Posts Tagged ‘back’

I'm Spent on Hellgate: London

26 November 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Not to say that I am a valid currency to be used in the world of Hellgate: London, but rather an expression meant to convey my leaving of the game. That is correct, I am done with Hellgate: London, just a few days before having played it inconsistently for a month. What started out as months of glorious anticipation eventually lead to the boring monotony of random hack and slash gameplay.

It’s actually kind of odd. The first few days that I was playing Hellgate: London, I absolutely loved it. I’d sworn that I found a 3D Diablo 2, and that I would be able to finally sink months of time into an [M]MORPG again, but, alas, such was not the case. At about the one week mark I could feel the game beginning to wear thin on me. I subscribed to the non-existant bonus’ and got my Evoker up to a respectable level 34. Then, last night after logging in for the first time in a week, I decided that the game was just too boring to continue to play. I subsequently canceled my subscription.

The game isn’t terrible, but it is monotonous. You’ll grow tired of seeing the same scenery over and over again. Likewise, you will also begin to notice that the quests start blurring and blending with eachother. I understand that there needs to be “fetch and kill” quests, but does there need to be this many? Perhaps when more content is released I’ll head back to check it out, but as of now I can’t recommend this game anymore. The subscription bonus’ are not there and the content is thin and paltry. Overall, I’d say the game could have used a few more months in the oven.

P.S. Happy, belated, Thanksgiving. I have been gone for the past few days without any internet. :)

Hey, My MMORPG is Linear!

21 November 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t MMORPGs supposed to be huge dynamic worlds where anything and everything could happen. Yet instead it seems that they are becoming just like single player RPGs, except you can play along with friends. Think about it. In a single player RPG, you create a character out of a half dozen or so choices and then build them to become the type of warrior, mage or whatever else you want. When you start the game there is a beginning and end, with a few hundred quests in between, some part of the main storyline some optional. Now stop me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that sound like nearly all the MMORPGs that have come out over the last few years? There are obviously a few exceptions to this, but for the most part they are.

You start your character and complete quests to get XP and since quests give you the most XP players tend to do all the quests possible to level up quickly. Now by doing all these quests you are following a straight line, go here and do this. Go here and bring this back, go deliver this. Nothing dynamic about this at all. Yes you can choose if you want to skip a quest and in what order you do the quests, but the main point is that everyone is doing basically all the same quests. Everyone is basically playing a single player RPG online with a few hundred other people at the same time.

Now once you complete all the quests and reach the level limit at least now the game should become more dynamic, and it does for many games. However it only does if your playing a MMORPG with PvP. If your playing a game that does not offer this than you are stuck in a lifeless linear game, nothing to do except what the developers tell you to do. Yes you can chat and explore where ever you want, but you are confined to what the developers allow you to do. Once you have completed the game and maxed your character out, theres really nothing to do except start a new character or play a different game until an expansion or patch with new content is released. Sorry, just not my thing.

However most RPGs do have some PvP which offers some dynamic interaction. Fighting against other real people offers a much greater challenge to gamers which enhances the game play. However even todays PvP are watered down. You can’t loot, no penalty for PK and no penalty for dying. Basically it has become bragging rights. “Haha I pwn u”. Again there are games out there that are exceptions to this, but most of them are many years old at this point. There really hasn’t been a new MMORPG that has taken PvP to the next level and we desperately need one.

Games Made to be MMOs

19 November 2007 | 4 Comments » | LHStaff

There are a lot of games being made out there. In fact there are so many being made across all platforms (Wii, PC, 360, PS3, DS, PSP, PS2, etc etc) that there are bound to be at least one or two titles that could very easily be made into an MMORPG given the story, world, or just playstyle. Some games, developer’s and publisher’s permiting, were made to be an MMORPG, and I have my personal picks right here. Enjoy.

