The Forbidden Zone

For the last month me and a friend decided to jump head first into WOW something I am sure you know all to well how I feel about, but beyond that I have found invective enjoy from this lavish and wonderous game. It’s been one month we have a 56 warrior(me) and priest(him) a level 16 fury warrior(me) and rouge (him), and a random amount of alts for when we aren’t both here or awake. In our time here I have found a fondness for this game, but it seems as though on our 56 main we have all but stopped leveling for fear of that part of the game we have never crossed into in any mmo. The end game, is well a scary thought. seeing the number of mmo’s I personally have played and have never reached end game in any its almost this scary and weird Forbidden Zone, that we are not allowing our selves to cross into.

I can’t quite put my finger on to why we won’t but we are making random alts to road block us from achieving the beyond 60 range, MY QUESTION TO YOU IS! have you had a similar experince and how did you deal with it, what was your climb like?

Reacquainting myself with The Quest for The One Ring.

I recently found myself with an open invite to the LOTRO F2P Beta, with the last time I was in this world being when the game was in beta before the original launch I decided to give it a shot. And to my surprise I found myself in an utter joy of the minstrel class playing my lute to banish demons to the other side. Being a dwarf in a feathered hat doesn’t hurt nor.

The introduction and start of the game consists of 2 segments. The first of which is a romp through a mine with the powerful mage Gandolf and the fierce dwarf Gimli It starts with a come to me (movement), equip this, attack that dummy, & talk to that guy. All of which are well narrated with some funny commentary. All in all the cut above the average intro to a MMO. The UI is mindbending at first it seems all too complex and the level of stylization is counter intuitive to the use, but after 30 minutes to an hour it becomes much easier to grasp.

The graphical quality of this game is still at the top of its game years down the road. The color scheme however is a lot less vibrant than it could be. With a lot of earth-tones its hard to get that white feathered hat you always wanted. The only thing about this game that has annoyed me thus far is the movement, it almost feels as though you are running on ice, with a lack of umph to stopping and even more of a learning curve on jumping. Though it does simulate weight quite well. My personal favorite thing in this game is the ability to play music, nothing like pulling out your loot and covering Dragonforce’s Through the fire and flames with a middle-earth tone.

In closing this is a truly unique and wonderful adventurous romp through the Tolkien world and completely recommended for those with even a hint of question about this game and it’s potential. I mean what do you have to lose, after all it is going free to play!

WTC! Aion does not look anything like this….

I decided to go ahead and jump face first into this game and after seeing this newly released trailer I am interested tons. I can’t wait to see what they do with this.

What am I playing?

Right now I find myself on the edge of games I salivate for yet to come a few being A.P.B., Mabinogi Heroes, and Monster Hunter Tri. Yet lately I have been finding a different breed of game to sate my hunger and hold back the consumption. A game that is by no means perfect and by all means a struggle to survive in. A game that gives you no helping hand, but a back you can easily be stabbed in. To all of you that wanted an Oblivion style MMO I am here to give it to you.

Mabinogi Heroes

The Way Instanced Games Should Be Made.

A lot of people will look at this game’s title and pass it off for another cute anime grindfest. They couldn’t be farther from the truth! Infact Mabinogi Heroes is quite possibly one of the most violent and bloody MMO’s I’ve seen in awhile. The combat is my preferred style, a fast paced live action one. This does indeed mean that your evasion rating isn’t gonna help you any longer Mr. Night Elf Rouge. Yes the point I am getting at is you are going to have to dodge incoming attacks and actually strike with your own. Many people are going to initially look down on this and call it some kind of fps mmo. Which will sicken me at the thought of those so simple minded. To make a game that has the tact and skill of a shooter, but in the world of story and life as an MMO is nothing short of steping stone to inovation. Its steps like these integrating more challenge and skill into a game pushes forward the steam engine we call the gaming industry.

