Bootae's Bloody Blog

Mechwarrior Online - In game footage

2012-03-09T22:43:00.000Z

Lots of excellent news for mechwarrior/battletech fans recently. MWO is very much being made as a simulator and looking to be extremely familiar to those of us with mech history. Much of what's on view or being said may not appear to be that much of a big deal to those who haven't played these games before, but believe me, it is all good so far. All very promising for another MW game with great depth and flexibility. I'll talk more about this when I'm not half cut from a night in the pub.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, MechWarrior Online - GDC 2012: Role Warfare Interview HD, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

New Warhammer Online website is live

2012-03-08T21:04:00.000Z

Took a while, but it's finally here and looks fairly good. Most importantly it's actually up to date! Hopefully Mythic will keep on their toes with it and that will help stem off some of the "dropped game" perception within the general MMO community. A little bit anyway. Hopefully 1.4.6 can arrive sooner than the normal patch cycle and we might get a little bit of positivity going. Maybe anyway :P

http://ageofreckoning.warhammeronline.com/

Planetside 2 gameplay videos

2012-03-08T11:08:00.002Z

OK so some lovely person has put loads of vids on youtube from the Planetside 2 presentation at GDC. Lots of in-game footage and explanations.

These videos may explain why it's Planetside 2 I'm looking forward to far more than Guild Wars 2...

Vehicle pad and flight video with accelerated day/night schedule

Direct link http://youtu.be/KSXXEOJUcG0?hd=1

Outdoor battles, all sorts of carnage

link http://youtu.be/KrA3LAAIOc4

Tanks, infantry, Galaxy transport :) , customising inventory, etc, etc

link http://youtu.be/rmWyIMXJEiI

Campaign map, more infantry stuff, base capture, stats, guilds, etc.

link http://youtu.be/ikSRA46-Ug8

Ground stuff, not much action in it but shows the style of some buildings, etc.

link http://youtu.be/NHbQDFsdXyk?hd=1

Some nice screenies here too.

A mixture of hope and apathy

2012-03-07T17:17:00.000Z

At the moment I’m kind of adrift on an uninspiring sea of MMORPGs. There’s no siren call strong enough to tempt me into paying a subscription fee, I’m just not finding anything particularly alluring. Too much of the same old same old I suppose. So instead I’m just fiddling about with single player and F2P stuff, whilst I wait for one of the more interesting online games on the horizon.

As always I am tempted to return to EVE, but also as always, it’s just not life style friendly enough for me and my regular AFKing. Alas, I can’t see me being able to play EVE the way I would like to anytime soon. Though it’s probably a positive thing that real life prevents me from doing so, as I know EVE can devour you like a Sarlacc with the munchies. For now I’m mainly playing Star Trek Online. Just nipping on for an hour here and there to play through episodes or missions and set my next batch of Duty Officer assignments running. It’s free to play, quite engaging and I’ve always had a soft spot for STO. That said, the game won’t ever be my long term MMO love affair, but is more of a regular casual flirtation, perhaps with the occasional tongue. Flashing eyes across the office, the odd late night drinking session, but not quite worth a divorce.

Oh, I've downloaded RIFT again and will dick about the free 1-20 bit. Not logged in yet.
The only other online game I’m playing at the moment is Tribes: Ascend. It’s free to play, the cash shop is not essential and most importantly, it’s fun. This reimagining of the classic Tribes 1 and 2 is getting better and better and I recommend people try it out. Just be warned that it is not like your normal online shooters. It’s MUCH faster and you have to learn to lead your shots a lot more than normal. It’s all about predicting people’s movement and it can take some getting used to. Anyway, it’s a good game and recommended.

At some point soon I will be making use of my 2 weeks free in both WAR and DAoC, but I doubt very much I would subscribe to either in the near future. Obviously I’m a fan of both games, or at least what they once were, it’s just that WAR would really need to do quite a lot to make up for the Wrath of Heroes disappointment. The less said about that the better. Actually, as I write this I’m changing my mind slightly regarding DAoC. There is a bit more chance that DAoC could persuade me to take up a month’s subscription. It did grab me last year, surprising me how well so many things still played and looked. I swear if that game had a decent UI update it could see a reasonable resurgence.