  1. Mario. I know what you are thinking: “how can you possibly make an MMO out of a platforming game such as Mario?” Well that is left up to the developers. You see, what makes Mario such a great idea for an MMORPG isn’t the gameplay mechanics but the world. Like it or not the Mushroom Kingdom is an awesome world and one that is ripe for exploration and dungeons. The setting already has numerous enemies, towns, and a very large world. I’m not saying you would play as Mario, himself, but rather an anonymous person within the world. Perhaps they could even throw in some RvR gameplay mechanics and allow people to be on the “evil” side. I would totally rock a Goomba. Any naysayers need just look at what Square and Nintendo did with Mario RPG, the game was amazing.
  2. Zelda. You knew this one was coming. Seriously, Hyrule is one of the most epic kingdoms in any game anywhere. Again, Nintendo has set the stage with a huge world filled with multiple towns and a very real “bad guy”. I am, however, thinking this game could follow a more “Guild Wars”-esque style of [M]MORPG as opposed to a fully blown out WoW-styled MMORPG. The game could be more story-centric and provide some awesome side-games/quests. Zelda is known for its awesome extras.
  3. Pokemon. Nintendo serves up yet another awesome MMORPG idea. This is the last one, I promise. Pokemon started out way back when in the hayday of the Gameboy and was an instant success. The whole idea of capturing monsters and fighting other people with em is already an MMO unto itself, it is just lacking the other players. Although for those interested you can find a neat freebie Pokemon MMORPG here.
  4. Elder Scrolls: Any of them. Bethesda has created some awesome games, most notably Morrowind and Oblivion their perspective action-RPG games. The worlds are huge and incorporate a number of awesome skills combined with a near flawless FPS-type gameplay. This game/world is a PVPers wet dream and could be incorporated in nearly every aspect of the world. Of course, with this type of system, it is obvious that the people with better computers will be better players. Thats how these types of games work, I’m afraid. Still a good idea though, in my opinion, and with the opening of a new online studio this could very well become a reality.
  5. Knights of the Old Republic. Everybody knew this one was coming. In fact, I’d have feared for my life if I didn’t include this game. People are fanatical about it becoming an MMORPG and with good reason; the game is a masterpiece. BioWare created an awesome story for their version of the Star Wars empire and it only further proves as to what good story-telling can do. With this game set as a base for the background story the MMORPG could sweep in and play off of that. Of course with the recent revealing of a LucasArts and Bioware deal many hopefuls are already expecting the game to be in development. Unfortunately, we have our doubts.

Those are my top 5 picks for games that could/should be amde into an MMORPG. A lot of people will disagree with my choices, and some will probably have very good reasons. There are problems when making each one into an MMORPG as MMORPGs play very differently than most other types of games. However, given the time and work, any one of these games could be made into a stellar success. Is there any particular non-MMORPG game you’d like to see become an MMO? Tomorrow I’ll be listing my top 5 games that should NOT be an MMORPG, ever. Ever ever ever. No matter what.

Exteel – First Look

19 November 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

A few days ago I mentioned that NCSoft’s Exteel opened up it’s Beta up to the public. So I went ahead, signed up and now have a few hrs into the game with my level 9 Corporal Mech. I gotta say that I’m loving the game so far, its basically like a extremely fasted paced version of Counter Strike. You log into a central chat area, similar to Blizzard’s BattleNet, and you can chat with other players as well as see a list of open games.

Once you join a game it’s strictly a FPS. There are all the usual game types, FFA, team, control points, as well as a survival type where players battle NPC mechs for a set period of time. There are no rounds, its all set to a timer with unlimited respawns for players, however the more often you die the longer it takes for you to respawn. Once the timer expires, the game ends and players receive XP and money(credits) depending how they did.

Once your back in the main chat room, you can go to your hangar to upgrade your Mech by purchasing better armor or weapons. Aside from upgrading your mech, you also earn XP to use on your Pilot to increase attributes, such as health, energy, aim, etc.

There are also Skills you can add to your mech to give them special moves to do. Currently you have to purchase these skills with credits, an idea I’m not very fond of. Even more so since these skills aren’t permanent, they have a 30 day timer, so you will eventually lose them and considering they aren’t cheap it seems like a waste of money. I think skills should be earned by winning matches as opposed to buying them, hopefully they’ll change this later on.

