I logged in the day of F2P early access with no problems at all.  The ease with which I was able to install and log-in already puts this experience a step above my attempts to get into the game upon the initial launch 2 years ago.  There’s a plus already!  My Lieutenant Commander was sitting there, patiently waiting as he had been for the better part of two years.  He would have to just keep waiting however.  This was my first time back into a game that had reportedly changed quite a bit since I had last played it, so that called for a new character.

Character creation is one of the things Cryptic Studios does well, and Star Trek Online is no exception.  The amount of character options are enormous, and the amount of detail you can put into each of your creations can leave you in an epic daze of character creation for hours.  You can choose an existing Star Trek Lore species, and create an avatar to your liking, or you have the ability to just go wild and create and entirely new alien species.

The only negative thing I have to say about character creation is that you are forced to choose some attributes for your character right then and there.  At this point I am not sure just how much these choices can make or break you, but I really do not like having to make skill/attribute choices before I play one second of the game.  For veterans it’s most assuredly not a big deal, but for a new (or relatively new) player it can leave you afraid that you may have screwed something up before you even get started.

Once you’ve created your character you can visit any tailor in game to change your uniform options, and even tweak the look of your character for a cost of energy credits (the normal in-game currency you acquire by completing missions, vendoring items, etc.).  The uniform and basic detail options of your Bridge Officers and Away team can be adjusted here as well.  Of course, being a free-to-play game, there are plenty of options that can be unlocked in the C-Store for real world money.  The in-game store itself is laid out in a very simple to use, intuitive manner which makes it easy to find available items and their costs.

Upon loading into the game for the first time in a long time, my initial impression was absolutely positive.  Within minutes I began noticing changes that had been made, not only in the game world, but also with the game systems.  The graphic textures of the game have vastly improved since my time in STO, and gameplay felt smoother than I remember.  Cryptic is working on utilizing DirectX11 for users whose rigs are optimized for it, and I’ve heard some really good things about it.  Even without DX11 though, the graphical and overall systems improvements were absolutely apparent.

A little side note:  There are many players complaining about the visual beauty (or lack there of) of the information signs found on the Earth Spacedock.  They may not be much to look at, but their simplicity and utility are a gift sent down from the heavens for those of us who easily get lost in giant circles.

As far as visual presentation, game performance, and character creation go, Star Trek Online gets an A+ from me.  I wanted Cryptic to slap me in the face with improvements the moment I logged in, and they did just that.

The main reason I walked away from STO two years ago can be summed up like this: Boring, repetitive gameplay.  Sure, most MMO’s on the market today feature quests that essentially do the same things over and over, but in STO it just felt like a never ending treadmill of identical quests in identical sectors of space.

One measure Cryptic has taken to alleviate some of this grindy repetitiveness is to organize their quests into Episodes which consist of a group of missions that are part of an over-arching storyline.  This fundamental change in how receiving quests is perceived, and what completion of a quest means, has done wonders in my opinion to revitalize the questing, and for the first time in years I find myself quite often taking the time to read the quest text.  Yes, some quests can be a bit repetitive, but the conclusion of the overall Episode story is the motivation to finish out the duller missions so you can see what happens next.

Some of the missions I have gotten have been familiar from my time in initial launch, but they have been tweaked to fit within the new episode stories and streamlined to make completion of the objectives less strenuous.  Everything isn’t roses however.  There are occasionally quests that have you beam down to a planet’s surface, find and scan an item, and then find and scan more of those items.  Unfortunately said items can be ridiculously far apart, and difficult to spot.  There have been times when there weren’t even any enemies to fight along the way, which yes can be annoying at times as well, but without them you are left spending ten minutes roaming around an empty world to scan four items, in which there are exactly four.  This is by far my least favorite quest type in the game.  It can also be difficult at times to quickly and easily recognize where you should be going next as the mini-map and world map do not always do a good job of pointing you in the right direction.  Sector space can be particularly confusing when trying to locate your next destination and the map system there could really use some updating.

Cryptic’s Episodic missions aren’t your only available option in order to get your quest on.  The Foundry is one of the boldest innovations in any MMO.  At first glance the ability for users to create their own game content may seem like laziness on the part of the developers, and to an extent it may be, but once you delve into some of the highly rated missions that players have created it quickly becomes apparent that there are true Trek fans in this game who possess an intense love for the deep story of exploration and peace at the heart of the Star Trek Universe.

If you played STO early on, you already know that the ground combat was some of the worst gameplay to be found in any game.  Slow, methodical, dull, ridiculous.  Those words only begin to describe how bad ground combat was.  To fix this, the developers re-imagined ground combat completely, and have implemented an over-the-shoulder third-person shooter style combat that brings a bit of the action back to ground missions.  Upon logging in for the first time in years, ground combat was one of the things I wanted to see immediately, and the game didn’t make me wait long.  While it may not be able to compete with top of the line shooters that are out there, this system is WORLDS ahead of where it was before.  If you’re a big time shooter fan, you’re probably not going to want to come to STO just because of the ground combat, but in a game that leans more towards space combat, the new ground combat system is a fun way to keep things interesting during Away Missions.

Space combat will be familiar to anyone who has played STO before, as it has not changed much, and really it did not need to.  The space combat system itself was done very well from the beginning and it was typically the unoriginal quests and locations that really brought it down.  In a ship-on-ship phaser fight in space everything “feels” as you would think it would.  Ships turn for better firing angles against weakened sections of the enemy ship, or to protect their own damaged shields.  During combat you are choosing which weapons to fire, controlling power to different shield sections, and utilizing your bridge crew’s abilities to give you an advantage over the enemy.  Star Fleet doesn’t traditionally come in guns blazin’, but when it’s time to protect a defenseless colonized planet from invaders, STO space combat will deliver a satisfying battle encounter.

The Duty Officer system brings a unique mini-game experience that has become a hit with STO players.  The system gives you the experience of running day-to-day activities on your ship as you assign duty officer personnel to tasks based on their personal attributes in order to generate the best possible outcome for each particular mission.  These tasks can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, and can generate rewards if successful such as experience, skill points, dilithium and more.  The Universe isn’t a safe place however, and your Duty Officers can wind up injured and have to report to sick bay to recover, or in some instances even be killed in the line of duty.  You begin with a small selection of officers and can expand your roster by leveling up or purchasing more roster spots through the C-Store.

You can literally play Star Trek Online without spending a dime if you so choose, and the Dilithium Exchange is the feature that makes that possible.  Dilithium ore can be acquired through gameplay such as certain daily missions, and up to 8.000 dilithium ore per day can be converted into Refined Dilithium which in turn can then be traded for Cryptic Points in-game via the Dilithium Exchange.  There is a floor and ceiling for how much Dilithium a Cryptic point can sell for, but there is room for economic flux and a bit of competitive marketing.  As an example, at the time of this writing each Cryptic Point is going for just under 300 Refined Dilithium.

STO still suffers from it’s share of problems, but the bar has undoubtedly been raised from where it was when this game originally made its debut.  The rumors you’ve heard about this game being much improved from its original incantation are definitely true, and if you’ve been thinking of trying it out again, especially for Star Trek fans, it is for sure worth the download so you can decide for yourself if Star Trek Online deserves a place in your gaming library.

Here we go, like Alice down the rabbit hole, venturing into a fantastic world of wonder and awe.

I apologize for the grandiose introduction, but something about a land filled exclusively with anthropomorphic animals does bring to mind certain images.

I refer of course to Earth Eternal, the initial offering from Sparkplay Media. I must admit that Earth Eternal isn’t at first glance something I would have considered for regular play, but it seems that I was very much selling it short. Having been able to spend some quality time with it, I will say that it certainly is something that I could get into.

I suppose we might as well start with the basics. Earth Eternal is a fantasy MMO, set in a world where humans have become extinct and animals have evolved to fill their place; at least in a nutshell.

Players may choose from a rather impressive list of anthropomorphic animals as their character; though as far as I can tell at this point, this selection doesn’ t have an effect on the actual stats or choices possible for the character.

The game is free to play, with the requisite cash shop, and as a final bonus, you can do it right from your browser.

Now I am suitably impressed by the technical savvy displayed by working out a way to get this to play in a browser, as it does actually look fairly good, but I have to admit that I personally far prefer playing with the downloaded client that comes with it. I may be just a little bit crazy, but for some reason the client seems a little quicker to respond to me.

In the interest of keeping things brief, I’ll start with what I like about the game, before I go on to some things I think might merit some changes.