Aside from those retro distractions, for me it’s all about the upcoming games; Planetside 2 and Mechwarrior Online. There’s a load more Planetside 2 news appeared in the last couple of days, which I’ll gather up and post about soon. Mechwarrior is continuing to drip feed news at a slow steady rate, though we’re still waiting to see some in-game footage. I hear we may see something soon however. Mechwarrior isn’t a MMO of course, but this blog is about stuff that interest me, so meh whatever. Oh and Hawken looks great. Me like mechs.

Elsewhere, I’m not totally writing off Funcom’s “The Secret World”, yet I don’t find myself particularly caring about it either way. To be honest I’m not quite sure why. Despite my many misgivings regarding Funcom, I do like what they try to do and certainly TSW has many features that tick my boxes. My apathy confuses me slightly. If I don’t get on the beta then I doubt I will try it until well after launch.

And on the subject of apathy… If for a moment I take off my Hat of Trolling+3, yes Guild Wars 2 has much potential and does look like some serious PvP goodness. That doesn’t change the fact that it will never be a game I get excited about and I still find it hard to motivate myself to write about it, but it’s certainly one I would like to see realise its PvP potential. Obviously Kill Frenzy and I will try it out.

Hopefully sometime soon we’ll start to get more news on Dark Millennium Online and World of Darkness. Both games are perceived as being on rather rough seas, what with the challenges faced by THQ and CCP, but I guess we just have to wait and see what news arrives. I still have high hopes for both games, purely due to their settings. Actually that’s not true. I have some confidence in CCP to deliver something interesting and hopefully sandboxy. Plus THQ have some excellent 40k games in their stable, so we know they’ll do the 40k universe credit when it comes to atmosphere at least.

I think that’s it for major MMOs of interest to me, can’t think of anything else. There are a few small games I have an eye on, but they’ll get posts of their own at some point. Oh and for the record, Diablo 3 I’m indifferent to and World of Warcraft Panda bear stuff just doesn’t work for me. Sorry Blizzard, as if you care lol :D

SWTOR 1.2 patch trailer

2012-03-06T21:22:00.001Z

And basically it's lots of cool little things that are standard fare in many other games.

New raid and a warzone too, so that's some proper new content.

I hear that there is a redesign of Ilum happening. Alas I suspect that will be doomed to failure because of SWTOR's fundamental problems with it's two factions. Ilum itself can of course be dramatically improved, but I just can't see how they can fix the monumental faction imbalance and suddenly have loads of people wanting to play the boy scout republic dullness. Even if they put faction based population caps (instead of the ri-cock-ulous zone based one they implemented before), that will just mean many folks from the overpopulated side end up PvEing the PvP zone.

Anyway, it's perhaps foolish for me to focus on the PvP issues of SWTOR. It is after all designed primarily as a PvE experience and on that front the 1.2 patch is looking reasonable I guess. It's not quite at the level of RIFT's content updates, but it should be enough to keep people interested.

Trion release a 2011 review + looking to 2012 video

2012-03-06T12:39:00.000Z

And it's worth a look.

I was planning on checking out RIFT again at some point this year, it's just such a well made game and I do like the way Trion do things. No doubt will be a temporary dabble when I do though.

In between my F2P dabblings I have been Minecrafting

2012-03-05T19:15:00.000Z

Not exactly OMG amazing or anything, but it takes a lot of gathering materials and some careful building when you're doing it all with vanilla survival mode. Lots of perilous balancing on things... And damn I had some bastard Creeper moments to deal with...

Click me and I get bigger.

For those of my generation in the UK

2012-03-04T22:14:00.002Z

STO - Cryptic looking at adding a third faction and maybe a fourth

2012-03-03T13:38:00.005Z

Dan Stahl, Cryptic's Executive Producer for Star Trek Online, has posted up the latest Ask Cryptic article where he replies to a range of player submitted questions. Despite there being a lot of the "promising but non-committal" answers that game developers tend to give, it is well worth a read and gives a bit of insight into future plans. Certainly Dan is promising a focus on adding new content, but the quotes I'm most interested in are these:

Q: (WazzaG) When will we see a Romulan Faction? I always read answers along the lines of “when the KDF has more content.” When will they have enough content so you can then launch a Romulan faction?
Dstahl: This is the number one long-term question on my mind and something I’m working directly with Jack (Cryptic’s CEO) and Perfect World to address. While I can’t give you a date, one of my goals in returning to Star Trek Online is to address this very issue.

