Posted by J.A. Laraque | 2 Comments

MMO Watch: Mortal Online : Open Beta Begins Feb. 1!

February 1^st is the date announced by the creators, Star Vault for their upcoming full PVP MMO, Mortal Online. Originally Feb 1^st was to be the release date for the game, but they have instead decided to go into open beta until they reach gold status.

What the heck is Mortal Online?

As one gamer put it “It’s not for your casual gamer”. Mortal Online is a first-person MMORPG in an open player-controlled fantasy game world for the PC. Player versus Player (PvP), or rather Player to Player interaction plays an important part in Mortal Online as trading, learning, combat, rumors and alliances are largely dependent on communication between players.

What this means is with players in control, building their own houses, setting up guilds with their own keep and controlling the in-game economy, you are truly in the wilderness. Their claim is to move away from grinding and get you right into the thick of things where the real fun begins.

There are no levels in MO, you are free to travel the world in any way you like, limited only by the terrain, mode of conveyance or dangers in the environment. In the same way you can use any sword you like, provided you have the necessary skills to wield it.

Also you do not begin the game with a specific class, but there are presets skills and abilities you can choose from at the start. The entire world is PVP which means you can be killed anywhere so guilds and teams are important. Like most MMO’s there is a monthly fee to play.

The game has incredible graphics, but we all know that does not make a good MMO. As much as the idea of player controlled, hardcore PVP world sounds great we also know that does not always work out.

Only time will tell what will become of MO, but if you want more information check out their official page here.

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Posted by Spooner | 1 Comment

WoW Cataclysm to focus heavy on Battlegrounds

Good news.

There is going to be a big focus on BGs for Cataclysm, including the ability to get the best PvP gear from rated BGs.

Ghostcrawler took to the forums and went on explaining a lot of where Blizzard’s brain children are in terms of conceptualizing the changes. Needless to say we’re going to be seeing Cataclysm in 2010 which is very exciting. The post itself is more about burst damage and gear scaling in the new expansion as compared to how things are now in Wrath of the Lich King.

I’m pretty excited to see that Battlegrounds are going to be making a comeback so that the spectator sport that is the Arena which also holds little to no place in the canon of Warcraft is dropping aside to it’s rightful place.

The gear scaling is “easy” to fix, meaning we know what to do and it just requires a lot of work. We are prepared for players to be sad when their ratings convert less favorably, but most would agree it’s good for the game in the long run.

I already addressed the burst issue above. If the bathtub is bigger, then the rate of health pouring in and going down the drain don’t affect the volume as severely.

I also don’t want to give the impression class balance is perfect. It’s not. We have some success stories and some specs that we didn’t get to where we intended. But we had an ambitious design from the beginning, and the way we work means there is always a much larger list of stuff we want to get done than we can actually fit into a given expansion or patch. We think the trend is good, and a lot of the changes we made for Lich King are going to endure through Cataclysm, which means we’ll be able to focus more on the problems we have now rather than resetting everything. source

So basically they’re going to throttle back the rate at which DPS scales and make it so healing is more reactive and based on being efficient than just spamming in case the boss lands a hit. That also means avoidance is important but not the only way tanks can gear for survival. I like the fact that burst is being toned down some as well and all of this is going to mean that PvP might be less frantic. A lot of players feel that if the combat is frantic and uncontrolled then it’s fun, but to me that just makes the curve favor the elite or the well geared over entry-mid level players.

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Posted by Spooner | 2 Comments

WoW Cataclysm: Details from IgroMir

I got pretty hyped up during Blizzcon to the point where the Cataclsym confirmations sold me on WoW for 2010, the latest news from Russian IgroMir gaming convention (where Blizzard was attending) has me all fired up again.

Rated Battlegrounds
Battleground and Arena gameplay are different and currently completely separate. Some players enjoy battlegrounds more but they cannot gain Arena points in battlegrounds and thus they cannot receive Arena rewards. Rated battlegrounds will be an alternative way to get Arena points. Each week, there will be a featured battleground, helping concentrate queues and keeping the rated battleground experience exciting and different from week to week.

If you win a game in a rated battleground you will gain rating, however your mileage may vary depending on the BG. Each victory in a rated BG will also give you Arena points. However, a loss will not affect your rating, nor your total number of Arena points.

If you have Arena points, you should spend them on something epic! Among the possible rewards, the most exciting will be the return of the classic honor titles like Grand Marshal or Knight Lieutenant. Players will also be able to earn epic ground mounts and vanity items such as tabards and pets in addition to helping their guild acquire levels and achievements.

