In-between games

About a month ago I stopped playing Star Wars the Old Republic and I was going to write a complete review but I felt so bored with the game and there is not that much to add to my initial first impression so I think I am just going to skip that.

What I can add is that, as suspected, the game more or less dies once you finish your storyline and cap your character at level 50. Then you can do some high level PvE raiding, known as operations, or PvP. I was never really interested in PvE raiding and PvP in SW:TOR is quite poor, content-wise. There are basically three (plus one which was delivered with path 1.2) instanced maps and they get boring quite fast. There is also a persistent zone for PvP, called Illum but it is basically a ghost town for various reasons I am not getting into here. Let's just say that PvP in SW:TOR is an afterthought and a boring one at that.

So while I was waiting for TERA to be released I have been playing, not an MMORPG, but rather a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) called League of Legends. The game is, as the name suggests, various maps where you fight with and against other people in short 20-60 min matches. How it works is that you select a hero, from a list of 50+, and then you level that hero by killing other players and AI controlled mobs. The objective is to destroy the other teams base.


It is quite addictive and I have clocked more than 500 hours playing it and it is good for when you dont have any other games to play so I do recommend it.

League Of Legends - MOBA

However I did mention that I have been waiting for TERA and even though the game is released I am still waiting. The reason is that I wanted to cancel my pre-order and play on the North American servers because the one in Europe is, for some moronic reason, more censored than the one in North America.

However the producers of the the European version, Frogster, refused to allow me to cancel my pre-order so I disputed the charge in PayPal. However that only lead to the banning of my account AND them keeping my money so I resolved the dispute in the hope that they would un-ban it. They did not and currently they have charged me for the game and after support tickets, phone calls and chat they have still to enable the game. So not sure if I will just skip playing this game, due to this bad experience, or they will eventually allow me to play a game which I have paid for.

The Decline of the MMORPG genre

This may be an odd title because as many people know the MMORPG industry is booming. New titles are coming every month and new payment models and features are being introduced. So why do I feel there is a decline?

For me quantity does not equal quality and quality in an MMORPG is very different compared to "standard" games. I read an old article by Richard Garriot where he discussed the idea behind Ultima Online, how the idea was hatched and then how it come to fruition and what really stood out to me in that article is where he said that Ultima Online would be different compared to other Ultima titles in the sense that the player is no longer the center but rather a habitant in a living, breathing world and how he interacts with people in that world shows what kind of character he is.

This somehow has become lost in the genre as almost all current titles are no longer trying to create a living breathing world and instead are trying to squeeze a single player game into an MMORPG. With each player being the center but only in his own little private bubble and you have these thousands of little private bubbles in the "world". And the reason I use quote marks around the world is because with this approach there is really no world, just a central server where everyone connects to and then occasionally see other people but are mostly shielded from them.

This is really visible in the latest, greatest MMORPG released, Star Wars The Old Republic where each character has it's own storyline, based on his class, and are running them completely independent from everyone else on the server and with no effect at all on the world. For example in your class storyline you may be saving a planet but if you fail or not is completely irrelevant for other people because they wont be seeing any of it. More over, the game is designed in such a way that you really don't need anyone else in your own private bubble and this for me just seems like a major design flaw for an MMORPG where the main feature is supposed to be interaction with other people.

SW:TOR is just the latest symptom of this and I think it all started with WoW really. The game did not at all have any kind of persistant world elements, and still doesn't, and it was all about a linear leveling treadmill from quest hub to quest hub for you to reach the "end" where you endlessly do raids to get better gear. The so called war in World of WARcraft really did not exist and was just an excuse for instanced, and non instanced, PvP.

But with WoW's huge success came all the copy cats and to this day they are still coming as the basic ingredients of WoW, casual, linear game play with little to no persistant world elements, has somehow become mandatory in any triple A MMORPG.

Sad really because the genre could have become so much more but instead of this:

We instead got this:

Star Wars The Old Republic: First Impressions

So I have been playing Star Wars the Old Republic for about a month now and I know what you are thinking, 1 month for a first impression? Well yeah, sort of. MMORPGs are, to me, not games that you play for a couple of weeks, finish it and then you are done with them, or at least they shouldn't be. So for me 1 month of playing with about 100 hours actual in game hours is around what you need to get an honest impression of the game, maybe not first but second or third impression...