Q: (KeithCrimson) When do we get to play as a Cardassian?
Dstahl: We’ve been holding off on having playable Cardassians and Romulans for the time being as we envision having a complete faction devoted to these races. That is the only reason we haven’t added them as playable species in the game yet. They are reserved for future expansions. That said, depending on what our timeline is for future expansions, we haven’t ruled out the possibility of having a few Cardassians or Romulans appear in Fed/Kdf ranks. So this is very TBD still.

OK so clearly it's not going to happen anytime soon, but it does sound like it will happen. Particularly the Romulans if that's the number one thing on their minds right now. Now, bare in mind STO is not a RvR game and as such a third faction would not turn it into DAoC in space, but aside from the obvious PvE additions and masses of new content, it would open up more PvP options. Plus it would sure make a lot of people very happy and be one hell of a news headline for the game. New factions are big media hype news, Romulan ships look cool, things that look cool and have media hype will attract players. And that's without considering the attraction for Trekkies.

STO has exploded in popularity since it went F2P, on a couple of occasions I've even had to queue to log in (not for long thankfully) and from what I see in game it looks like their cash shop is very successful. Everything in the cash shop can be earned without paying real money, since you can convert in-game currency "dilithium" into Cryptic Points to spend in the store, but that takes time to earn and it's pretty clear people are putting money in to get stuff quickly. Which is all good for STO and only increases the likelihood of Cryptic being able to introduce major expansions.

This is purely a personal opinion, but I suspect we will see an announcement of a playable Romulan expansion for STO being made around the Summer of 2012. Followed by a series of episodes related to it over the following months, then see it going into beta on tribble in December and going live Jan/Feb 2013. He says, speculating hopelessly :P

WAR dev on a right question roll

2012-03-01T17:56:00.000Z

Keaven is on a mission it seems. Another dev discussion post and this one has yet more sensible ideas to suggest.

+++
Wanted to start a new thread to consolidate discussions on gameplay enhancements/updates for things not necessarily part of the campaign, and not dealing with scenarios. Some things that fall into this category are...

PvE Gear Revitalization
Addition of new gear pieces to close RvR Gear Gap
PQ / Lair / Dungeon Revitalization
Talisman Charges/Refill mechanic

This won’t necessarily be for any one patch in particular, but will help focus our efforts over the next few patch cycles.
+++

Uhm wow? Potentially more gear gap fixes, making PvE content relevant again and a change to the bugged yet flawed concept of talisman charges.

2 days in a row with talk from Mythic that I am liking. Keep it up chaps!

Mythic show some promise for patch 1.4.6

2012-02-29T18:40:00.001Z

Whilst I'm not currently playing WAR and haven't for quite some time, I do still keep an eye on the game. Most often with a touch of frustration and gamer depression, but today that changes a little bit with Keaven Freeman's post about plans for the 1.6 patch. It is essentially a bug fix patch, which in itself isn't very exciting and of course I would love to see a big content patch, yet there are a few tweaks being considered for 1.4.6 plans that have the potential to make WAR a better and more balanced game.

Change Tier 4 lakes to bolster to 45
It may seem that WAR has a max character level of 40, but actually there are "hidden levels" that a character goes up as they hit certain high renown ranks. I've never bothered to properly learn the maths of why, but basically it's to do with making high end equipment stat increases scale correctly. Unfortunately it was just another part of making WAR become less about player ability and shifting the emphasis too far towards renown rank and gear. Of course if people look at it selfishly (and naively if they want the game to succeed) they'll think they should one shot everyone because they put the time in to get renown rank 100 and all the associated gear, but actually this model of progression is very harmful for a PvP focused game. It does nothing to entice new players to stick around (or old players to return), when they know it will be a frustrating experience as most current players have a massive advantage. So any steps towards making WAR more balanced and, crucially, more enjoyable for new players hitting Tier 4 is in my book a very good move.

Change scenarios to bracket by RR (renown rank) rather than CR (character rank; or level)
Same again really. It stops people getting auto facerolled by other players equipment, but it also stops people (at times justifiably) complain that they lost because it was so and so and he's RR100 and uber. AND it stops people (also, at times justifiably) blaming their losses on the lowbies they were stuck with. It should make for a much more competitive scenario scene.