First and foremost, I would say that the art team at Sparkplay deserves a rather heaping helping of kudos. The limitations of the browser based game they have could have proved a problem, but even with the reduced polygon counts, and lower texture resolutions, they have managed to make a game that looks very good.

I don’t want to mislead anyone and say that they’re going to be getting anything even approaching photo-realistic, but all of the game’s visuals work excellently together to create a coherent visual style that’s colorful and fun without being saccharine and “kiddy.”

The game also plays very well, though as I did mention above, it suffers from a little sluggishness in the controls occasionally, the control scheme is very similar to the standard layout that you find in most games these days, so anyone who has experience should not find themselves having any difficulty in picking up and playing.

One of the strongest parts of the game in my opinion is the level of character customization through skills and spells.

While one does select a class to play as when creating their character, they are not limited to only the skills available from that classes “Skill tree” for lack of a better word.

Certainly there are several skills and abilities provided to each class that are solely for them, but I would go so far as to say that fully half of the class skills in the game can be “Cross classed” allowing for a rather wide range of skills and abilities regardless of your initial selection.

This system is one of the better I’ve seen in recent years, allowing players to play and build their character based on their experiences and preferences rather than locking them in to a set selection of abilities right at creation.

Now there are a few things that I imagine could have been done better, and in most cases likely are expecting to be changed.

The first and certainly most annoying is the loading times. As someone who has been playing online games for a long time I like to think that I’m patient enough to deal with reasonable loading times. The loading times for Earth Eternal on the other hand simply are out of hand on occasion.

I certainly imagine that this is in fact a priority for the team behind the game and I would be shocked if this wasn’t fixed before the game was sent into a live environment.

Another minor qualm I have with the game at the moment is with the animation.

There are a few instances during which I have noticed a little bit of stuttering in the animation to the point where it actually did become a distraction. Again, this seems like the sort of issue that is likely to be sorted out during the beta.

One thing that does slightly bother me that isn’t a technical issue is the sound.

Perhaps I’m just being nitpicky here, but the game doesn’t seem to have that many sound effects, and when you hear the same one all the time being used for a number of situations it does start to grate a little, but like I said, perhaps I’m just being a little nitpicky.

All things considered, Earth Eternal is a very highly polished game that raises the bar for free offerings.

About the only thing that it has going against it, is that it does everything well, but as yet doesn’t seem to excel in any one area, though one might say that the atmosphere and setting are unique enough to make up for that.

Since it’s still a beta at this point it’s tough to make any real calls on how it’s going to turn out, we all know a lot can change.

But, at this point I would say that Earth Eternal is an amusing jaunt into a pleasant world, and a good way to while away a few hours. By all means,  anyone who’s looking for something to amuse them should at least give Earth Eternal a try.

MMOs have come a very long way to say the least. We have seen so much variety and expansion from the industry; it is becoming hard to keep up with. It seems that MMOs in general love to pop up in the most unexpected of places. So what do you get when you combine some of the most popular and well-known tech devices in the world, and a Sci-Fi based MMO? Iron Will Studio’s Outer Empires.

Outer Empires is a unique MMO that resides in one of the most unpredictable areas of the universe, space. However, this is not your typical MMO that you play at 2AM while trying to finish your research paper. What sets this MMO apart from many others is that not only is it available on many current web browsers, but also on iPhone and iPod Touch devices from Apple. So if you somehow manage to obliterate your motherboard, not a problem! You’re still able to enjoy a well thought out MMO at the touch of your fingertips, literally.

Now that I have pretty much bragged enough about how convenient it is to have such accessibility to an MMO, it’s time to move on to the game itself. In Outer Empires, players are able to freely choose how they approach the universe right on the go. You have a variety of ways to go about things, but probably the most direct approach to the game is the player’s ships.

Players are able to buy, sell, build, or even modify their own ships. It adds the uniqueness factor by having every player in control of how they foresee their ships. I think Outer Empires really has made it to the point where players are not as tiresome as they typically would be. They are not compelled to choose a certain component; rather they are open to customization and free thought.

Every player is able to join or be in control of a faction (which most people can just look as a guild). This provides an in-game private chat system, forums, and universal bank system, all of which is exclusive to the faction. Besides being convenient, it leads to further growth and development within your own community. Players don’t feel alienated from their members, and are given strong communication with all who are associated.

Every player in the game is able to transport various goods throughout the universe. There are also a variety of set tasks that players are recommended to perform to really get them started in the game. They pretty much give you a nice boost in the game by getting you started at a steady pace. Once players reach a comfortable level, they are able to then create their own in-game colony. With these colonies, players are able to perform a host of things, such as manufacturing, research, and even mining.

Outer Empires truly brings something new to the platform of MMOs. It is definitely refreshing to be able to try out something unique and well thought out. The fact of being able to be explore the universe, join friends, create colonies, and modify galactic ships is a good enough reason to give this game a go.

Outer Empires is currently available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as a host of internet browsers (Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer).

Turbine’s other and oft forgotten MMO, Dungeons and Dragons Online is set to make a major change from subscription based to free2play while still keeping the option to pay the 14.99 subscription fee. What this means is, if you like D&D but don’t like paying a monthly fee you can get your D&D freak on for free.

To entice free users to at least spend some money, an item shop called the DDO Store has been incorporated into the game that sells everything from hair dye to extra character slots. In order to buy anything, you need to first purchase Turbine Points to spend in the DDO Store. Nothing in the shop is game breaking and the shop is available anywhere in the game. So what this means is if you are in the middle of an instance with some friends and you run out of healing potions, just bring up the shop window and within moments the items are delivered right to your inventory.

Users that decide to pay a monthly fee (premium users) will have access to all game content, like the two player races; dark elves and the warforged. These premium users will also have access to all the higher level quests and the new Monk class that launches with this new update. In addition to the above, premium users will also get some Turbine Points each month to use in the DDO Store.

Since DDO launched in early 2006, it has changed quite a bit. The biggest change Turbine added awhile ago are adventure areas that are basically large open instances that you can go into solo or with a group. These areas have quests available as well as special milestones to achieve. These milestones include slayer achievements which require you to kill a set number of a specific creature, and the number increases with each amount you fulfill. Another one is rare encounters, where you have to find a specific monster spawn and kill it. The last two are lore and dungeon entrances which reward you for finding specific locations. Each milestone awards experience to the player.

The only problem I have with the game is some of the quests seem overly hard for the solo player and require a large amount of healing potions and unless you stock up, you’ll easily run out and have to either buy some from the DDO store or leave the quest area (which resets it) and buy some. I don’t believe this is intentional and it barely detracts from an otherwise very enjoyable MMO that is ultimately easy on the pocketbook. I know come September 9th I’ll be lobbing the heads off skeletons and slaying kobolds.

Salutations folks, I was lucky enough to be afforded the opportunity to take part in the Aion closed beta, and I thought I’d take a little bit of time to relay my thoughts so far.

I suppose the first thing that warrants mentioning is that the developers are doing something drastically differently than previous betas I’ve participated in. As opposed to other game betas it’s not a continuous playing period, rather they are opening up individual areas that they are hoping to test and running players through those areas, presumably to get more focused feedback. I personally have to say that while I would prefer the chance to just play the heck out of the beta, I think that this is actually an incredibly effective technique for getting proper testing feedback. That said, the amount of time they have allowed for actual testing has limited the amount of exploration that one can engage in, but I assure you I’ve done my best to root out all the interesting bits.

The first thing that anyone is likely to notice about this particular game is that it’s incredibly, and I mean incredibly polished for a pre-release state. There is however a reason for that, and that is due to the fact that the game has been live in Korea for just over seven months. I’m certainly not going to hold that against the game, but I have noted that testers of the NA/EU version are currently playing on v1.0 servers and clients, while the actual game is v1.5 at the moment.

What difference that might make to the finished product I certainly couldn’t say, so I’m going to try and limit this to only what I know, and leave speculation to the comments at the bottom. As I said, the game is currently polished to an almost mirror shine. One spot I did notice some performance trouble though was with control responsiveness. When playing things could feel a tad sluggish sometimes, though I’m willing to chalk that one up to the network chaos that accompanies huge amounts of people all playing in the same space.

One aspect that almost certainly deserves it’s own section is the graphics. The game is running on the Crytek engine, the same little piece of software that brought you the gorgeous Far Cry, and which was later improved to be used in Crysis as Crytek2. As such the graphics are, for the most part, quite breathtaking. Characters and enemies are highly detailed and effects are varied and for the most part also quite impressive. I think that this high quality is what creates such a jarring effect when compared to the texture quality of the terrain and far distance static objects. The terrain and distant objects are certainly not in any horrifying state as to be distressing, but they certainly lack the variety and detail of so many other objects, there does also appear to be a fair amount of stretching on pieces of terrain that are not entirely flat.