Anyway, whatever you want to call it, without further adieu here is my take on SW:TOR.

Overview

Before I got into the game I decided to read up on the different classes because I usually enjoy playing ranged healer/support/controller classes and after checking on forums and reading up about the different classes I decided to go for the Jedi Sage.

But before we go on here is my breakdown of the different classes. There are two factions in this game, the Empire and the Republic and each side have three advanced classes which at level ten branch out into a specialised, so called advanced class. So technically there are twelve classes however that is really not the case.

You see each class on each side has their exact mirror on the other side so say for example a Jedi Guardian is more or less the exact equivalence of a Sith Juggernaut. The look of their powers are different but they function pretty much the same way. This was probably done to avoid imbalance issues but for me it is a cop-out, I would much prefer the way Warhammer Online did it with mirrored but still distinctly different classes on each side.

So SW:TOR really has only six classes some of which are:

Jedi Guardian/Sith Juggernaut (Tank/DPS)
Jedi Sentinel/Sith Marauder (DPS/Tank)
Jedi Sage/Sith Sorceror (Healer/DPS)
Jedi Shadow/Sith Assassin (DPS/Tank)

And so on... I didn't put the whole list here but you can find good descriptions of classes here: http://www.swtor.com/info/systems/advanced-classes. And I also found Darth Hater's DB very useful when planning my classes.

Anyway, as I said, I picked a Jedi Sage because it fitted my play-style the best. I cannot say that I was very impressed by the character creation options. It has a few body types, faces, hair-color, etc. Basic stuff which I think does its job but that is just about it. This was my result, not the best picture but I think you get the idea.

After that it was on to the starter area and what struck me when I started the game was the voice acting which was hyped so much and I think they are good, really good, but one thing I noticed is that when you start the game it seems that everything is focused on you, you are the new recruit which is to set everything straight and of course there is some sort of crisis for you to fix. Very single-player like and does not at all give you the feeling that you are on a virtual world sharing it with other people because you will often see other characters, of the same class, solving the exact same "crisis" as you and for me that is just.. silly.

But I did my best to ignore that and just follow my quest line because I knew this game was a Theme Park after all. And I have to say that these quests and specially the class story lines are quite well directed and many times I just wanted to finish the quests so I could get to the story telling parts.

However at level 10 I got to pick my advanced class and of it was to Coruscant, the capital of the Republic. and below you can see a nice picture of close the Senate building:

And inside:

To be honest I am quite pleased with the GFX in this game. I know it has received alot of flak regarding it and I do agree that technically it is not at all impressive and not on par with what MMORPGs like Age of Conan, Aion and the soon to be released TERA. But aesthetically it is quite nice.

But to move on, after level ten you get to engage into instanced PvP which I of course did and I can say it was a big mistake. The reason is that they lump all different level characters together. Initially it was up to level 50 even but now it is 10-49 which has made it a bit better but unless you are in your forties, except to be face-rolled a lot.

Which brings me to my other point, around level 20 or so, I decided to give up on my Sage and this for various reasons. First I specced full healing (there are talent trees in this game, much like WoW used to have and many other games still have) but I felt, at my level, I could not at all keep up with all the damage being done, both in PvP battlegrounds and in the Heroic Areas (more on this later) so I could not at all feel effective in my role. More over I did not even feel as I healer I could defend myself in PvP, which is crucial in PvP because as a healer you WILL be targeted a lot.

Also the class story line of the Jedi Sage did not feel compelling at all which did not make me want to continue it. And finally, and least, it just felt weird to be a ranged class but still carry a light saber. What is it for, looks?

Anyway, I read on the other classes and I haven't given up on my healer support role so I decided to go for a healing specialized Commando class.

Trooper with nice background in the starter zone

This class felt much better as it was a ranged class, wearing heavy armor and a bad-ass weapon so I managed take this one a bit higher level than the Sage and the  class story line was much nicer not to mention it's look when it got in his twenties.