Player-damagable Keep/Fortress doors
Hmmm. Everyone hitting the doors wasn't always great. However it was sodding worse when 1.4 arrived and all too often we ended up not having anything to do at keep sieges. Mixed in with possible changes to oil damage and this could get quite interesting.

There's loads of other things they're looking at fixing or tweaking in 1.4.6, but for me these are the things that have actually managed to catch my attention. Not big flashy changes, but changes that could make the WAR a bit more competitive again and improve the game as an experience.

Its looking like I will save my 2 weeks free return until 1.4.6 arrives.

Mechwarrior Online - First trailer

2012-02-28T21:32:00.003Z

And we have the first trailer :D

update... grrr their embed code is knackered :(

No shock that they went for the Atlas. It is one of the iconic inner sphere mechs.

MWO - The Commando

2012-02-23T19:19:00.001Z

This week sees the announcement of yet another mech in Mechwarrior Online's starting line up: The Commando. It's an interesting choice of mech; very humanoid (for want of a better word...) in it's appearance and proportions. Actually I'd say the original designs look a bit more like it should be a Transformer.

Thanks to Sarna.net for this classic image

Once again Piranha have slapped the original in the face with their Legendary Sword of Modernisation+3. We see a new design that holds true to its roots whilst looking perfectly acceptable by 2012 standards. I'm liking this quite a lot.

Gameplay wise the Commando is classified as a light mech. Actually you could say very light, at a mere 25 tons. Fast, maneuverable and with short range weaponry, we're talking about a scouting mech that should excel in urban or dense terrain. In previous Mechwarrior games there has been a lot of people that go straight for the huge assault mechs every time, they just can't see past big guns. Those people miss out on some of the most entertaining gameplay and they nearly always suck. With MWO putting even more emphasis on scouting, information warfare and synergy between weight classes, I'm expecting this mech to be one of the most exciting to play.

I'm not subbed to anything...

2012-02-20T19:36:00.000Z

...and I really don't care, because soon Mass Effect 3 will be here.

I love these games. Are they my all time favourite single player RPG series? Whilst I am a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls, it's only Mass Effect that I've played through completely multiple times. So yeah, I think they probably are. Can't wait!

Bootae makes a Guild Wars 2 post that is not totally full of bile and loathing

2012-02-16T23:08:00.000Z

OK so as everyone knows, I am hugely cynical about Guild Wars 2. I played the first game and I think it's hugely over-rated, despite what it's rabid fanbois say. Which actually is probably why so many GW2 fans are quick to say "but yeah GW2 is a totally different game!!!".

However, this blog post from the GW2 devs about PvP has gone a long way to increase my level of /care. I've now upgraded my interest from utterly indifferent to moderately intrigued. Which is quite a feat considering the game's WoW crowd pleasing, clown vomit, childish, emo and horribly generic art style. I bet there's a blindfolded busty angel somewhere.

The screenshot below however did not make me hurl.

This one does though...

And don't get me started on this shite.

Anyway, I must admit, that's an impressive list of PvP, RvR (or WvWvW?) features and if it doesn't turn out to be mainly dev speak or just plain broken, then I might actually be persuaded to ignore the cutesy crap.

SWTOR - Goodbye and thanks for all the fish

2012-02-16T15:13:00.001Z

I have cancelled my SWTOR sub. Yeah, I know I recently said I wouldn't be just yet, but meh... It turns out my original prediction of "It will probably keep me entertained for a month or two" was correct. So really it’s no big surprise that I’ve called it a day, but I shall now have a TLDR style ramble about why I've lost interest:

Firstly all the things that my "a game of two halves" post talked about. Getting to 50 was great and was possibly the best PvE levelling experience to date, but once at 50 it all just reverts to standard MMO farming and the entertainment provided by the storyline progression is gone. This was always a concern for me and was one of the reasons I suspected I would only get a couple of months out of SWTOR. Now that I’ve hit 50 and the storylines are all done… Well, I’m just not interested in repetitive daily missions and PvE instance farming to boost some stats by a few percent. I can sometimes be a little more motivated if the gear upgrades looks good, but the end game armour sets for my Sith Inquisitor are some of the worst art design yet seen in a MMO.