I won’t presume to speak for the developers, but it seems to me that this decision was made to reduce the amount of power needed to create the world, the upshot of which is, you will be able to play this game at a quite detailed level without having to refinance your house to buy a new supercomputer. I was getting quite acceptable fram erates with full detail and upwards of thirty people on screen at the same time.

Now a very pretty game is one thing, but that certainly doesn’t necessarily make it a good game, that is provided by the game play. Up to now, only the first twenty levels of play have been made accessible to players, which does certainly leave some parts out, but it allows for an impression of the basic mechanics as well as the new player experience. As far as game mechanics goes, it will be largely familiar to people who have played any of the other big name titles out there. HP and MP bars, and some boxes with pictures on a bar at the bottom that do different things.

The holy trinity has been maintained with a clear Tank and Healer class, though from my limited playtime I found that there were a number of classes that could fill those shoes if strictly necessary. I had chosen the healer route as I am wont to do, and played through the first ten levels at a pace similar to healers in most other games. I must admit that there was not a great deal worth mentioning in those first ten levels, though there was one thing that I was impressed by. The overall starter area quests were separated into two lines, the campaign quests and standard quests.

The standard quests truly are standard quests, in every sense of the word ,they adhere to the same principles that were created with EverQuest questing. It was the campaign quests that I found myself more drawn to. It would appear from my limited experience that each major area has it’s own particular story that is played out through these campaign quests, each of which are either explicitly or subtly related to one another, and are often bookended by cut scenes. Currently they are simply video with subtitled text, but the developers have promised that voice-over is intended and is currently in progress to be included for cut scenes.

And now we come to level 10. Once a player manages to get a character up to level ten things open up a bit more. The story given is that while you have been a mortal human for the first ten levels, you are blessed and allowed to ascend to the ranks of the immortal Daeva after completing a simple quest line. While that sounds cool of it’s own right, it comes with the added bonus of a pair of wings which you can use to take flight and rain death from your opponents down from above, and take to the skies and explore areas previously denied to you by your mortal status; for one minute, and only in proscribed areas. Yes, I found out very quickly that there are actually a rather large number of restrictions on playing with flight. Looking at it now with the benefit of hindsight I can understand why that might be, but it was still a little bit disappointing to be grounded so soon.

Flight isn’t the only big change the comes with level ten. From level one to nine you get to pick a general class, but once you reach level 10 a player gets to branch into one of two subsequent classes. In my particular case I went from Priest to Chanter. As could be expected, each of the two classes one can choose at level ten are, at least in the most general sense, a more advanced version of the class you’ve been playing for the first nine levels, but with slightly different directions. In the case of a chanter I retained my ability to heal, but from the skills available to me at the time it would appear that the Chanter relies more on powerful buffs in order to prevent your party members from taking damage and increasing the damage they do.

Continued on next page.

When The MMO Gamer was invited to visit Hi-Rez Studios for a sneak peak at their upcoming game, Global Agenda, I was very interested in the prospect of going.

But, before we get into that, let me tell you a little about the game itself, and the people who are going to bring it to us.

Hi-Rez Studios is a US-based company located in the state of Georgia, just outside of Atlanta.

Founded in 2005, they have grown to become a large-scale operation, drawing away employees from several other MMO studios.

The CEO of Hi-Rez is a man named Erez Goren. His dream was to create his own video games, and now he’s trying to make good on it.

Erez started writing software back in the late 1980s, with one of the first a baseball games for the Atari 400. After college he started a number of successful business ventures, using the proceeds to found Hi-Rez.
Helping make Erez’s dream come true is a group of around fifty people headed by Todd Harris. Todd, whose office is decorated with spy movie posters, is the executive producer for the game.

Enough about Hi-Rez! Let us take a tour of Global Agenda. My very first impression of Global Agenda, from skimming the website and watching some in-game movies, was that it was just another Unreal Tournament clone.
But, having seen it now in person, Global Agenda goes above and beyond what Unreal is. Using their own motion capture studio to do all the animations, Hi-Rez is making a unique game built on the Unreal 3 engine. Michal Adam, the public relations manager, even pitched in and did the animations for the female medic, which is her favorite class.

GA is set in the future of Earth. The current governments of today have faded away, and new powers seek to control the citizens. Technology has progressed leaps and bounds, especially in the field of robotics. Although there are new governments, like the controlling Commonwealth, Global Agenda characters will be working for companies called Agencies. These Agencies are built of people banded together to try and take over the world in epic campaigns.

Built up on four founding layers of gameplay, Global Agenda is trying to provide something for everyone.

The first layer is action. Each class provides a different way to play, and each mission gives you a wide variety of things to do.

The second layer is character development. With the inclusion of the RPG-style elements you can create a wide variety of characters not seen in traditional FPS games. This can branch into fun for the traditional roleplayer, by having to build your character, or frustration for the traditional FPS player, by not having access to all the cool guns.

The third layer is teamwork. With goals in each mission and for each agency you will get to work with friends to accomplish things you wouldn’t be able to by yourself.

The final layer will be the large-scale warfare. With 45-day campaigns, or seasons, Agencies will compete with each other to be the best and bring honor and fame to their members. Something a player who prefers to solo may not get to experience.

Characters are created from four base classes. The weapon-master Assault class, wielding anything from rocket launchers to miniguns is the damage dealer. Engineers are the masters of robotics, they can throw down a shield to protect teammates from fire while deploying deadly turrets. Medics run behind their teammates healing them and engaging in biological warfare against their enemies. And, the last thing you ever see could be the stealthy Recon class; equipped with a sniper rifle and invisibility cloak.

Each class has more than enough skill options to give them a wide variety, leaning towards eight or more unique builds in total. Each character has a family name. This “family” includes your entire, account and ensures all of your characters are in the same Agency, fighting for the same goals.

Each comes with their own jet pack for quick travel on maps, and has their own specialties. But, with only four to choose from you may feel a bit limited when creating a new character.
These agencies set the central theme of the fast action Player vs. Player for the game. You can freelance yourself if you desire, but the most rewarding action comes from the Agency battles. With groups of around 10 you fight for and defend key points on a larger map.

The larger-scale battles are alliance against alliance, or Agency vs. Agency. These larger battles are part of 45 day campaigns that Agencies participate in to win prestige and awards for themselves and their members. Each “season” provides a goal to accomplish for teams and provides bonuses if they dominate.

Even if nobody from your agency or alliance is online for you to fight with, Global Alliance provides players options to freelance for the government and join groups of random players to fight with and against. Even though PvP is the central theme for an FPS-style game, there is a support role for your characters in the Player vs. Environment.

PvE is used for orientation of new members, class missions for learning how to use upgrades, and learning team building skills. With such little PvE, some casual players may find themselves out of the loop.
All this talk about PvP casual players may be thinking, “I’m no twitch gamer there is no way I can compete with all the 13 year old players!” Well, Global Agenda has added a few things to deal with this. Not only is there a rich RPG-style character progression to gain better equipment but high-end characters as well as low-end characters are limited to how much gear can be used in a match.

Leveling in the game gives you access to new weapons and abilities, but you can’t use them all in every battle. With such limits, the long time player may have access to some of the better weapons in game but they will be limited on some of the smaller items like mines or grenades which are also essential to a well rounded game.

GA also has a well implemented melee system that is useful and easy to learn. When the other team deploys a projectile shield you better get in close with your battle-axe and tear them up. When playing with the experienced alpha testers I found melee a nice twist to the traditional FPS game that gives more depth and gameplay to the normal point and shoot of the genre.

Global Agenda does a nice job of blending RPG and FPS to create a game that anyone can jump in casually and play a good game. The depth of character building and agency campaigns will allow you to enjoy the game for a long time to come. Even after playing an hour with the alpha testers I am very excited about the ease one can get into Global Agenda.

Offering aspects of traditional games that allow most gamers, casual to experienced, to have a place to play brings a lot to the table.

I had originally written up an impressions piece on Frogster Interactive’s Runes of Magic a few weeks back, before open beta hit. That piece was based on what I had seen so far in its closed stage. After playing the title for about a week since open beta hit, I wanted to rewrite the piece as a lot of the qualms I had were squashed with the new client. I understand as well as anyone else that beta testing is just that, testing. Most of the qualms I had were localization issues. It’s kind of hard to test and write about things that you can’t understand because it’s in another language.