Commando in Hutt controlled Nar Shadda

However I found out that the class pretty much had the same issue as the Sage. Namely that the healing output was way too weak, barely enough to heal your NPC pet companion whiles fighting a Champion mob (a third grade mob, stronger than common and tough mobs) and in PvP it was constant face-rolling as soon as people found out I was the healer. Maybe it will get better at high levels but I dont play MMORPGs just for the end game content, so time for another re-roll.

This time I gave up on the healer role entirely and decided to go for the probably most common basic class in the game: the famous Jedi Knight and more specifically a tank specialized Jedi Guardian.

Jedi Knight in Jedi Council Chambers

Again this was an upgrade of the experience of my previous Commando class. The class story line was even better, I had more survivability in PvP. But even as a tank I felt I was being constantly killed in the instanced battleground type PvP maps so again maybe the huge level bracket is to blame here. Still I managed to get this class to level 30 and visited iconic places like Tatooine and Alderaan and I can't say that I am bored of him yet.

Jedi Guardian on Tatooine

and on a mount on Alderaan

But still something did not feel right as being melee was never my thing. So next up was a ranged DPS in the form of the Bounty Hunter and that is the class I am currently playing.

So that was a, not so short, run through of my experience in SW:TOR and my overall score is:

Score: 7/10 Good

 But how does the game different parts stack up?

Combat

For me one of the most important aspects, regardless of other, is how well the combat works in SW:TOR and I can say that mostly it is quite fun. It is the traditional TAB target hotkey type which you see in most MMORPGs and it does not have any really cool mechanics like in Warhammer Online but, in PvE, it is still quite fun.

PvP on the other hand is also pretty fun when doing 1v1 but in the instanced PvP scenarios which are 10vs10 (I think) it is no fun for the reasons I stated above. Up to level 30 you will be inferior and constantly face rolled, regardless if you are tank or healer. So I will divide the score for PvP and PvE in this section.

                                    Score (PvE): 7/10 Good

                                        Score (PvP): 5/10 Average

Progress

Yet another very important aspect for me and SW:TOR does not dissapoint. The leveling is finely tuned through the class story lines and other more generic quests and I can't say that progressing my character ever got boring.

However it is a wee bit too fast for my liking and the choices when you level is quite few. After level 10 you get some sort of talent tree point which you can spend on the three available trees and you get enough points, at level 50, to fully spec. out one tree with 10 left over points. So it really does not give you that much options to make your character unique specially since each class has basically two roles, DPS and an "other" role and that other role can be tank or healer and that is pretty much it as this class takes the tank/healer/DPS trinity to the letter and does not give you much options outside of that.

Finally due to the single player story line aspect of this game I rarely felt I needed to group with other people. The only two times were when doing Heroic Quests, which are basically quests which requires more than one person to complete and Flash Points which are repeatable instanced, big quests. But neither of them have as good story as your class story lines and you really don't ever feel you need to do them.

Score: 6/10 Above Average

Virtual world aspect

For me the fact that MMORPGs are persistant "worlds" which does not reset is what makes the genre special and the possibilities are endless. However SW:TOR hugely dissapoints in this area. The world is extremely level bracketted and very few options exists when leveling your character which makes the experience extremely linear and you have very little, or no, reason to return to a world once you have passed the level bracket.

Also there are almost no random world quests, like other Theme Parks such as Warhammer Online's Public Quests and Rift's ehr... Rifts. This gives you very little reason to just explore the world and see what is out there. Even the mobs are usually stationary and just stand around like statues.

To be honest I think the only redeeming quality in this one is that Bioware has captured the Star World feel quite feel in the different worlds, such as Tatooine.

But no Bioware, you completely missed the mark on this one and I seriously doubt you understand what makes MMORPGs different from other games.

Score: 3/10 Bad

Innovation

Innovation has become a somewhat controversal subject in MMORPGs, in parts because people does not understand that innovation does not mean inventing new things but rather re-inventing what already exists and parts because of the elephant in the room which all other MMORPGs, specially ThemeParks will be compared with.

However I strongly feel that the MMORPG genre is in a state of stagnation at best, decadence at worst due to greed and wanting to earn the same money as the aforementioned elephant. 

So I strongly feel, that for the genre to prosper, it needs to progress and constantly re-invent itself and sadly SW:TOR does little in this area.