You can enjoy end game PvP outside of the arena now in a big battle and you can get the old classic PvP titles. This is made of win.

Tol Barad
Tol Barad is a brand new battleground which will have features similar to those found in both Wintergrasp and the Isle of Quel’Danas. When battle mode is active, the contest will be similar to WIntergrasp with PvP fights, vehicles and destructible buildings. When battles are not in progress, Tol Barad becomes a daily quest hub like the Isle of Quel’Danas. The faction that wins the battle in Tol Barad will not only get Tol Barad marks of honor, but also will get access to bonus daily quests and special bosses.

The Sunwell Isle was actually the best part of Burning Crusade and the prospect of something worth fighting over means that perhaps we’ll see a little concentrated PvP in this particular area. But this is nothing new that I didn’t already report from Blizzcon.

Guild Advancement
Guild advancement will be one of the biggest changes made to the World of Warcraft game system when Cataclysm arrives. Guilds will be able to level up and gain talent points, develop guild professions and gain achievements.

Players earn guild experience in a variety of ways, for instance by gaining levels, reputation ranks, boss kills, rated battleground or Arena wins, or profession ranks. Each guild level grants a talent point that can be spent in a guild talent tree which works similarly to character or pet talent trees. Some of the options in this tree include repair cost reduction and increase in looted gold. Guild talents will affect all guild members. To give fair opportunities to both big and small guilds, only the top 20 earners per day in each guild will contribute to guild experience points.

Guild experience will be converted into a special guild currency, which can be used to buy a variety of rewards such as profession plans, recipes and reagents; vanity items (mounts, tabards, etc.), and guild talent respecs. Guild heirlooms can be created with the help of professions and are bound to the guild, which means that if a player leaves a guild, the item will be returned to the guild. Guild items require less reagents, which can be bought with guild currency.

Players will be able to earn achievements as a guild as well. To do so, at least 75% of guild members (for the moment) will need to complete an achievement to make it appear in the guild achievement tab. As players’ guilds complete achievements, players who are offline will be able to read the latest guild news through an RSS feed to the World of Warcraft Armory and get access to profession info and much more. Guild banks will receive a percentage of gold looted from a boss when guild members make boss kills. Also, it will be possible to invite other guilds to various events such as weekly battlegrounds.

This is by far the most exciting change to gameplay mechanics as you can literally start a guild and tailor it to leveling, then switch it to focus on PvE content, then again to PvP if you so desire. The emphasis on your guild is being ramped up and that’s fucking amazing. When cross realm Battlegrounds came out, and name changes, and transfers, it really did a number on the reputation game. You could be a jerkoff theif and get away scott free, reputation in your server meant nothing as you could easily guild hop. Not anymore in Cataclysm, and that’s a very strong step in the right direction.

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Posted by Spooner | 44 Comments

The Soapbox: How to fix Aion.

I’m by no means a game developer and as such, I don’t know what kind of man power or hours will go into these suggestions. I’m pretty damn sure that a lot of people will argue against my ideas and have solid and powerful opinions and that’s welcomed. So here is the summed up list of problems with Aion that can enhance the game altogether.

Mind you, I don’t talk about bots or lag, that’s not a glaring game mechanic flaw – that’s just bullshit 3rd level drama that can be fixed. There are tons of MMOs (World of Warcraft at the forefront) that can lend strategies through history on how to fix the latency and bot problems.

Punishing us for playing is ignorant and stupid.

Gathering: You can either pass or fail at gathering. This doesn’t make sense. I just found a node in the world and you’re going to take away roughly 30 seconds sometimes more of my time to try and pick the item off the ground only to have the chance of it suddenly failing and me getting jack shit. This serves no purpose, punishes the player for playing the game, and is a major liability in most mid-end game areas since PvP and other friendly players stealing your node in mid gather is pretty much a constant threat.

Change it so that as long as you have the appropriate level required to even gather the node, you will always gather from it. Remove the action interface and substitute in the typical fill meter you get when opening a door or collection quest item.

Crafting: You can spend easily upwards of millions of kinah on crafting alone and still even at max level, fail at making an item. When you do fail, you lose every single material in the process. When most of the materials are Orange (ultra-rare) quality items that drop off raid bosses and the likes and even then at an extremely low chance – having a failed craft is simply insulting. The pass/fail mechanic for crafting doesn’t seem so harsh at all until you start to get into the higher range crafts where expenses are extremely high and the payoff is fucking dismal. If anything, only allow non-drop materials to be lost. Keep the fluxes used, the special green or higher quality parts, and lose the aether powder or crystals or other player created parts.