On December 15th, Runes of Magic launched its open beta with a new client that took care of just about every complaint I had about the title so far, and you can bet that they will be updating it continuously as open beta rolls along. That’s great, because Runes of Magic is an exceptionally solid title, especially being in the Free 2 Play sub-genre. If there is going to be any game out there in the next year that is going to open us Westerner players and developers as to what the F2P genre can be, it’s going to be Runes of Magic.

Just don’t go into the title expecting something all-new, because you won’t find completely new mechanics here. What you will find in Runes of Magic is a fun, easy to get into combat system, player housing, dual classes, tradeskills, a (so far) lower emphasis on grinding compared to most F2P MMO’s and even a PvP server or two. There will be a lot of people who will call shenanigans right off the bat as to how closely the title resembles and plays many other games in the MMO genre. While I agree that RoM can seem very similar to other titles, I personally haven’t seen a ground breaking MMO in quite a while, let a lone a F2P title with this much to offer a player.

If you’re looking for something new and yet tried and true with some new twists, check out the open beta for Runes of Magic. It’s free to download and play, and might just surprise you a little with how much the title has to offer.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…  there was a title from Sony Online Entertainment called Star Wars:  Galaxies.  It wasn’t greeted with with critical fanfare, but it did have a loyal following within the MMO community.  Since its inception, a lot has changed with the title, including the ”New Game Experience,” and a Combat Update that changed the way the game was played, and the way fans view the title and SOE in general.

Having been one of those fans back in the day, I’m not going to sit here and berate anyone for what happened, but instead take you on my first impressions of the title having not played the game since its initial release.  While a lot has changed, one thing that has stayed the same is that community (that still plays) is thriving, and as anyone can tell you, sometimes that is all a title needs.

When you first load Star Wars: Galaxies, whether in the free trial or a purchased a copy,  you get to take part in an area specifically designed to get you hooked.  In other words, content that is designed to get you interested in the title, and wanting to subscribe.  A lot of publishers out there are going with free trial offers, but not all content, even free, is created equal.

In Star Wars: Galaxies you run through a brief tutorial on the basics of an MMO, movement, inventory, quests and the like, before getting to meet Han Solo and Chewbacca and blasting off in the Millennium Falcon.  On the Millennium Falcon you get a quick turkey shoot, taking control the Falcon’s guns and destroying some TIE fighters.  While basic almost to the point of tedious, it does feel very iconic to the Star Wars legacy.

Upon destroying the TIE fighters, you land at the Tansarii Point Station, which is where you will spend much of the next 10 levels. Upon helping Han fix the Milenium Falcon, you can leave the station at level 5, but the big quest line once you reach Tatooine, doesn’t start until level 12, so you are better off staying and picking up some random quests once you reach top side.  While on the Station, you will be treated to quite a few different quests for XP and loot, a quest to get some early faction points, space missions if you are a fan of flying iconic Star Wars ships, and an obligatory dungeon.

To be honest, I hated Tansarii Station.  While it was a pretty quick trip to level 9 before you get to the meat

 and potatoes of the game, I think it’s pretty darn.. well.. blah.  While you get to see Han Solo and Boba Fett, the Star Wars feel just really doesn’t flow during your time on the Station.  Once you reach level 9 (or level 5 if you are in a real hurry), you can make your way to Tatooine, and get started to the real content of SWG.  After touching down, and running a couple fetch quests that at least net you a speeder to get you around quicker, you start working on what is called the Legacy Quest.  What this is, is a VERY LONG quest line that spans from the moment you touch down, all the way to level 50 or 60 or so, touching on most of the planets in the game.

While I have only played until level 20 so far, the Legacy quest is fairly entertaining and eventually brings you in contact with a few big names in the Star Wars Lexicon.  As you get closer to level 20, you will get to start working on Jabba the Hutt’s “themepark”.  No, there are no hutt slime dunk tanks, or crazy Ferris wheels.  A theme park in SWG is like a quest hub.  It is a place, usually of a certain faction, where you can go work on a multitude of quests.  For example, including the Jabba theme park, there is also a rebel and imperial theme park.

A lot has changed in the five years that SWG has been out.  Instead of the old skill based system, the title has moved to class based, instead.  Where as you used to have to pick up a weapon or skill set and use it to gain in strength, you know pick from an iconic class type, such as a Jedi or Bounty Hunter, and level up like you would in a normal title.  You now get “Expertise” points, which are points that you can drop into a skill tree to increase your effectiveness, or give you new skills, kind of like talents.

You cannot wear any armor until level 22, and up until then you will find quest rewards, and very rarely, loot items that you can use to upgrade yourself.  One of the biggest disappointments to me is that weapons and items in general, are a lot of times few and far between.  Crafters do not waste time making lower levels items.

Any questions I had were very quickly answered by again, what is one of the real saving graces of SWG, the community.  Just remember in character creation to pick a server that at least has a medium load, because while SWG has quite a few servers, most of them are dead at the moment.  But that should change soon, as SOE is going to be offering free server tranfers sometime after the first of the year.

The other saving grace of the title is of course that the game is Star Wars.  I mean lasers, light sabers, ships… who doesn’t like that sort of thing?   So far, I am actually enjoying myself, even if the title is a bit tedious at times.  If you like Star Wars, or are just looking for something a little different, give the title a try.  Just make sure you actually make it out of Tansarii Point Station before say Yay or Nay.

I had totally forgetten just how many races (19!) and classes (15) this game had until I had logged back in with the trial and created a new character.  Some of the races seem kind of blah, for example there are three types of human, but they vary them by being different nationalities and ultimately tie-in with the look and feel of their home continent…  Which, unfortunately, you wont see on the trial island.

It is entirely self contained, using the Kojan style, which is what you would call an Asian theme.  I was surprised they used Kojan, because like most people I was expecting something a little more typical of the fantasy realm, but it helps show off one of the things that makes Vanguard are darn cool game: diversity.

After choosing your Race/Class and creating your avatar, you are dropped into a little village where you quickly learn that the entire area of the trial has been in constant battle with the Hobgolbins for many years.

Only recently, a new player has shown up and is threatening to destroy both sides of the battle.   As you progress through levels on the isle, you learn that the people of the Isle were betrayed and ultimately make your way to beating this nefarious character and helping set free the isle.

While the story sounds like something you would hear just about anywhere, SOE does a great job of keeping you moving from one quest or area to another.  Always keeping you in something to do, or with a goal in mind.

One thing that differentiates Vanguard from other MMOs is that not only does it have adventuring, but crafting is considered it’s own “sphere.” You can level it up the same way as you would adventuring, including things like doing quests.

Or, you can chose to progress in the  Diplomacy “sphere.”  It’s a sort of card game that has its own quests

and rewards, and is very integral to the game if you want it to be, in that you can learn a TON of information about the world.  On the Isle, you learn a lot of the storyline from adventuring, but by doing diplomacy, you get to see exactly what is happening from a storyline perspective.

I think the Isle was great.  It gives you a great idea of how Vanguard as a game works.  It shows you and teaches you about abilitiy chains, crafting and rewards, diplomacy and its rewards, and is a fun time to boot.  If you haven’t had the chance to try Vanguard, or tried back at release when it was an absolute mess, you owe it to yourself to give the game another try.

The community honestly, is the one thing that surprised me.  Vanguard is not a WoW clone, and while it may be that Sigil is taking steps to change things and make it a little easier for some players, it has not lost out in the community.  The community on the Isle is great, with players offering up free bags, being very helpful, and just in general seeming a little more mature than what you find in most games today.  Honestly, it felt a little bit like playing EverQuest back in the day community wise, which was a huge delight for me.

Vanguard is not perfect.  It had a ton of problems back at release, and has had its backlash because of that. What you see in the trial might not always be 100% indicative of the actual full title. The biggest issue facing Vanguard at this time is lack of content at the level cap, which in turn has made population an issue.  You wont always see the amount of people running around Telon as a whole as you will on the Trial Isle.  But the dev team is hard at work on creating some brand new content for max level players, and is constantly working on new things. In fact, they are getting ready to launch a new content update that is to include max level content, including 700 new items,  and new quests.

I’m hoping to spend some time with the full game and bring you some impressions of the title, but in the meantime, check it out!  The Trial of the Isle is here to bring new players to the game, and show old veterans that the small team working on Vanguard is committed to making this into a great title.  If you haven’t played Vanguard, give it a shot.  I am sure that you will be pleasantly suprised!

