Beta Testing Update

I have also been accepted into the APB Beta test… What’s next? Jumpgate Evolution? Stargate Worlds? All of a sudden these MMO’s are jumping out of the woodwork.

 

Another Month, another Beta

Lego Universe has begun it’s Closed Beta testing and someone has been invited to play.

While I did get 30 minutes to play about with it I’m not at liberty to say anything about what I found – Not that I found much as I’m still pottering about in the tutorial – however I can encourage people to go over to the Lego Universe site and sign up.

As you can probably tell from the trailer they’re going for a base game that is instantly familiar to any veteran MMO player, create an avatar and go whack on hordes of baddies. The difference being that you’re a brightly coloured Lego man fighting against evil lego men.

Being Lego the focus will likely be on play-value and that other MMO staple – Crafting. This is LEGO, it was the crafting tool of my generation. Imagine BUILDING your own mount, or designing your own weaponry. Not even Cryptic and their character design focused games let you do stuff like that. The potential is there for this to completely wipe the floor with other MMO’s in terms of making Crafting fun.

If anything, a successfully envisioned Lego MMO will bring the brightly coloured blocks to a new generation of kids and the tie-ins to the physical bricks is inevitable, moreso than WoW’s trading card game. In a similar way that Nintendo Points work (or used to work, I havn’t bought a Nintendo game since the Game Boy Advance so I don’t know if they still use them) in that buying a lego set would award points in some micro-transaction store (Like in CO or STO), or actually getting the item you bought as a pattern to build in-game.

We’ve still yet to see anything with regards to pricing, microtransactions or any other kind of monetary tie-ins but this is Lego. It’s designed to appeal to both kids and adults on different levels, so the nag-factor will be huge, not taking advantage of this would be a remarkably foolish thing to do from an income point of view, and in the opening weeks longevity will be decided by how many people are willing to pay for their microtransactions.

My duty as a blogger and my duty as a beta tester conflict quite a bit. So I will be saving up Lego Universe stories for when the NDA is lifted, which may be some time away, so watch this space.

 

A Blast from the Past

It’s been a long time since I was in Naxxramas beyond the Weekly bosses, but (If you’re reading this today you can probably see from the achievement feed) last night we decided that we’d do a 10-man farming run. It’s amazing how formerly troublesome fights become stupidly easy when out-geared for it and how some fights still trip you up if you forget what to do.

Take Instructor Razuvious for example, even when everyones in iLevel 232 gear that can still go horribly wrong if the Mind Control tanks mess up their timings, or if people wander in too close and pull prematurely *glares at certain guildies*.

On the flip side of this were the numerous bosses we got down before their special moves. Like Noth the Plaguebringer, whom we nuked down before he teleported once, or Gothik the Harvester and his minions, where we all stayed on the live side and AoEd down the massive rush of 20 mobs at once from the undead side with no casualties, then proceeded to take him down before he teleported twice.

 

4 Franchises that could shake the MMO Market

Looking back on the last decade, during the rise of the MMO and we see that there were loads of MMO’s based on pre-existing franchises from a myriad of other formats. We’ve had World of Warcraft come from RTS roots, Warhammer Online and Champions from Tabletop, Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings Online from Films and Books, with both Star Trek and Star Wars moving into yet another medium.

All these share one thing in common, a complex and detailed world pre-created and ready to slot the mechanics of the MMO into.

It is it’s greatest strength, and also it’s greatest curse.

Pre-existing franchises and pre-existing gameplay go hand-in-hand to create what could only be described as Development-by-numbers. Child’s-play. You get two years of development, a playable game, and a dedicated rabble of pre-existing fans guaranteed to play it, or at the very least, buy the boxed version and play for the free month.

For me, the rose tinted spectacles of franchise blindness have been worn down after the failure of Cryptic with there latest two MMO’s. No longer will the mere hint of a pre-existing license tempt me to play it, only concrete examples of innovative gameplay or a genuine love for the subject matter.