Most if not all high end gear is crafted using epic quality crafted items as their materials. If you think I’m out of bounds with this issue then spend 2 million kinah making plate pants, then another 4 million for the other mats, and lose everything in a few seconds because the little red bar was a millimeter ahead of the blue bar and your crafting skill is maxed out for the game.

Player run economy AND massive NPC money sinks are worthless and not fun.

Yes, everything in the game SHOULD have some modicum of fun factor to it. Why the hell would I pay money and invest time to do something that’s tedious and boring and ultimately stressful and unrewarding?

Dying in the game costs money. If you want your EXP back that is. But if you manage to die at level 29 you’re going to spend at least 12000 kinah per death. Die a few times because of a bad group or whatever, and you’re pretty much fucking broke. Or you can RESPEND the next 5 hours or so grinding out EXP since you can’t redo the big payout quests you used to get the EXP in the first place. See where I’m going with this? Why? Fucking pointless.

Everything costs kinah. 90% of the time I talk to an NPC and it’s not quest related I’m giving him my money. Hell there are even quests out there that ask for up to 50000 kinah. What the hell? How much money are the Korean players making that the inflation was ramped up so high? What the hell are the developers thinking when they set the bar at this level?

I’m not afraid to spend time and earn some cash but when I have to decide to either play the game and quest and group and have fun, or mindlessly grind out money when I’m not even at the level cap; well there’s something wrong there. But that’s the great illusion because there is no choice, you must have tons of cash on hand constantly because the costs at vendors and such scale exponentially as you level. Why? You once again punish the player for playing the game. So you succeeded in leveling to 50? Great now if you want to fly it’s 15000 kinah instead of 8000 and it all started out as only 121.

You can make tons of cash on the Trade Broker (Auction House) but they LIMIT THE AMOUNT OF ITEMS YOU CAN PUT UP FOR SALE. Why? As if the AH isn’t already flooded to fuck all and back even with the cap. Basically this is another hurdle another pointless brick wall in the face of somebody trying to advance in the game.

So the AH window is full, let me use my private store! THAT TOO HAS A CAP EVEN SMALLER NOW ON HOW MANY ITEMS YOU CAN SELL! And now as a very pathetic and amateur solution to their botting problem, private stores have a time limit before they stop working. So again I ask why bother? Why? Why should I give a shit about my private store? I can’t set it up and go AFK because it’ll run down on time and shut off. So my alternative is to pay money to play a game where I literally sit on my ass and do NOTHING in the game.

It’s 92000 kinah to get all your new spells at level 22. It’s 150000 kinah to get your 4th inventory expansion and it’s still just another 9 slots, like the last 3 purchases were; only those cost 1000/30000/80000 respectively.

Solutions: Give us the option to run back to our corpse from the obelisk for no kinah or EXP cost or resurrect at the bind point for some exp loss and kinah cost upon soul healing. Stop scaling the cost of flights and teleports, that’s pointless. Raise or remove the cap on how much you can put for sale in the AH and do the same for private stores. Why does it cost so much to train in the skills you need as a class to continue playing? Lower the price. Also lower the price or possibly give items or quests to expand your inventory instead of just leaving it as another mindless money sink. That’s LAZY game design.

This is a player controled economy with every single NPC interaction acting as a sever money sink. Money sinks server 2 purposes; to keep players playing to earn back money spent, or to control the amount of money in circulation. Obviously this is a fucking failure in Aion as players need billions of kinah simply to carry out daily class functions.

Flight

The one major selling point that is supposed to make Aion unique from WoW or any other MMO, and it’s a fucking chore. You can’t fly everywhere only in certain places that really serve NO GAMEPLAY PURPOSE as there are no mobs in the air there. Gathering Aether is also fucking pointless. You need aether to fly as per the lore… gathering aether from the sky doesn’t replenish your flight timer. Explain this. What possible fucking purpose does this server. Yes we pay good money and invest hours of time and as developers it is your responsibility to support your decisions. As adults you’re held accountable for your actions.

Even in the abyss where aether is all over and the world is shattered and composed of NOTHING but floating islands. You have flight limits, you can fall and die and lose money and EXP and more. Why? Its insulting. We can fly freely in the entire world of the Abyss and yet you put a limit. How stupid. You play up the fact that you can fight and gather and do everything in the air and it’s a tactical aspect of PvP – no its not. You have extreme limitations so really what it means is that the tactical choice of flight is reserved only for players with billions of money spent on flight potions and scrolls and rare gear.