All the information we get talks about the re-reopening, and the future plans of Nevrax to revitalize the world of Ryzom, and bring players back into the game, which seems to have a fairly steady user base.

Having been bombarded by all of this, I decided that maybe it was time that I gave Saga of Ryzom a fair try. These are the subsequent impressions from my first week or so within the world.

I have to admit, I was a little excited about the game. The press releases actually piqued my interest in the this colorful looking MMO. Talk of a decent community of players, coupled with the Sci-Fi theme and some very picturesque screenshots had me pumped to try out something different.

Honestly, I wasn’t disappointed. At least, in the things that I mentioned. There is a lot to like in Sage of Ryzom, but, on the same token, there is plenty more that just confused the hell out me.

Character creation in Ryzom, like most lower budget titles, isn’t all that in-depth. The race I chose allowed me to tweak my hair, body size, and some facial tattoos. Par for the course, really. The last step in character creation is choosing what type of character your want to focus on.

Ryzom, as far as I have been able to tell, isn’t level-based, but skill-based. As in, you choose which type of class to specialize in, fighter, magician, harvester or crafter, and then use those skills in-game to increase their levels, making that skill more effective. It’s a change of pace compared to your normal level-up titles.

Once I loaded into the game, the first thing I noticed, is gee, this game is pretty. Graphics aren’t cutting edge, but the art direction in Ryzom is one of it’s strongest points for me.

Bright greens and blues dot the landscape, there are what look like floating pathways that criss cross the cloud-filled sky, butterflies and leaves float in the wind. All in all some pretty darn good aesthetics. But on the shiny exotic outside of the box, lives a very complex monster waiting to be released.

When I first started my character in Ryzom, I chose the basic of the basic, the fighter class (little did I know that not much in Ryzom is basic). I was instructed to meet my first quest instructor, and get started on getting acclimated with my surroundings.

During those first other quests, you had your typical kill and return affairs, but also some more interesting type of quests. And while going out and clicking on a few monsters really isn’t “interesting,” finding out that those monsters are designed with their own eco-systems in mind. Monsters herd together forming long lines marching into the distance.

Animals are creatures of habit, having their own AI ambitions when it comes down to their behavior. If you are attacking a predator or enemy of that type of monster, maybe it will join in on beating up the helpless creature. Or at least, that is what the game itself says. I didn’t see much more than some monsters traveling in huge herds in my time spent.

I really feel the need to point something out before this goes any further. I am not a hardcore player anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some MMO, but I just don’t have the time to spend on games that I used too.

Ryzom, while not hardest of the hardcore, has quite the learning curve compared to most MMOs coming out nowadays.

As I mentioned earlier, there are no levels in Ryzom. Character advancement comes in the form of leveling up skills. Beat a yabo’s ass with sword and board and your fighting skill will go up, use some acid magic and your magical skills will increase.

Same with harvesting and crafting. The more you use those skills, the better off you will become with them, which then open up new avenues and skills. While we have all been waiting a long time for a new skill based title, all the way back to UO, it just feels overly clunky and less rewarding then ye olde fashion “ding” level up.

Beyond your basic gaining of skills, you can also go to your Archetype trainer and learn some skills to use. Unfortunately for me, beyond pick up a self heal and a taunt power, I didn’t understand a lick about the activatable skill system.

I just could not come to grip with using “stanzas” and adding and removing skill modifiers and different attack chains( I think). It’s not that I didn’t want to, but I felt the very short paragraph description on how it works did nothing more than confusing me even more.

All in all, I was disappointed when Ryzom failed to impress.

I love the setting and art direction of the title whole heartedly, but the meaty mechanics were just way to much with to llittle explanation. Don’t even get me started on crafting.

While harvesting was a pretty menial affair, just listening to the people in chat have 10 minute conversations about materials and plans and quality level made my spin.

But, it’s those 10 minute conversations that leads me to what I feel is one of Saga of Ryzom’s biggest strength: The community, something that I feel is lacking in a lot of titles nowadays.

Everyone I talked to on the server was great. There are a lot of vets out there in the game that are willing to help out with anything a newbie might ask, and it felt really good to see that again.

When all is said and done, if you are looking for a solid community, and an MMO with more meat than potatoes, Saga if Ryzom just might be the game for you.

The Saga of Ryzom is free-to-play through the month of October. Further information and a link to download it may be found at the game’s official website: http://www.ryzom.com

Northrend, the setting for Blizzard’s new World of Warcraft expansion “Wrath of the Lich King”, puts the massive back in massively multiplayer. In adding just one continent this time around, as opposed to the remnants of an entire planet in The Burning Crusade, you’d think that the scope of this expansion would be a little smaller.

Certainly, the focus of the expansion is tighter – the titular Lich King is present from the get-go for any new Death Knights, and makes himself known early and often for any existing level 70′s heading north. Once you arrive in Northrend, however, it’s a great big world that opens before you.

To begin your adventures, you’re given two options for starting zones – The Borean Tundra on the southeast side of the continent, or the Howling Fjord on the southwest side. This week we’ll take a look at the Borean Tundra, with a partially alliance point of view, as that’s the character I have to explore with.

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To reach BT, head to Stormwind. Once there, head to the northwest part of the city for the new Stormwind Harbor, and get on the Kraken, a shiny new boat that will arrive at the northernmost pier. Personally, I love the look of the new ships that take you to Northrend – a grander look with a definite military edge.

You’ll disembark at Valiance Keep, a forward port and fortress for the Alliance. Visible in the distance will be Warsong Hold, the first stop for any Horde arriving on a Zeppelin from a new flight tower just outside Orgrimmar. These two fortresses serve as starting points for questing in the Tundra, and also as places of rest, where you’ll find profession trainers eager to sell you patterns to improve whatever trade you’re plying.

Without giving too much away, you’re immediately thrown into battle with the Scourge, those minions of Arthas who dominate the entire continent. Fighting your way through the beachhead and up onto the expansive plains of the Tundra, you’ll be presented with a few options.

To the south is Riplash Strand, where you’ll first encounter the Kolkar, a walrus-like race native to Northrend. Immediately to the north of Valiance Keep is the struggling frontier town of Farshire, besieged by the Scourge. Immediately to the west of the beach are the Bloodspore Plains, where Kobolds are presumably harvesting the bloodspores.

Heading south around the coast takes you across the Plains of Nasam and towards Echo Cove, both sites of a number of Horde quests. Heading north again, you eventually arrive at Garrosh’s Landing, a coastal town overrun by the Skadir, who seem to be a sub-set of the Vrykul, a viking-like race that you’ll come into lots of contact with.

Even further north along the west coast of the Borean Tundra, you come to Amber Ledge, the first outpost and quest hub run by the Kirin Tor, a group of mages with a deep and rich history in Azeroth.

Eventually, you’ll have a lot to do with with Kirin Tor as you make your way to Dalaran, their city in the sky. It’s immediately apparent that the Kirin Tor have dealings with the different dragon aspects, and the dragons look to be a big part of the expansion as well.

To the west of Amber Ledge, a broken bridge cuts off passage to a rocky island, surrounded by floating platforms. This island is Coldarra, and by doing enough quests, you’ll open up access to it. You’ll be able to fly on the back of a dragon from Amber Ledge to the Transitus Shield, under which agents of the Kirin Tor are performing research on the dragons found on the island.

Coldarra is its own sub-zone, with a number of quests that will lead you into The Nexus, your first accessible dungeon on this side of the continent. The creatures you encounter in Coldarra are around level 72, so you may want to finish the rest of the Borean Tundra first, before heading over.

So, to the immediate south of Amber Ledge, there are some bad guys called “Beryl”, who look to be dragonkin and mages working together. The the immediate north of Amber Ledge is a quarry being dug out by these Beryl folks, who are using enslaved Tuskarr to carry out the labor. Some quests here involve restoring the ghosts of Tuskarr elders and causing grief for the Beryl.

Continuing north, we pass Steeljaw’s Caravan, and the ghosts around it. Just north of the caravan, there’s a road heading west, which leads down to the shore and Winterfin Retreat. Here you’ll meet the cleverly disguised King Mrgl-Mrgl, and have some adventures involving Murlocs and an Orca.

Of note, your breath seems to last a lot longer under water in Wrath of the Lich King than it did before, and it seems as though the designers have paid attention to making your underwater adventures just as visually interesting as the world above.

I will be the first person to admit, that sometimes I don’t understand why I am attracted the MMO genre so much. MMO’s as a genre are a social type game, and while I thouroughly enjoy playing MMO’s, I’m not exactly social half the time. Which in turn, I think, is a good reason that I love Free 2 Play MMO’s and eat them up like candy.