Fictional Franchises exist because the subject matter easily lends itself to adaptation. It’s a framework that designers can use to build upon, but merely building upon a framework is not enough. You still have to innovate.

I can think of few franchises that would give you a framework and yet allow for spectacular innovation in the MMO medium.

This is going to sound like a bit of a wish-list. A fanboy’s fancy perhaps. I hope that as much as it does, it also highlights what I think MMO’s are missing, and where the next generation should be looking to for ideas.

 

The greatest decision…

.. to buy or not to buy.

I have in my freezer 6 chicken steaks and 2 fish, I have a tin of beans in the cupboard. I have four options.

1) Cook the chicken and beans and have a chicken and bean sandwich

2) Cook the fish and beans and have a fish and bean sandwich

3) Go to Morrisons and buy curly fries

4) Get a takeaway

Bear in mind that I have a raid on tonight and that a detour to Morrisons would cost me my place. It would also look odd to just buy a bag of curly fries, and I don’t know about you but that awkward look I get from cashiers when I do that kind of thing causes a lingering haunting sensation.

Also, a takeaway would likely involve me getting a Curry, and thus tomorrow I’d be going into work farting like an unwell cow.

 

Exit… Stage Left

Now, I knew that Star Trek Online’s end-game was spartan, but I never realised until I hit Rear Admiral 5 exactly *How* spartan it is. I mean, really spartan.

I know it’s a cliché but compare it to World of Warcraft when it came out.

What could you do at level 60 in classic World of Warcraft (as of Patch 1.1) ?

3 5-man level 60 instances and 2 40 man Raids.

You had reasonably easy content for new 60’s and raids for them to work towards.

However, no worthwhile rewards from PvP. No daily quests and No Casual epic rewards.

By todays standards that is rather spartan. You expect, at the very least, some method for casual gamers to gain competitive gear (if not the best) – through daily quests and a badges system, one or two small team instances, if there is PvP at all, some method of reward from that.

Star Trek Online somehow managed to take this template and leave out so much.

The only way to get your top-end epic gear is a single daily quest in the B’tran cluster.  5 badges per day. Granted, some things cost only 4 or 7 badges, but things like starship weapons, shields and deflectors (the *biggies*) cost 50. That’s 10 days of just logging on once for 30 minutes per day. To get everything you’d have to play for around 60-80 days.

The B’tran cluster, which consists of randomly generated quests from a series of templates, can be described as the only ‘grindable’ instance. As, other than the Epic daily quest, you can do a 30-minute repeatable quest to gain badges that give Mk X uncommon equipment (In WoW terms, think level 60 BoE green items). That’s ONE instance for both your grindable gear and your Epics.

I worked out that to gear yourself, your ship and 4 Bridge Officers with MK X Green gear would take a total of 15 hour grinding the B’tran cluster repeatable mission.

And you can do that solo. On your own. Alone. Anyone can do that in about a week. The dedicated can do it in a weekend. The crazies can do it in one day.

Amazingly Cryptic have delivered LESS end-game with STO than they have done with Champions Online, I didn’t think it was possible, but it is. There is potential there for them to have an excellent end-game. The combat is engaging, the storylines are entertaining. Group combat is robust and playing a science vessel is just as rewarding as playing a DPS or Tank.

Three weeks of levelling for £30 was good. I got more play-time out of STO than I do out of any offline RPG, and playing another week grinding similar, non-story, missions for essentially nothing is fair enough, but I am not subscribing to play the same, unchallenging, mission once a day in the hopes that better end-game will come along. They’ve mentioned  the 5-man ‘raid-isodes’ involving the Borg Queen, due out ’soon’ – but likely this ’soon’ will be after the next round of payments. Me, I’m going to leave it. I’ll wait a while and see how things pick up.

Incidently, I did the same thing for Champions Online, for which I had a 6 month subscription, and they still havn’t added anything decent.