OB Trailer

The Engine And The Story

Dev Cat decided to go with one of the most flexible and incredible engines in the industry, Source. That’s right this beauty of MMO magic is running on the same engine as the Monolithic Half-Life series. Not only are they using it to make a real time combat MMO they are making it possible to beat down your epic boss mob with a stone pillar as well as almost anything else laying around or standing up. Yeah that is right using the wall to your advantage is just as a viable tactic in this game as a two ton pillar of stone. Something any egotistical gamer loves myself included. The story of Mabinogi Heroes is as follows, it is the prequel to Mabinogi. Showing the story and trials they took to get to the peaceful and loving world Mabinogi is in the current MMO. I am certain a gritty and compelling narative will soon come.

Somethings Never Get Old

The Questions

To date no one has heard if this beastly fury shall hit North American or EU shores anytime soon, but knowing Nexon like I believe I do I couldn’t see them passing up on the chance even more enforced with the growing popularity of games such as Monster Hunter state side. Only time shall tell for this bloodly encounter. Below I shall embed some home brew gameplay from overseas beta testers.

Coke Bears Gone Bad

The Roof Might Be On Fire But We Need To Take Care Of The Elephant In The Closet

Character Creator

Disney on a Shopping Spree!

Animation mogul Disney has recently decided to by famed comic-book giant Marvel for 4 billion dollars and mere days later buys game development company Wide Load Games for a unannounced amount, taking with them Bungie Founder Alexander Seropian. He will reportedly join Disney Interactive as their Vice President of Creative Development.

Any Thoughts?

What MMO System Would you do away with?

The Solo System

This is a system that can’t be upheld in an MMO anylonger, the bases of these games is you are in a massive world with thousands of other people the whole point is to play with them. Why do we uphold a system that does the exact oppisite! It makes little to no sense. I can understand wanting to just chill out and kill a few things from time to time, but solo through a whole game really should not be supported in the way it is it segregates the community and loses the point and purpose of an MMO. It would be like logging on to your live account and playing the gears of war 2 co-op mode by yourself. what is the purpose of it then? Even games that are sudo-mmos like the Monster Hunter franchise really stress cooperation between players to complete a task which is exactly what the mmo world needs. It works wonderfully and you really grow as a player even more. It easily triples the fun and you create a bond with those you play with on a regular basis. I remember there would be time after a tough mission we’d go back to the tavern sit at the tables and get our avatars drooling drunk and falling all over while we just laughed about and discussed our “Adventures” in this space. Really being able to feel like there was something completely physical to hold onto in that virtual world. The MMO genre really can’t expand and become advanced until we really nail this fundamental property of the game to the wall. Hopefully they will see this in the development community soon.

The Rise and Fall of W.O.W

Now I decided to talk about this in blog form first to get the opinions of others, but it will be the main discussion of my revival of Hunterfiles podcast. Now the rise of WoW is a very interesting story, see WoW didn’t really hit a steep incline til 3 to 4 years into the games cycle for a long time it really was like other mmo’s. What made this drastic increase in players was a combination of people leave other mmo’s such as FFXI, EQ, & others. As well as the time Blizzard had to polish and refine this game. Once wow hit a popularity level of such it was easily increased in player count by word of mouth, about 1 million mouths to be exact. The main draw after awhile was that it was a game that everyone played you at least knew 2 people that played it and probably more. This increased through the last two expansions and has of late seemed to level off. Now for the fall to be.

The fall of such a game is no easy task. A task which wont be achieved by just one be all end all game. It in fact will be the release of several games. Games which are nothing like WoW, infact they wont have the population that WoW does. These games such as: A.P.B., Mabinogi: Heroes, T.E.R.R.A Online, Co9, and many others. They wont be as wide ranged as WoW, but the niches they hit they will do incredibly well and offer a level of enjoyment that WoW’s outdated engine and format cannot. What I truly think you’ll see happen with these games is not that mass amounts of people will leave, but key people in communities leave. Point in case, the average WoW player does not read blogs like this or listen to podcast, but the guild leaders and the more active community and guild members are and without these players around to hold the guildmates and others together you’ll see these great guilds fall and these people half leave the game and half trot off to other guilds. You’ll see this happen little by little and more and more you’ll see a server or two close. That is gonna be the mortal wound needed for flagship titles like FFXIV to to have this golden chance to to offer a new adventure in a new world and in this time of guilds falling and people in dynastopian moments. They’ll flee Azeroth for worlds like Eorzea and slowly, but surely the life blood of WoW will drain out and die.