Aside from that, the graphics are pretty good, controls are very easy to learn and fun. Considering this is still in beta, I think the game can only get better.

The Avatar Machine

9 November 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

How many countless hours have you watched your character with nothing but their back towards you?  It seems that a great many MMORPGs and a good amount of regular games are in third person, but why?  We don’t live our lives in third person.  Well a design student, Marc Owens had decided to see what it would be like if real life was in third person.  He created a helmet with a camera strapped a few feet behind and a boxed screen infront of your face so you can’t see anything but the screen.  Turned on you are now living your life in the third person.

So whats life like in the third person?  Surprisingly Marc says that while most people are slow to get used to it, once they do they tend to act more freely than they normally would.  There seems to be a disconnect between seeing yourself in the third person and your actions.  People approach strangers, start jumping around and moving as they normally wouldn’t.  Sorta like the vast majority of gamers you’ll see jumping around like idiots, myself included.

Heres a video of the Avatar Machine in action.

Tabula Rasa First Impressions

5 November 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

After work on Friday and went a picked up a copy of Tabula Rasa. I was excited about the new direction Richard “Lord British” Garriot was taking with this MMOFPS and since I wasn’t playing any MMO at the time, I figured why not. I wish I was writing this with a little more play time in the game, but my computer had a melt down Saturday morning and I didn’t get it back up until Sunday evening, so I’ve only managed 3 hrs 35 mins of game play. It’s a long story, so I’ll just give you the ultra short version. New power supply, new graphics card (upgrading). Broke clip on heat-sink (don’t ask why I was playing with this), had major problems getting it back on without overheating issues, eventually go it. Also lost 1 GB of memory which still needs to be replaced. If anyone’s really interested, just comment and I’ll write out the full explanation of my comps melt down.

Onward to the actual game. The game starts out as any other game, giving you a very nice CG movie of the back story, which is always entertaining. You than customize your character, enough options to ensure uniqueness, but not enough to waste hrs on, which is good. Basically when you start out in the game, everyone is the same. You have the same skills, same weapons, same armor and as you progress and level you get skill and stat points. Its exactly what you think these points are for, so no need to explain. You start out at an outpost where a tutorial teaches you the basic movements and once your done with that you get to kill a few baddies. The game is pretty interesting, your in the middle of a War and there’s basically enemy units all over the place reeking havoc. They don’t just stand there hanging out in the middle of the map waiting to be attacked, they attack outposts and NPCs, drop ships come in and drop more enemy units, this gives the game a chaotic feel which is exactly what a war should feel like.

As a trainee, my character isn’t on the front-lines yet. I’m doing gathering missions at this point which isn’t much fun, but I’m learning a lot. Most of these missions are to visit ancient shrines to learn new LOGO ability’s. These are abilities that grant you new skills in the game. Combat is pretty fun, after playing LOTRO I’m used to just standing during combat and clicking buttons, but this is a MMOFPS so moving and attacking is vital. As far as complexity, the game is a little confusing, as is any MMORPG when you first login, but it’s nothing that you can’t pick up within a short time frame. Not as easy as WOW, but much easier than Eve Online. Having been released only since Friday I did expect the lag to be pretty bad, it was at least today, all servers seemed to be pretty full when I logged in and my character froze at least a dozen times during the 2 hrs I played. However I’m sure this will only get better once server loads are balanced out. Other games have had much worse lag issues on launch weekend, so this wasn’t that bad.

As I said I’m a little over 3 hrs at this point so I haven’t gotten very far or seen very much. I will be doing a follow up review of the game in 2 weeks after I put in some solid game time. But from what I have seen of the game thus far, I’m very excited to get past the beginner missions and really get into the game.

Hellgate: London MMORPG?

29 October 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Hellgate: London seems to be a pretty typical MMORPG when you look at the game and world. It has all the same elements of an MMORPG like quests, ability to play online, different armor, stats, levels, a number bar for your skills and spells. All very typical of your everyday MMORPG, but does that make Hellgate: London an MMORPG?