Everything from combat to the UI feels copy and paste from existing games and even the crafting, which some people say is innovative, is basically letting NPCs do crafting instead of you doing it. However the NPC companion system I would say is the only innovative feature I can think of as you can equip them, pick what skills they will use and they even sometimes participate in NPC conversations.

However one, rather small, feature is hardly enough and the only other thing I can think of, single player class story lines and voice acting, is just a copy paste from Bioware's single player game and has existed in single player games for years so this is definitely not something I would call innovative.

                                    Score: 4/10 Below Average

Value

So how well does this game return in the gaming dollar or euro you invested in this game? Well the game is good, no doubt about it, but the experience is very much like other single player games Bioware has produced, like Mass Effect, but it has not only an initial purchase cost but also a monthly sub. fee and I can't really justify that for what essentially plays like a single player game.

That being said, the content in this game feels more than your typical single player game because usually I'm done with those in a month (unless it is something exceptional like Master of Orion 2 or Civilization) and Bioware seems to be adding some extra content but still, this whole thing does not feel right. It feels like they wanted to figure out how to charge a sub. fee for a single player game and SW:TOR was the result.

                                               Score: 5/10 Average

Final words

As I said before SW:TOR is a good game but not a good MMORPG so if you just expect a good single player game with some multiplayer options I would even say the game is excellent but as an MMORPG it sorely dissapoints and I truly hope that this business model is not copied by other companies. If they do then the MMORPG genre will be swamped with single/multi player games, pretending to be MMORPGs so they can charge a monthly fee.

EVE, why I can't enjoy this game

Eve Online should be everything I want in an MMO. It is Sandbox, it has huge space ships and it takes forever to reach the skip cap and finally it has free roaming PvP but why is it I cannot enjoy it?

Well here are the reasons as I see them.

First of all the game boasts to be a space ship MMO but for some reason it does not feel you are controlling a ship, it feels you are a ship and for me that is just plain weird. This is evident by how you move around by double clicking in space or by selecting items in a textual radar and select to go to a certain distance to it. It just does not feel immersive at all which leads me to my second issue.

The UI which Eve uses is horribly clunky and ugly, I understand that they want to use a minimalistic UI but the end result is just plain bad. There is no visual radar but rather it is a text table. The enemies which you target are represented by an ugly portrait image rather than the actual 3D ship and most of the time you wont even be able to see your targets, unless you zoom in on them. I could go on and on about how bad the UI is but I think the picture below just explains it all.

Then as I mentioned before your enemy targets are visible mostly as this ugly portrait, as can be seen on the picture above, so you rarely actually see any epic space combat but rather two dots firing at each other. I don't know if the creators CCP wanted to go for realism or something by having these extreme range between ships but the end result is quite un-impressive.

Fourth issue why I can't get into this game is because this game does not allow you to advance in levels, or rather skills, in this game by actively doing something. All skills are on timers which mean you select a skill you want to train and then you simply have to wait. Some people find this innovative but for me this is just taking away one of the core elements of MMORPGs which is the ability to advance your character by accomplishing feats. But no, in this game you advance your character by selecting a skill and then log of (or whatever).

There is some sort of advancement in this game which is in the form of ISK farming, ISK being the currency in this game, because unlike many other MMOs currency in this game is very important as without it you cant get new skills, ships, modules or anything basically.

That is fine and all if it wouldn't be for the fact that ISK farming in this game is extremely boring. It basically boils down to very boring AFK mining, selling/buying on the market, doing very boring PvE missions or building/manufacturing items and more. All which are quite boring.

To move on, this game boasts to be a skill based game and to some extent it is but what many fail to tell you is that there is a completely legal character market where you can buy a highly skilled character in their character bazaar.

Add this to the fact that you can buy ingame currency with real money through buying PLEX and converting it to timecodes which can then be sold at the timecode bazaar. It is not difficult to see that this game has strong elements of Pay to Win to it.

Finally and probably the biggest reason why I don't like this MMO is because of the PvP. This game boasts to be PvP centric but that is truth with modification because altough it has large areas where free for all PvP is allowed the game has a very high death penalty where you lose your ship, your modules and possibly even your character's clone (which cost additional money) and implants. One death can, depending on how much you spent on the above items, set you back days, if not weeks of ISK farming.

