Last week I finally hit the level cap in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but didn’t have a chance to get to Illum until this weekend and holy crap does it suck.  Now if you’re already level 50 and have traveled to Illum, you probably already know what I’m about to say, but if you’re not, seriously take you time leveling, you don’t want to be on Illum.

To start, Illum the “PvP planet” isn’t even dedicated to PvP, half of it is PvE, which blew me away when I got there and I had to spend the next few hours completing more story missions. Yay!? =\

When I finished off those missions I finally made it to the other side of the planet where I was greeted with on-screen notification messages of players who were near certain control points. It seemed like there were a lot of notifications coming up, so I started to get excited that I was in for some good PvP action, however as I neared my first control point, I saw no one. I proceed to another point, controlled by the Republic (Im Empire) and again saw no one, so I figured I’d try to take it over.

To take over a control point, you have to destroy the enemy vehicles in the area, which by the way don’t attack you so after about a min, by myself, I took over the point. I though, ok, that was boring, what next? Finally a Republic player found me as I was leaving the control point and decisively thrashed me.  While I don’t like dying, at least it was something.

I continued to travel around from control point to control point for about 30 mins, seeing a few players here and there and getting my ass kicked a few more times until I finally found where everyone was. It seems about 100 players were lined up standing infront of a narrow bridge staring at each other. I hung out for about an hour getting some kills and valor points, however the lag was too much and I finally logged out in frustration.

Visting Illum has now fully convinced me no one working at BioWare has every played a PvP MMORPG. By far SWTOR has the worst PvP system I’ve every played and makes games like WoW look like the grand-master of PvP.

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As sweet as this water looks, it's the least of the changes being made in 4.0.1.

[Update: Servers still aren't up, so why not freshen up on those stat changes?]

Whether through the internet or the game client itself, you’re probably aware by now that the massive Patch 4.0.1 for World of Warcraft is set to hit live servers today. While it needs to be reiterated that this is not the patch that forever changes the world, it will change yours. And by that, I mean everything you know about how the game, and your class, should work.

There’s simply so much to consider that it would be a waste of space to reproduce the entirety of the changes here (though we may post official patch notes when they’re up). Instead, we’re going to run down the litany of new features and, if applicable, let you know where you can find out more about them. Look ‘em over while you wait for the servers to come back up:

• Major Classes Changes: In an official Blue post, Bashiok clues us in to the most critical, paradigm-shifting class changes such as Eclipse for Balance Druids, Soul Shards for Warlocks, and switches to alternate power sources for Hunter and Paladin.
• Minor Class Changes: As the bulk of the update, individual changes to spells and whatnot are hard to track down. Chances are, if you play World of Warcraft, it’s safe to say Blizzard changed something critical about your class! The link provided will take you to Elitist Jerks. If you can parse the theorycrafting jargon, check your class forum, as they’re already diving deep into the tweaks.
• Talent Changes: This one’s huge, too! Remember that Blizzard has actually shrunk the talent tree, changed the way in which you spec into multiple trees, and added Mastery! Most of the “useless” talents have been removed, changed, or replaced. The EJ link above probably has a lot of information, but if you’d like to play around with the new system in a sandbox, this WoWTal link has you covered.
• Glyph Changes: As skills and talents shift, so must Glyphs. Prime glyphs have been added and you now only have to use a glyph once to “learn” it, after which it can be switched in and out when not in combat. Blue Lylirra gives us the lowdown.
• Currency Changes: Badges are out, points are in. Any Honor or high-tier badges will be immediately converted to the new system. Low-tier badges and other non-monetary currency will be converted to gold. The system applies to current raiding and battleground content, but will come into its own with Cataclysm.
• User Interface Changes: Improvements are coming to just about every aspect of the UI, which is great but means that you’ll probably have to reorient yourself over the next few days. Check out many of them in the linked video, put together by our very own Mordil. It’s worth taking a look at the one he produced for the Druid UI, as well.
• Flexible Raid Lockouts: Bashiok comes at us again with more learnin’. Flexible raid lockouts mean that even if you missed some days in your raiding week, you’re not completely out of the game. It’s being put into the game now, but will make even more sense when the Cataclysm comes.
• Stat Changes: Don’t fret if you log in and all your gear has changed. Some stats have been changed, converted, or removed in order to simplify the system a little bit. Remind yourself what’s been done to your precious gear by following this link.
• Reforging: NPCs in major cities can swap secondary stats with other secondary stats on your equipment. See if you can squeeze a few more points of awesome out of your gear.
• Power Auras: The popular third-party mod has been co-oped (read: copied) by Blizzard. The basic idea is that custom graphical effects will pop up around your character when it’s kosher to activate an ability or when it comes off cooldown. While some may still opt to use the original, the rest of us will get the functionality built in.
• Socketed Relics: Relics now have stats and sockets for gems. Rejoice, relic-using classes!
• New Water Engine: Those shiny, new water settings we’ve seen in previews for the expansion are coming in 4.0.1, but make sure your rig can handle it first.
• New Guild Member Cap: Mega-guilds, beware! If you’ve already listened to our most recent podcast, then you’ll know we look like fools talking about the 600-member cap. Bashiok followed up the initial announcement stating that feedback had caused them to “re-evaluate” the decision and bump it all the way up to a cool 1000. This is now a had cap and necessary to accomodate all the new new guild features.