So knowing the PvE farm wasn’t for me, I went into SWTOR thinking the one thing that might keep me entertained, at least a little bit longer, would be the PvP and the Ilum open world campaign zone. If Ilum was even close to being as good as WAR’s Praag zone used to be, then I could easily have subbed for a while just for that. Unfortunately it's not good, in fact it's utterly shite. Everyone from Mythic who worked on SWTOR should be feeling a bit embarrassed. They didn't learn a single thing from WAR and actually launched a RvR zone that quite simply does not work and takes massive backward steps in RvR design. The much lauded walkers and artillery seen in videos of the zone are nothing more than stationery graphical fluff that do NOTHING and essentially the zone’s objectives are nothing more than flags to click on. A bit like WAR’s objectives but without the guards, resource carriers, etc, or the end result of a keep to attack… Basically, it’s a beautiful looking zone without anything of any interest to do.

The only purpose of the Ilum zone seems to be to complete the daily mission, which funnels everyone to the central objective and makes a mockery of about 95% of the landscape. However, worse than that, this is with a game engine that cannot cope with more than a handful of players in the zone. SWTOR’s performance is TERRIBLE in Ilum. As a result of this combined with the huge faction imbalance, Ilum is often completely empty. Of course it does have moments of activity, but that tends to be 5 Republic players veruse 30 Imperials… Which leads me neatly to my next big issue; factions and balance.

Come on, you didn’t think I’m going to miss a chance to rag on yet more 2 faction stupidity? :D SWTOR could easily have had 3 factions, those being: Imperial, Republic and Hutts. Classes for Imperial and republic are easy to do obviously, but so are the Hutts and their criminal organisations. Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, Slavers and all manner of scumbags could and should have been a third faction. This would have given the game much more of a chance to succeed on the PvP front and would have provided a very interesting different look at the Star Wars universe. However, Bioware went with the easy route, did a Warcraft and 2 factions it is. This could have been ok, after all PvE is the game’s main focus, yet they totally screwed up on making the Republic desirable to play.

All of the Empire classes are linked immediately to cool characters; Darth Vader, Darth Maul, The Emperor and Boba Fett. Whereas the Republic only have; Han Solo and the clone trooper (which sure aint no Stormtrooper and spends the first 15 levels walking round in a shirt that looks like it comes from An Officer and a Gentleman). The problem with the Jedi classes is they don’t naturally link to the interesting version of Obi-wan from the proper Star Wars films, instead they’ve been tainted by the hideous prequel films. They’ve been turned into uninteresting, wet, simpering idealists that hang around with Jar Jar fucking Binks and don’t have the sense to ram their lightsaber up his arse. The prequels made Jedi Knights boring. That’s unavoidable, the prequels did what they did, but Bioware could have made them more interesting with better alien options. In fact more than anything the Republic faction should have had some kind of tough guy class with playable Wookies as an option, something to give the faction a bit more oomph and bad-ass appeal. Instead we are left with an incredibly dull, uninspiring and desperately unpopulated faction. The effect on PvE is limited, but it totally screws over openworld and instanced PvP.

Having the Huttball warzone (instanced PvP scenario/battleground) allow same faction versus matches is a good idea. A good idea that falls apart when that is all you get. As an Empire player I am so bored of Huttball. I AM SO BLOODY BORED OF HUTBALL!!! I like the other warzones, but they just don’t happen much. SWTOR PvP is boring, simple as that.

So I’m at level 50. I’ve got fully purpled up gear. I’ve got my purple glowing lightsaber. I’ve got enough PvP gear and skill to compete comfortably. I’ve cleared all the PvE instances except one. I’ve run out of storylines and have no further progression possible except for slight stat improvements with hideous looking armour. There’s no openworld PvP and the RvR zone is broken beyond repair. Basically, I’ve got nothing interesting left to do, except play something else.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the game at all and actually I would honestly still recommend people play SWTOR. But exactly as many of us have been saying throughout its development, play SWTOR with the expectation of a Bioware single player game. Albeit one that has about a month’s worth of multiplayer PvE to complete once you’re max level. Do not expect a long term PvE or PvP subscription love affair, just go out there enjoy it’s excellent levelling experience and be ready to move on.