And speaking of F2P MMO’s, I recently had the chance to check out OG Planet’s La Tale closed beta. Upon first look, much to my dismay, the game looks a lot like Nexxon’s Maplestory. And personaly, while I understand that thousands of people out there love Maplestory, I didn’t last over 15 minutes in the game world. La Tale on the other hand, just had a little something that actually drew me back into the game for repeated play sessions.

One of the first things that I thought was interesting is that when you start playing you are greeted with a little story about the character Iris, who ends up being the main character of the game proper. It’s a nice little touch that adds a little more to just hack, slash and talk with your friends.

Controls took a little getting used to as I havent spent a lot of time in 2-D MMOG’s lately, but combat is pretty simple using the arrow keys for movement and some hot keys as well as keyboard letters for attacking. There are also a couple of classes in the game, as well as the ability to branch those classes again at level 80.

Graphics are colorful, and the music is cheery, both of which seem to be a staple of asian style F2P MMO. And of course, you can’t forget about the broken english load screens as well. All in all though, I actually had a pretty good time in the hours I spent with La Tale, especially when compared to what I feel is it’s closest competitor, Maplestory, which lasted a whole 10 minutes on my hard drive.

Open beta ended on the 3d of September, and La Tale is expected to go live on Sept 18th. Hopefully they have the XP rate down pat, and you can’t get massive amounts of XP just by running to the next ‘town portal” or ” Stone of Iris”, which you could do in OB. I look forward to giving the game a try when it goes live!

I didn’t think I liked space-based MMOs, until I played Jumpgate Evolution at GC08. This impression is based partly on a demo of the game, as well as actual hands-on time as it was being showcased at the Saitek booth along with the company’s joysticks.

The presentation was given by Michael Rowland, producer for Jumpgate Evolution at Codemasters, while the gameplay was shown by Grace Wong from NetDevil using an alpha build of the game.

Michael talked about the basics of the game, mentioning the focus on fast-paced twitch combat, controlled mainly through keyboard and mouse, though joysticks may be used instead. The game’s class system is based around licenses, where different licenses give the player access to different equipment.

Examples of these licenses were space truckers or miners, which use different types of ships and other equipment to fulfil their roles.

Although the game is focused around combat, Jumpgate Evolution is making room for a player economy with mining and manufacturing being in the center. Different manufacturing plants found throughout the game world specialize in creating different items and players will need to find these to make use of them.

They also talked about the background story of the game, a lot of it written by Keith Baker of Dungeons & Dragons fame. He is most known for his work on the Eberron setting in which Dungeons & Dragons Online from Turbine takes place.

Factions are also said to be an important part of the game with different factions available within each of the three nations with a reputation system being based around these factions and the missions players do for them.

An interesting note on the mission system is that if several people enter an area where they have the same objective, they do not need to be grouped together to be able to share the experience points. Michael said this would cut down on spawn camping though one might wonder how exactly this will work so that only those who do the actual work gets the rewards from the encounters.

Later during my visit at GC Germany, I ran into the game being displayed at the Saitek booth. The game was playable and the system was hooked into using a joystick and thruster.

I’m not a huge fan of using them and I’ve avoided them in the past, but since the game rig was provided by Saitek, who of course wanted mainly to show off their products, I had to bite the apple and give it a go.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

I started off in the starting area with a goal to destroy several pirate ships circling debris. After stumbling around with the thruster and the joystick for a few minutes due to my inexperience I finally got the hang of the basics of moving and attacking. And the fun started immediately.

The combat in Jumpgate Evolution is fast-paced and from what I experienced in the early stage of the game, it is twitch based, meaning you shoot the moment you hold down the trigger/mouse button. Using the thruster and the joystick also created a more immersive environment during movement and combat as I flew around asteroids and passed space stations in my dogfights against the pirates.

The atmosphere and immersion the game provided was refreshing and I can say that I haven’t had either feeling recently when playing an MMOG.

What Jumpgate Evolution could use some more work on would be the UI, which seemed a bit cluttery to me, with unnecessary parts such as the large square area in the top left corner showing an animated rendering of whatever you have currently targeted. It might have some use later in the game or it may not but at a first glance, it simply added to the clutter.

In the graphics department, Jumpgate Evolution doesn’t fall in the high-end category and the producer explains that they don’t want to have high system requirements for the game. The graphics aren’t bad and the style fits the game well from what little I saw during my flights and short combat sessions.

Overall, I had fun playing the game even if it was only for a short time and I am looking forward to giving the game another go, making it one of the few games at GC Germany that piqued my interest.

On the first day of GC08 I had the opportunity to see Hero’s Journey. The live demo was done by David Whatley, President and CEO of Simutronics Corp, the makers of Hero’s Journey and HeroEngine.
The demo started off by showing us the character selection screen, a fortress where the camera pans in an out of different rooms and areas to show you your characters, going through chambers and gardens. Although this doesn’t affect gameplay and some might think it takes too long to move between characters, I found it to be a nice detail.

Before picking one of the already created characters, David guided us through character creation. The character creation is very detailed but the UI for it looked unintuitive with David assuring me that the interface was being revamped to allow for more ease of use. Character generation offers the usual options but with enough sliders and options to keep even the most picky character creators busy. There are sliders for everything and even aspects such as hairstyle has been broken into several parts to allow for more customization. Additional customizable elements are makeup and facial details.

Another small but nice details was that not only doesn’t hair break out of worn hats and helmets, the hairstyle will temporarily change to one that fits the item worn, so a done up hairstyle would be let down when wearing a helmet for example.

In Hero’s Journey you can also customize your clothing extensively at character creation and your character can keep those clothes throughout the game as the game doesn’t force you to change your appearance by putting benefits on items. Hero’s Journey instead uses a system of “wyr”, tokens that can be placed into abilities, items and even guilds to enhance them further. When using them on abilities and spells, the affects of those spells and even the appearance can change. This system of wyr, David says, allows for improving their characters without forcing them to change their appearance. Wyrs can also be part of sets and if your character puts together a set of wyrs they will receive an additional bonus beyond that of the sum of the individual effects.

While David was running our female character through the world, he told me about the class system. It’s a dual class system where you first pick a role for your character and then pick a class from within that role, the combination of which will result in a third class which is the effective class for your character. There are three main categories, warrior, ranged and support and within each category are 3 classes.

The game also has something called player services, abilities limited to one per character which help other players. Examples of such abilities are lock picking and identifying. As no character can have more than one player service ability, the developers hope that these sort of player skills will encourage interaction between players. Locks will need to be picked in order to open chests and players with unidentified wyrs will have to have them identified by a player with the appropriate skill to be able to use the wyr’s effects.

The game overall has nice graphics and although not in the highest technical league, the game should be able to compete with games coming out this year or next with its atmospheric graphics and very nice particle effects. The UI of the game was also refreshing by being familiar without immediately reminding too much about the interface in World of Warcraft.

What seemed most interesting about Hero’s Journey, something that is more likely to interest players than either the number of classes or customization, is the branched quest system. The game’s quests can not only be completed, they can also be failed. The former will lead you down one path and the latter will lead you down another. Quests also involves options for the players, our demo character received a quest to deliver a crystal to an NPC and could choose between handing it over, refusing to hand it over and faking knowledge about said crystal. As we opted to not hand the crystal to the NPC, he summoned monsters and killed our character.

Hero’s Journey looks like a game with potential and since there is plenty of development to be done and still some time before the game is released; executive vice president Neil Harris told us that the game would likely hit the market around 2 years after it has found a publisher, something they were attempting at doing at this year’s GCDC.

For those of you unacquainted with the saga up to this point, the prior installment of this article, without question, received the most violently negative reaction of any piece I have ever written.

As a result, to clear up any possible misconceptions this time around, I’m going to state something very clearly here right up front:

This article in no way represents a “review” of Warhammer Online. A review will not be forthcoming until after the game has been released. It’s an impressions piece.

An impressions piece is a collection of thoughts and, yes, even opinions, that myself, the author, personally felt and experienced while playing the game.

Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, it is not the job of the gaming press (and this site, in particular) to distribute puff pieces stating that every title that comes across our desk is the Second Coming of Christ, destined to lead us to the Promised Land.

If you aren’t interested in seeing someone take a good, hard look at WAR from a veteran MMO player’s perspective, I’m sure that there are many fansites available which could much better accommodate you.