Solution? Gathering aether should refill your flight meter. In the Abyss the flight meter should only begin to drop as you engage actively in combat as in you’re attacking not running away from an attack. In the normal world there should be a cap on the altitude your character can reach and chalk it up to fatigue and aether concentration being very low.

Environment

There are tons of terrain clipping problems and bugs. If you jump over a log, odds are you’ll see your character glitch a little – replay and rubberband a second – and then maybe land where you expected him to. Why? You can do it in WoW and every other fucking MMO so why is travel in Aion so buggy?

The zones as well are either MASSIVE and require a mount of which there are none, or tiny and cramped with tons of grinding fodder (neutral mobs) and over the top terrain doodads that really serve no artistic purpose either.

Flight paths have a kinah issue that I already discussed, as well there are only 2-3 in most zones and they’re almost never at a MAJOR quest hub. You spend such an astronomical amount of time WASTED in traveling throughout Aion. Gliding helps some but ultimately it too is a lackluster and uninterestingly boring way to travel. I don’t want the hassle, I want a mount or better placed flight points.

Solutions: Place more flight paths. Introduce mounts. Expand on the land mass because as it stands, there’s very little earth to explore with even less reason to go explore it.

I could go on more here about the crippling reliance on consumables, the fact that PvP is broken down to basic zerg vs zerg lag wars where the victor is the side with more Rangers and Sorcerers and more kinah to supply the trillions spent on kisks and potions.

This isn’t so much a dig, hell readers of the site here know that I really like Aion. I was very excited to get into it, to be on the ground floor. But right now I’m immensely disappointed at how NCsoft is handeling the IP. They ruined Tabula Rasa, and now they’re on the slippery slope of ruining Aion.

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Posted by Spooner | 10 Comments

Aion & WoW side by side, a Spooner Q&A Session

I got an email from a reader the other day named Lew. He’s got a pretty solid question and it’s taken me a little bit to get the answer for him. In a nutshell, he’s requesting a fact by fact comparison of Aion to the World of Warcraft for the purpose of translation ans transition not to judge which is better or worse.

I want to point out right now that even though I read every single comment posted on this site, I’ll be personally moderating this article to make sure it’s being used as a reference source and not flame bait. So let’s begin:

Transportation – Mounts? Flying Mounts? I heard that you get wings, is there any other mode of faster movement/travel?

At the moment the only way to travel in Aion is either through flightpoints, running, gliding, or teleports:

• You have to spend kinah (money) in order to use the flight points in game however, unlike WoW you do not have to learn them before using them. Just being in the zone at all will grant you full access to all the flight paths in the zone. You will also reveal the map as you fly over it through the use of the taxi but revealing parts of the map don’t grant EXP. Teleports are pretty self explanatory. All the zones in the game are instanced from each other but you can travel between them typically through normal paths (going from one zone to the next like you would in WoW into you hit a loading screen in between) or through teleports given by an NPC right next to the flight master.

• Running is pretty self explanatory. There are stats on gear, potions and scrolls, and class buffs that increase run speed by a significant amount and this makes a big difference in PvP for the most part.

• Gliding is the primary means of quick travel. When you ascend to a daeva at level 10 you’ll get your wings. Now you can only fly in areas with high aether concentration like the Abyss and certain parts of Atreia but you can glide anywhere. Mastering how to glide and get lift is pretty essential to getting by quickly. Gliding is fast and actually a pretty cool mechanic and somewhat replaces the need for ground mounts. You can fly but flight is more of a strategic battle thing than just a means of travel.

• There are currently no ground or flying mounts in Aion. It has been said already by the developers that they have plans in the works for ground mounts and flying PvP mounts but no solid details have been released.

That about covers all the bases for travel so far.

Servers – Is Aion like other Asian based games where you can play on ANY server after you create your character? or like WoW where once you create your character on one server that is the one you have to play on every day unless you realm xfer?

The 2nd thing you said. Creating a character is almost exactly the same as it is in WoW only the faction rules are like Classic WoW where if you make Asmodian you cannot make an Elyos on that same server, and vice versa.

How stable are the servers and how long are maintenance times? Are there huge random chunks of time for server maintenance at peak hours, or do they have scheduled times?