As somebody who loves MMORPGs, I tend to travel around the forums a lot. On these forums it gets brought up a lot. Somebody will say something like how they can’t wait for the “new MMORPG Hellgate: London to come out,” and then a forum fight will ensue between the MMORPG purists (people who maintain the strict definition behind the acronym MMORPG) and the others (people who generally just use the acronym to define any online game). It has actually become quite interesting as people struggle between keeping the acronym a strict set of standards to define an MMORPG, and allowing it to become just a word to describe a genre of video games.

So, back to my original question: is Hellgate: London an MMORPG? Well, let’s look at why some would not call it an MMORPG:

  1. The game is completely zoned. Even the safe zones in the game can only hold 50 or so people.
  2. There is no persistent world where thousands of people can inhabit the land together.
  3. There is a single-player component, an MMORPG no-no.

All legitimate reasons as to why it could not, technically, be called an MMORPG. However, in this day an age I’d still say it is, simply because the term is fast becoming an industry genre that is being applied to what can only be called a “baby boom” of MMORPG games. Its too complicated to come up with genres for each and every differing title and the term MMORPG seems to be broad enough to give people a rough idea of what your game will look like and be, which is what a genre is supposed to do anyways. Bottom line, games need genres, and it just so happens the moniker MMORPG has been adapted to define these new not-quite-MMORPG games.

 

Before the Now: Warhammer Online

26 October 2007 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Kicking this website off to a start, we at MMOCrunch will begin a weekly series entitled “Before the Now”, where in, we will be taking a look at various MMORPGs and how they have evolved from their past into what we see today. Usually, in most games, only minor changes have taken affect but other times you’ll get a game that has completely changed everything, even the developer/publisher. One such game is Warhammer Online.

Warhammer Online was not always being developed by the DAoC-famed Mythic Entertainment. Before Mythic the game was being developed by Climax Online and published by Sega. It was quite a different game back then having promised features that most MMORPGs still do not have.

Starting development in 2004, Climax took some bold steps to differentiate their newly acquired IP from other like-minded fantasy MMOs such as Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft, both of which were months from release. The game was promising the ability to play as a total of 5 different races (Human, Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, and Halflings), and almost 100 different careers. There were NO levels planned for this game, everything was to be based off the skills of your chosen career. Should you decide to switch careers, you could, and you could keep using those skills from that previous career too. Neat idea huh? Too bad its never been carried over to other games.

Their PVP system was proving to be rather unique as well. Unlike the current Mythic rendition of the game this one was not promising any realm vs realm PVP. No they were developing something completely unique, which I’ve decided to term career vs career PVP. You see, the game was being developed so that most, if not all, careers had an equal opposing career (witch, witchhunter). These career characters, if they saw the other on the field, could attack eachother. No matter where they were; town, castle, cave, they were open to PVP. Such careers being planned for this were the Bandit and City Guard careers, as well as the Priest and Cultist careers. In addition to this style of PVP the game was planned to include the usual all-out PVP areas of the map as well as a more traditional dueling PVP-mode (like WoW).

Unfortunately, this game never really made it passed its’ first year in developement. GamesWorkshop (owner of the IP) decided to pull its funding from Climax in June of 2004. Climax attempted to go it alone with its’ own funds for a while but it eventually closed down for good in late 2004 due to trouble in securing a publishing agreement, presumedly with Sega.

On May 18th, 2005 Mythic and GamesWorkshop secured a deal that would allow Mythic to recreate the MMO franchise from scratch and now we have the game the is currently being developed with a release date scheduled for early 08′. The original game had a lot of fresh ideas, and although were probably not ideal for the Warhammer world they could have definitely been used to spark up interest in a new IP. Unfortunately that never happened and Climax is now back to developing console-specific games.

Come back next week when we take a long look though the history of Tabula Rasa. The game that went from a hardcore fantasy MMORPG to a casual Sci-Fi MMORPG.