The Third Time’s a Charm

As those who read my prior impressions piece may recall, I did have some rather unkind words to say about the game.

While I admit now that I could have offered up a more even-handed appraisal, I stand by everything I said as being accurate at that time. Keep in mind, when I wrote those words the game’s release date was not September 18th, but the first quarter of this year—six months ago.

If anyone back then seriously thought that WAR was in anywhere near a state ready for release, somebody had to try and put the fear of God into them, and it might as well have been me.

But, that was then.

I do not hesitate to say that the game has come a very long way since that article was published. Nine months is a lifetime in game development, and they’ve put their delays to good use, polishing what needed to be polished, and cutting what they knew wouldn’t make the grade in time.

That action alone, cutting four classes and end-game cities out of the game, shows just how deadly serious the team is about delivering a quality product.

As they should be. Age of Conan demonstrated all too well the very real dangers of pushing out an unpolished product for the sake of meeting an arbitrary release date.

WAR isn’t going to be anywhere near perfect at launch. No game ever is (though, Civilization 4 came pretty close), and anyone expecting it to be—Warhammer Alliance—are going to find themselves to be sorely disappointed.

But, WAR is also not going to be a repeat performance of Conan. While there are the usual pre-release bugs a-plenty, and some classes are still more balanced than others, there is nothing inherently flawed in either its design or production. The game itself is for the most part fun, entertaining, and solid enough to hold all but the most hardcore of players over until post-release content is forthcoming.

Another thing the game is not going to be, in something of a reversal of my first impressions of it, is a WoW clone.

Much of the game, from the UI, to the graphics engine, to the character models and combat has been heavily reworked since I first saw it, and now, in many places it bears only the most remote passing resemblance to WoW in terms of style and art direction.

Now, I’d say that there is a much greater comparison to another game… one likely much more familiar to long-term Mythic fans: If BioShock is the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, Warhammer Online is the spiritual successor to Dark Age of Camelot.

The game is at its core DAoC 2.0, with a change in setting, updated classes, and a much larger focus on PvP from the outset.

It was Sunday, the last day of the convention, and there was a faint sampling of Star Trek bridge noises trickling through the loudspeakers at the Hilton’s Gene Roddenberry Theater.

The room was slowly filling up when Leonard Nimoy came on stage to introduce the game’s Chief Creative Officer, Jack Emmert. Some of the fans in the front row left their seats as soon as they realized this Jack guy hadn’t even been in one single episode of Star Trek.

The rest of the audience, however, reacted well to both Emmert’s claims to Star Trek as the reason he loves sci-fi, and apparent serious devotion to all things Star Trek when making a massively multi-player online game based on it. He expressed a sincere desire to have the community get involved and have the fans make the game.

Many things have been decided, such as using all available Star Trek lore as Canon, and that although the game will have two opposing factions, Player vs. Player combat will not be the central focus of the game. Beyond that, the team has put nothing in stone and is looking for feedback.

Who should you send that feedback to? Craig Zinkievich, the Executive Producer. After watching the gameplay video, I got the chance to sit down with Craig for a few moments. My first question was how and why Cryptic came to acquire Star Trek Online.

“Perpetual told us what was happening,” Craig explains. “We saw great potential in the IP.”

It was a smooth transition, he said, because CBS was excited about the opportunity to keep the project alive. Cryptic had the technology and experience, and produced a playable demo within six weeks.

Their existing platform and next-gen engine allowed them to immediately put new ideas into testing without any extraneous bugs slowing them down. The evolving technology and all of the art assets were created in-house, meaning 100% of the game development was done at Cryptic Studios. Did Cryptic get anything from Perpetual’s team?

“We did get a variety of concept art,” dismisses Craig.

Cryptic also offered one of their producers a job, and he is now working on Champions. Craig tells me that he and Jack did not really want to be familiar with Perpetual’s design or investigate their vision for the scope of the game. One of the most fundamental decisions was how many factions there would be. Craig preferred Star Fleet, and Jack wanted to be Klingon. It seems they compromised.

“There needs to be a conflict in the universe,” suggests Craig. “We wanted to make a Star Trek game, not just another MMO.”

Players can choose from just about any Star Trek race that has ever been seen on screen, or they can take the time to create their own custom race.

They will either fight for the Klingon Empire or as a member of the United Federation of Planets. When players start the game they will have a small ship and a small crew, but over time they can qualify to pilot more powerful ships with larger crew capacities, and more customization options.

So far, it is possible to upgrade the nacelles, saucer section, and engines as well as add color and decals to the hull. Players will mostly customize their ship by outfitting their character and bridge crew with equipment, and by what combination of races the general crew is made up of.

In ship combat the Cryptic team hopes to give the captain a visceral experience. While the game will operate like other MMOs, Craig wants the player to feel like they’re piloting a starship.

The interview actually took place a few weeks back at E3, but I’ve been sitting on it until now to allow it to become a companion piece to my updated impressions article, which you can read right over here.

After getting the questions I had to ask lest I be fired out of the way, we got down to business discussing the details of recent class changes in the game, along with the team’s responses to tester feedback.

And, seeing as how I don’t interview people with “Art Director” in their title while sitting in the middle of a game-inspired art gallery very often, we even delved a bit into an old eternal question…

Read on for the transcript, or press play to listen to the interview.

The MMO Gamer: Here we are at E3 ’08, sitting in the Into the Pixel Gallery, which was the only quiet space we could find.

I’m here with Adam Gershowitz from the Warhammer Online team, and just so I don’t get your title incorrect, in case you’ve changed jobs since the last time we interviewed, could you please introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about what you do at Mythic.

Adam Gershowitz: My title hasn’t changed; I’m still an Associate Art Director. But, I’m actually working more with the Combat and Career Strike Team now as one of the design leads.

Day-to-day, a lot of the stuff I do is working with the designers and the artists to really put a high level of polish on the career system.

The MMO Gamer: There’s been a lot of Warhammer and Mythic news coming out lately. Let’s start with just the name: Mythic: Why you’ve gone from Mythic, to EA Mythic, and then back to Mythic again?

Adam Gershowitz: Basically, that actually has more to do with John Riccitiello and his vision for EA. When EA bought us, Riccitiello obviously wasn’t the president.

The company was still a lot more corporate. It was a big publisher, everybody was a part of EA. Join the Borg, right? Be assimilated.

But what happened when John Riccitiello came in, is he really put more of the focus on the studio. He wanted to give the power and the creativity to the developers, and more importantly, wanted the developers to be credited for it.

So yeah, everybody wants to know EA is a good publisher for good titles. But, more importantly, no one knew who was making those things. Very few people knew that Tiburon made Madden, while Black Box made Need for Speed, for example, they were all under the EA label.

Really what’s been going on right now is the studios are regaining their identities. We’ve been Mythic for—oh—ridiculous amounts of time.

We were EA Mythic because they were kind of starting to do this when we bought us, and now we’re just returning to our roots, Mythic, because that’s the name that has been associated with our games since we started working on games, and it’s the name we want to have associated with the studio from here on out.

The MMO Gamer: The other piece of big news, obviously, was the announcement that you’re cutting a number of end-game cities and classes from the game. I imagine that was a somewhat painful decision.

How long did you guys talk about this, and what did you weigh as the pros and cons of making the decision?

Adam Gershowitz: It was a very hard decision. Just like Mark said, honestly, it’s all about making the best game we can. When it comes down to it, we’ve been in beta for quite some time now.

We’ve really taken our beta tester feedback to heart. We wanted to make sure we didn’t just have a good game, we wanted to have a great game. When it came down to it, certain careers weren’t cutting the mustard.

In some cases it was just the artwork wasn’t where it needed to be, in other cases the gameplay wasn’t where it needed to be. So we took a good, hard look at where we were, what the players wanted, and where we had to go with everything.

When we did, we came back and we saw four of the careers really weren’t where they needed to go. The other careers were a lot more fun, and instead of investing ridiculous amounts of time making good careers a little bit better, we wanted to invest all that time making the current careers really great.

When it all comes down to it, it was focusing our effort more, getting time and effort in to really, really, really bear down on that polish level on the 20 careers we had left.

In the case of the cities, it was a very similar type of circumstance. But actually, that was as much driven by beta feedback, and the fact that players really, really love the cities, we had concerns about running multiple campaigns at the same time, and when it comes down to it, we wanted to make the cities fantastic.

So we basically said, a single campaign is actually a lot easier, having the campaign go across where you have to win two of the pairings in order to unlock the city, make sure that people are going to multiple pairings and there’s large populations and everything, and then really focusing down on Inevitable and Altdorf to be the key crown jewels at launch, where they are a playground. We’ve put that much more content into it.