Maintenance is maybe at most 1-2 hours a week and typically on Fridays from what I’ve seen. Sometimes they apply a very small patch 5MB large and that’s it. The servers are actually stable, but that depends on the server. The high population servers (like Azphel) are pretty much bogged down ass during peak hours but smooth and flawless during off-peak.

The server I play on is actually flawless and never down once since it’s launch. I have not seen servers go down for maintenance once during peak hours unless it’s a crippling issue. Servers have gone down as of this writing because of latency problems and other crashes due to overpopulation though. Yes they are allowing server transfers in the future as early as November.

Are there a few amount of servers with huge populations creating immense lag, or are there a variety of servers with differing population bases?

At the start, few servers with a lot of lag. They’ve launched new servers which has helped some but for the most part it’s very dependent on your realm. Some are bogged down all the time and to prevent lag, there are long queues to get online. Lag is still there but minimal. On other servers, there is no lag at all and no wait time to get online.

NCsoft has been adamant about not throwing tons of servers at the problem because in a game so incredibly PvP oriented, faction balance is VERY important and causing a bunch of one sided near dead population servers will hurt the game in the long run. It sucks in the short term because people have to wait, and that is unacceptable with some of the times being tossed about. But in the long term, it will help the game because as more people level up to fight in the Abyss, it’s going to be VERY noticeable if you’re outnumbered by 10% or not.

Questing – Is it like the normal grind? WoW grind or Asian mmo grind? How different are quests? Is it mind-numbing kill after kill or are there riddles or puzzles you have to figure out?

You can level to the end cap pretty much by only doing quests. The questing is identical to that of WoW in that you get a quest, complete it, then turn it in to the NPC. There are repeatables, long chains, gathering quests, kill quests, group elite quests, instance quests, PvP quests, and so forth. It’s not mind numbing and they do provide an in game wiki with the quests so you can locate and mark on the map where your objectives are. Sometimes the objective is harder and you have to explore.

Good news though, there’s no mindless faction grind or daily quests that limit your play and progression. Most repeatable quests have a 100x limit but there’s a lot of them and some are as simple as “Deliver these supplies for me on the other side of town then come back and I’ll give you 3,000 kinah”.

Leveling – Is there a level cap? How hard is it to level?

Level cap is 50. It’s not hard to level. You gain EXP from questing, killing mobs, gathering and crafting. There really isn’t any excuse as long as you’ve been keeping up with your gathering and quests to ever have to brainlessly grind for EXP. This is of course my observation from Lv 1- 24.

PvP – Are there severe disadvantages vs. certain classes? How do level differences factor into PvP? How does gear factor into PvP?

Gear plays a role but not as massive as it is WoW. Armor types are noticeable in that cloth is very weak and plate is extremely strong, versus physical damage. The gear and weapons in Aion are very simplified so more emphasis is placed on classes and player skill.

As far as class balance goes, it’s relatively fine. The game is in no way balanced around a 1v1 level; when you PvP it’s assumed that you’re going to be in a group or fighting a group and so the classes really compliment each other dramatically. The only out of whack factor seems to be in duels where most of the time a healer (Cleric or Chanter) will win out because of their heals, or versus a Mage archetype (Sorcerer or Spiritmaster) since they have a lot of defensive spells and really strong nukes.

Fighting a sorcerer is downright suicidal most times as their burst is very strong, however. If you can break through their mana shield skill (Stoneskin) they have the lowest HP pool of any class int he game and fold really quickly. Also they run dry on mana very quickly int he earlier levels so exploiting that is crucial. Every class has a weakness – melee is highly susceptible to kiting and few have any ranged attacks to compensate, cloth users have shit health, Rangers have no real defenses if they fail to kite you, and so forth.

PvE – One of the main problems I had with classic WoW, or for anybody that was a true raider back in the day, was that you needed 40 people to raid. That meant 40 people wanting bathroom breaks, needing a beer, smoke, or what ever other fix there was. So it was always you having to wait for other people to get to see end game content and gear.
How is Aion different?

Currently the max group size for a party is 6 players and that’s where most of the “instanced” dungeon action is. You can form raid groups called Alliances with many more but there aren’t any instanced raids as we’re used to in WoW. You will see A LOT of massive group raiding in the Abyss for PvPvE sieging of enemy player fortresses which can be captured, or NPC controlled Balaur strongholds which can also be captured.

There are also a lot of world raid bosses which consist of these massive epic legendary monsters wandering through zones that drop great loot.  There are plans to bring large scale instanced raiding in the future to Aion but very few details are available right now.

If you all have any comments, corrections, or additions to make here please leave them in the comments and keep it civil.

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