Can’t wait to check out of this stuff, myself, but I still don’t expect to be playing hardcore until 4.0.3, myself. While all the new changes are cool, there still isn’t any new content (well, beyond the impending pre-Cataclysm events which should be a part of this patch, as well). Tell us what has you pumped (or disappointed), and if I’ve missed anything, please let me know.

Starting tomorrow until May 12th players who have left LOTRO will have the ability to come back for free for during these 4 days. LOTRO has changed quite a bit since it first was released and Turbine is looking to boost it’s subscriber numbers by giving players the opportunity to take another look at the game. This come only 8 days before Age of Conan is set to be released, so maybe Turbine is trying to snag any borderline players before the game is released.

I myself rejoined back in Feb after a 6 month hiatus and signed up for 3 months, however I again lost interest in the game after a month of playing and haven’t been back since early March. Since its a free weekend, I’ll probably hop on for a bit, but I doubt I’ll signup again. I’m going to hold out for AoC.

About a week ago I did a short piece on Mythos, being developed by Flagship Studios. It was sort of a pre-preview that entailed very little information because, well to be honest Flagship has decided not to make the website accessible to anybody who is not in the beta. Good thing for you, and me, then that I was accepted into the beta and am now able to give you guys a proper preview! Also a good thing that the NDA was lifted a couple months ago. :)

In typical fashion, I started my character in the world of Uld by choosing his race: Satyr, Gremlin, or Human. Naturally, I chose to be a Gremlin (they are PURPLE!). From there I went on to choose my class. Currently, there are only 3 classes available: Bloodletter (a melee class), Gadgeteer (hunter/ranged class), and Pyromancer (spellcaster). Deciding to go with a theme I decided on Gadgeteer simply because whenever I feel a bit purple I also feel a bit firey. After all the customization (hair, face, etc.) I was finally ready and set to make my appearance in the world, which after a quick tutorial quest, sent me to Stonehill. For players looking for some extra adventure there is also the option of choosing Elite mode (which makes everything harder) and Hardcore mode (which means if you die your character is gone), for some real spice you can turn em both on. (Pardon the grainy images, JPEG is too big a file size)

Stonehill is the main gathering point in the game, from what I can tell. It is the Ogrimmar/Iron Forge of Mythos, if that helps at all. You’ll start your game here and, for at least the first 10 levels, you’ll be doing a number of quests from here. It’s a pretty nice town that is very beautiful and very active. After gathering some quests I was off to do battle in the lands of Uld.

The first thing you’ll notice about Mythos is how similar the game plays and feels to Diablo 2. Seriously, when I say this game is a Diablo 2 clone I very seriously mean it. The game allows you to map skills to your left and right mouse buttons, the left being primarily for weapon skills and the right being for everything else. The movement in the game is very much the same as Diablo 2 as well, where you click is where you’ll go. If you hold down the left mouse button your character will continue to go in that direction. A brilliant system that works just as well in Mythos as it has in every other game that has employed it successfully.

Upon doing a few quests and leveling up a few times you’ll notice some more stark similarities between Diablo 2 and it’s soon to be released twin brother Mythos. Upon each “ding” you’ll get 5 stat points and 2 skill points. The 5 stat points can be put into any of the 4 stats: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Wisdom. Each one of these stats does something different, and much like Diablo, depending on your class and play-style you’ll want to put your points into different stats. In addition to the stats, you’ll also notice that each class has 3 skill trees from which to choose various skills. As a gadgeteer my skill trees were: Marksman, Grenadier, and Tinker. After reviewing each tree for a few minutes I decided to mainly pursue the Tinker skill tree which allows me access to sentries, notably a flame sentry. :)

Continuing on in pure and utter Diablo delight I ambled my way through many dungeons and went through many quests. Some of them were fun and some were mediocre, but at no time did I think: “this is a poor Diablo clone” because if anything the new vibrant graphics and identical gameplay made it an even better game. For those still not convinced that this game is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2 you’ll be happy to also jot down that the game has randomized dungeons, hordes of monsters, and more loot than you could ever have hoped for. Top all this off with an inventory system that allows for identify charms, town portals, and gemstones to slot into items and you have got yourself one awesome Diablo-esque game.

Bottom line is that Mythos is an awesome game. Anybody who loved the Diablo games of yesteryears will enjoy Mythos equally as much, if not more so, because of near identical gameplay. Toss the gameplay in with new quests, more storylines, and an overall feel that Mythos is a world as opposed to a single player game with an optional online mode and you have yourself a game that is sure to be a smash hit amongst fans. The best part about it? It will be 100% free to download and play. I’ll be the first to admit that because I have only played the first 10 levels of the game there is still a lot I have yet to see, maybe the game gets horribly repetitive after level 11. Maybe the game gets unbearable after you complete a certain quest. I don’t yet know these things. What I do know is that you will, at the very least, get some enjoyment out of the beginning parts of the game. So what are you waiting for? Beta sign-ups are just a click away. Screenies below:

P.S. Once again, sorry for the grainy images. For some reason I couldn’t upload JPEGs and had to downgrade em to GIFs, the game really is beautiful. :)