We’ve even put some of the content that was found in some of the older cities into Altdorf and Inevitable City. So, it’s not like those cities are just gone, vanished forever, we’ve moved a lot of that stuff over into Altdorf and Inevitable City just to make it more broad, and more interesting.

On the one hand, I played Diablo and all of its direct offspring for more hours than I care to admit to in the presence of polite company. There’s something very gratifying about slaughtering hordes of undead, goblinoids, demons, and all manner of other creatures in the eternal quest for shinier shinies. On the other, no other game in the genre has managed to captivate me like the Diablo games did. Not Dungeon Siege, not Titan Quest, not any of the other action RPGs that take the Diablo formula and transpose it to a different setting.

Given all this, I realised from the beginning that Mythos has a huge Damocles Sword hanging over its head. It is made by some of the same people that made Diablo back in the day, and that is very noticeable. A lot of elements can only be described as direct transpositions. Despite the heritage and the similarities, however, it isn’t Diablo. Not by far.

A little background, in case you haven’t been fervently following the development of the game: Mythos was originally intended as a prototype of the network code which was going to be used for Hellgate: London. As such, the game is very solid, even for a beta build. I didn’t encounter any technical problems connecting to the server, lag was minimal, and what few tech-related issues I had with the game are most certainly due to my rig’s long history of video card malfunctions. There is very little I could find at fault on the technical side of things, if anything at all. But I get ahead of myself.

After installing the client and logging in, I was greeted with the character creation screen, a minimalistic, efficient affair, vaguely reminiscent of the King Kong of the current era of online entertainment. Nevertheless, I’m not one to fault a car manufacturer for using round wheels. If it works, it works.

Fidgeting around with the various options for character creation, I discovered four races and three classes. The races are Cyclops, Satyr, Gremlins, and Humans. Other than the Gremlins – which are not of the scaly, green skinned variety with a penchant for wanton mayhem, but rather seem to be offshoots of the halfling/hobbit evolutionary chain – the races are pretty much self-explanatory. Cyclopses are large, one eyed brutes, Satyr are willowy and have horns, like the Elves in the latest Magic: The Gathering block sets, and humans are basic Homo Sapiens. The choice of race doesn’t affect what classes are available – this is strictly ARAC territory, and it seems wise, with three classes to choose from – and neither does it affect your character’s starting stats, other than to grant a 20% damage bonus to damage inflicted to one of the basic enemy types.

Finally bringing to a close our Behind the Blue Curtain series, we bring you today a look at some of what the upcoming WoW expansion has to offer, along with a few brief glimpses of the inner workings of the company behind it.

If you missed them, you may find the other two articles in the series at the links below:

Behind the Blue Curtain: Discussing Wrath of the Lich King with Jeffrey “Tigole” Kaplan

Behind the Blue Curtain: Further Discussion on Wrath of the Lich King with Tom “Kalgan” Chilton

The Introduction

From the street, you might never know that within this nondescript cluster of low-slung office buildings lay the people responsible for some of the most successful gaming franchises known to man. If not for the two foot high lettering announcing the presence of Blizzard Entertainment above the main gates they could have been selling life insurance in there.

As I passed through those gates and found myself a spot in the parking lot—which, to my utter disappointment, was not paved in solid gold, with every other car either a Ferrari or Bugatti—I took a moment to reflect on the appropriateness that Blizzard should be a company named after a force of nature.

You don’t need a weatherman to tell you that there is a storm brewing on the horizon of the MMO genre. Its name: Hurricane Arthas. Once it makes landfall, the only thing anyone in its path—like the competition—will be able to do is get the hell out of its way, and hope it doesn’t cause too much damage as it rolls on through.

Being sent into the headquarters of the company setting that storm into motion, I couldn’t help but feel a bit like the proverbial reporter, standing on the beach in a rain slicker, earnestly preparing to state the obvious for the viewing public back home: “It sure is windy out here, folks!”

Barring the onset of Armageddon, I don’t know of anyone who seriously believes that Wrath of the Lich King won’t go on to become the fastest-selling PC game of all time roughly ten seconds following its release, taking over the mantle that its predecessor, The Burning Crusade, captured for itself a mere two years prior.

The reputation that Blizzard has built up over the years is such that by now they could release an empty cardboard box with “Diablo III” written across the front in magic marker and it would still become an instant best-seller, with everyone and their mother falling over themselves to see who could rush to print the most glowing 10/10 review:

“Blizzard is really thinking outside of the box with their latest addition to the Diablo series, forcing players to use the power of their imagination to create their own game, just like when we were kids! Using this revolutionary system, the graphics, design, and story can be customized to each player’s liking, and, for the creative types, the game never even has to end! Editor’s Choice!”

What could I ever possibly say to that?

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, takes place during the time that Conan sits on the throne as King of Aquilonia. You start the game with your character, who was a slave upon a galley ship, washing ashore of the Island of Tortage. From here you have to fight your way through to the gates leading to the port town of Tortage. Combat does not follow the same route as many other MMOs.

Instead of hitting an attack button and watching your character auto swing at your enemy, in AoC you need to use one of the three attack buttons, one button for left, one for right, and the other for straight ahead. On top of that, enemies have shields that they can shift around themselves to give them better protection from your attacks, forcing you to vary up your attacks to hit them where they are least protected. In addition to these three directional attack buttons you have normal attacks much like any other MMO; draining life from your opponent, charging up to your opponent, throwing fireballs and electrical bolts, etc. Each class has their own set of abilities that set them apart.

From what I’ve seen of the questing system it will keep you busy and there seems to be enough of them to avoid grinding levels at least in the beginning 20 or so levels that I have experienced. During Open Beta, Funcom kept the main destiny quest under wraps pretty well. We were able to experience the first few levels of it but they kept it capped at level 13 so the story line would not get ruined. For the last day of Open Beta they jumped characters to level 20 and transported them to each race’s home city.

There are a total of three races; the Aquilonians, Cimmerians, and the Stygians. Which race you choose also determines which class you can pick. The Aquilonians can be priests, assassins, rangers, barbarians, guardian, conquerer, or dark templars. The Cimmerians can pick from bear shamans, ranger, barbarian, guardian, conquerer, or dark templars. The Stygians can choose from tempest of set, assassin, ranger, demonologist, necromancer, and herald of xotli.

Once you reach level 10 you start to receive one feat point for every level you gain. Feats are similar to talents used in other MMOs. You can use your points in the feat tree and each class has three feat trees. Feats are used to augment your character by making spells more powerful or by giving you new spells or abilities.

For those of you who like to make stuff, AoC has a crafting system which you can partake in once you reach level 40. I believe this is a good idea since the beginning levels go so fast and most the gear wouldn’t be used for that long before you throw it away for the next item. For crafting there is the weaposmith, armor smith, alchemist, architect and the gemcutter. For the gathering profession there is mining, prospecting, skinning, stonecutting, weaving, and woodcutting. From what I have been able to gather, each character can have one profession I haven’t been able to find any info on whether it has been changed or not.

For those that like PvP, there are several options to choose from. There are of course free for all PvP servers where anything goes just about anywhere. There are PvP mini games like capture the flag and team battles. Out in the Border Kingdoms, on each server there are 9 battlekeeps that guilds can take control of and by using resources such as metals, wood, and stone they can build huge keeps. Every so often the guild occupying a battle keep will have to defend it against another army in order to maintain keep occupying it. Smaller guild won’t be left out, as they will be able to occupy towers in the Border kingdoms as well. There will be benefits to holding a keep or a tower, such as a library giving a bonus to casters.

The graphics are some of the best you’ll find in any MMO and most other games for that matter. The characters move realistically with a few minor problems here and there. Like pieces of clothing showing through outer layers, though this seemed to be fixed in open beta with the last wave of patches on the second to last day. The game ran great on my computer with some stalling (Funcom’s word for the momentary freezes that happened here and there) every once in awhile, although this too seemed to disappear after the last set of patches. Funcom has been quick to jump on problems and get them sorted out before release. One thing I didn’t like were the trees, if you stood still and looked at them they were beautiful, but if you stand under certain ones and spin in place they look like the branches are rotating. Very weird but it is due to the software they used to make the trees.

AoC is a mature rated game and rightly so, nudity and decapitations are the flavor of the day and this all stays true to Robert E. Howards writings. All in all, Age of Conan has left me wanting more and with launch day fast approaching, I can’t wait to get in the game and chop some heads off.