This has lead to the PvP being mainly gank type, with little risk to the attackers and little actual evenly matched PvP is occuring. Some people like that, I don't. Don't really see the point in either rampant ganking or being ganked.

New direction

So this blog has been quiet for a while and that is probably because I am bored here in the French Riviera and don't feel like there is much to write about.

That is why I am going go in a new direction and stop writing about my personal life here in boring French Riviera and instead talk about what interests me the most, which is movies and PC games.

So that being said I am currently playing Star Wars the Old Republic and I will post my review after I have thoroughly played the game. What I can say so far is that the game is your typical ThemePark (ThemePark vs Sandbox) which is not the MMO that I usually enjoy but what the heck, I am bored.

Warhammer Online adds more PvP to end-game

For those of you following this blog you might have noticed that one of my main hobbies is to play MMORPGs and one such game that I am currently playing is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

This article won't be explaining the game in detail but in short; Warhammer Online is based on the Warhammer Fantasy IP created by Games Workshop and is a fantasy setting where several factions battle with each other. Such as the Empire, Elves, Dwarves and Greenskins. The reason I like it more, than say the Warcraft fantasy world, is that the world is considerably more dark and gritty with many similarities to historical empires such as the Roman and German empires. The MMORPG based on that world is not so dark and gritty but even so is a decent PvP (or rather RvR, realm versus realm) based MMORPG.

The game has been out for over a year now and one of the most vocal criticism of the game was that the end-game, in an allegedly PvP MMORPG, is mostly about PvE. A criticism that I personally complete agree with. And so finally Mythic, the creator of the MMORPG, has in the latest patch release (1.3.5) revamped it.

Before I go on I must say that I personally have not tried it yet so this article is all about the information that Mythic has released. So with that being said, lets move on.

Previously, before this patch, the end-game was about playing through a series of PvE Quests to finally either succeed or fail in capturing the opposing sides King and sack the city. But now instead there are several stages, much similar to PvP Scenarios (but more advanced) where the two sides fight each other with some PvE elements to it.

The three main stages are as following:

1. The first stage is about the invaders knocking down the palace doors all while the defenders tries to stop them.
2. The second stage is where both need to escort a PvE mob, called a Warlord, while also trying to kill the opposing sides Warlord.
3. The third and final stage is where the two sides Kings, very powerful PvE mobs, fights alongside a select number of players to defeat the other sides King and champions.

All these individual stages has its own rewards, however all three must be completed for the invasion to be completed and final rewards handed out.

Sounds quite interesting on paper but will it be good enough? Warhammer Online Producer Carrie Gouskos seems to think so as she writes in her April 2010 Producer's Letter:

"We’re always trying to find ways to refine the things you like about WAR, as well as introduce new game mechanics for you to play with. We believe that the changes to the cities will accomplish both of these goals by focusing the endgame experience more on RVR and creating an entirely new experience in a very familiar place."


However will this be enough to revitalize a game that some hard critics have claimed is in "maintenance mode"? What is clear is that rival games like Age of Conan has released an expansion and Aion is about to release a major addition to the game so Warhammer Online needs whatever it can get to not lose more ground.

Prince of ... Persia?

I just saw the movie Prince of Persia and honestly I did not expect much and nor did I get much. The movie is about some adopted street child who grows and and becomes a prince. Then there is something about a dagger, a beautiful princess (ofcourse) and your typical, clichéd,  bad guy who wants to rule the world. In other worlds your typical good vs bad guy with a Walt Disney twist on it.

I guess the movie is not bad, if you are in your lower teens, but what makes me hate it is that the movie is called Prince of PERSIA and there is not one single Persian, or Iranian, actor in the whole movie. The "hero", played by Jake Gyllenhaal is dark blond and blue eyed, the beautiful princess is from UK and the to-be King is another blond and blue eyed from UK. The only one that maybe could pass by as a Persian is Ben Kingsley, which of course is the VILLAIN.

Such blatant display of ignorance (if not racism) makes me very disappointed in the game.. I mean movie, and even more so because, almost, no movie critique will mention that fact. Hollywood at its finest. Pathetic.

Last time I will ever watch a Walt Disney movie again.