 

Gruuuughhhh

The past 5 days have been hectic. I mean, really hectic. At work, a large potential client is dragging it’s heels and cancelled yet another meeting, meanwhile I’m training up on C#.net in preparation for this client giving us work.

At home, We’re attempting to gut the house so that we can sell it. My cousin goes into labour 3 weeks early and baby Ethan ends up plugged up with pipes. My oldest friend announces he’s leaving for Australia on Wednesday to do his post-grad. My Gran is going for an eye operation today and to top it off, my mum has announced to us all that she’s menopausal.

Oh, and I went up 20 levels in Star Trek Online. I’m a Rear Admiral now.

If there’s one thing I’ll say for that game it’s a great way to relieve tension.

 

Children of the Universe

Since the age of 4 I was playing with Lego. Those plastic multi-coloured Danish fun blocks. For me it was second only to my Computer Games (of which I was playing from age 3). So I’ve secretly been keeping one eye on Lego Universe for quite a while now. A sublime merging of my two favourite childhood things.

So imagine my joy when I get an email in telling me that Lego Universe has begun beta testing!

I would have physically done the glee hands if I hadn’t been sitting in the office.

So far it really just looks like a giant infinite Lego version of Second Life crossed with Free Realms, with all the fun of Lego Star Wars/Batman/Indiana Jones etc.

They say they’ll have pre-built models your character can use (Ala Lego Star Wars), along with the ability to create custom ones (Ala proper Lego )

Whether or not it’ll keep a grown adult interested remains to be seen. In all likelyhood it will keep kids glued to it. Certainly it seems like the kind of game that will also suit parents playing with their offspring, of which there are very few around.

 

New World Man

Star Trek Online is well underway and I can honestly say that I don’t know why I like it. Character creation is a blast. My Cardassian Science Officer and his crew are certainly a unique looking bunch, the graphics are fantasticly detailed, the space combat is fun, the episode missions so far have been quite story-rich, and the exploration missions have been a nice little aside, if not perfect, they’re still reasonably interesting.

But that’s the thing. “Reasonably Interesting” is the best I can muster in terms of praise for the game. It’s fun, and questing and levelling are as addictive as any other MMO.

Syp’s feelings on this pretty much mirror my own and I can’t really see me playing this in two months time. The only way I can see it happening is if we get something exceptional appearing on the horizon for end-game. Something a bit more solid than the borg queen 5-man they’ve announced (unless ofcourse, it’s truly epic in scope) – and proper crafting – all of which have been promised, but with almost no actual details.

On the other hand, it has been the first game where I’ve actually spent more than a day browsing the forums. Treading the flow of bile from whiners, and keeping my Troll detector on high alert notwithstanding, it’s been a mostly positive experience. There has been none of the Trekkie geekery we all feared would ruin the place, and most of what could be described as lore-whoring has been light hearted at best, and poe faced at worse. I’ve yet to see a single flame war erupt.

The most pressing issues on the forums this last week have been:

Fabulous Phasers, and yesterday’s patch that removed the ability to colour your powers

Missing Miniskirts, the inability to put Bridge officers in Pre-order bonus uniforms and the lack of dev response (until yesterday) over their inclusion.

Euro-woe for maintainence – People complaining that shutting the servers down at 2pm GMT to do maintainence is killing the game for Europeans. Get a damn job or get back to school. (Unless you’re a housebound cripple, then just go watch some TV). I do agree that Aussies get shafted though.

 

STO and Number Crunching

It was only a matter of time before someone decided to do some number crunching in Star Trek Online. The Engines Cannae Take It is a new blog with a couple of good articles on it regarding power levels and character basics, with a focus on number crunching the bewildering kerfuffle that is Cryptic’s latest MMO. This article on power levels is particularly good

Is this STO’s answer to Elitist Jerks? Lets hope so.

That reminds me, I really should finish my combat log analyser.