Films to keep an eye on

2012-02-13T16:44:00.000Z

You probably know of this already or have heard me nattering about them, but anyway there's new trailers out in the last few days.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Iron Sky

TERA, pretty, but horribly dull

2012-02-12T14:37:00.002Z

I could talk about all the normal issues Korean games have when ported over to the west and the many things I'm hearing from folks on the beta, but I'll save us all some time. This screenshot says it all:

click to enlarge and check the chat...

Can't remember where I saw this screenie the other day, so credit to whoever it was that took it. Update: Thanks Werit, it was in this thread over at Keen & Graev.

Of course if I get a beta invite then I will try it, just to satisfy curiosity, but I have absolutely zero hope for this game.

Rick rolled by a book

2012-02-08T09:13:00.000Z

Dunno if this is old news, I'd not seen it myself... A mate just linked this:

Hawken - closed beta application

2012-02-06T20:25:00.001Z

It's no shame if you're not familiar with Hawken, it's a game in development by a small indie developer called Adhesive Games. It's mech game, which we as you may know is a style I like, but as you'll see in the video below, this game is looking to have some serious potential. Graphically alone this is looking a wee bit more posh than the most indie games...

HD video link here.

Also here's a vid that shows some desert combat and shows off the UI rather well.

So if you're interested in some multiplayer mech mayhem and supporting indie games, get yourself over to their closed beta sign up page.

Official site www.hawkengame.com.

SWTOR - A game of two halves

2012-02-03T15:08:00.002Z

One of the issues that Bioware needs to deal with for SWTOR is that it is effectively 2 very different games. Firstly there’s the level process which is very much the traditional Bioware RPG, that being; fairly repetitive (but reasonably good fun) game play, which is beautifully masked by excellent story writing and an involving plot that you want to play through. Alas (and perhaps predictably) after you’ve finished that, you’ll find yourself automatically placed into the second game, which is the standard MMORPG instance farming and repetition with no real progression aside from stats and to a point, your characters appearance. The storyline is over, now kill those mobs, move out of the fire on the floor, interrupt that attack and repeat.

Now this is quite normal in MMORPGs ever since WoW cemented the modern standard. You level through quests and their storylines, then when you hit max level you then do the same dungeons over and over again until a new one is added later on. Critical I may sound, but clearly the system has proven popular, despite it’s fairly sterile and workhouse like nature. So this “levelling and end-game as two separate games” thing does hold subscribers and perhaps you could say “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. However, with SWTOR the difference between the two is far more pronounced than what we’ve seen before and it’s a lot more likely that once you’ve finished the first game, you might not be so keen on what you’re left with.

Bioware have put so much emphasis and effort into the storylines, it makes levelling a much more enjoyable process and it really does feel similar to Dragon Age and the like. Unfortunately this means when you hit end-game in SWTOR, it’s with a considerable and very noticeable BUMP. You’re dumped into “just another MMORPG” and the same old repetition we see in most other games. There is very little reason to choose to do that repetition in SWTOR instead of other games. Bioware’s primary selling point, the story, becomes completely and utterly irrelevant. I now know what happens with Darth Malgus, I don’t need to watch the same cut scenes over and over again. Doing so is not fun and it adds nothing of any merit. You might as well play RIFT or WoW, as they have the same end-game but are FAR more fleshed out when it comes to features and functionality. No light-sabres of course, but no chance of Jar Jar Binks either…

A friend of mine, who has now quit SWTOR, was expecting the game to have regular storyline content added. As in monthly updates at the least and not just a dungeon that is cleared in 1 hour. He was expecting them to have new quests, companions, etc and to see the whole plot and storyline progressing at a pace that could distract from the standard MMORPG instance farm. But instead he got daily quests and dungeons, again. To be honest this is actually not an unreasonable expectation on his behalf. Bioware has the pedigree and they’ve certainly had the cash to do this, so I would suggest that they could and should have had masses of storyline prepared and ready to be drip fed into the game post launch.

This could all be rectified, though I doubt it will. It’s more likely that we’ll just see a wide range of good, but generic post launch MMO updates. The basic features (by modern standards) that are missing will get added (guild banks, dual spec, etc) and we’ll see new instances for PvE and PvP added. The big issue there is how it will compare with what other games are offering for their end-game players. It’s not like RIFT will stop adding features to let SWTOR catch up…

STO dings 2

2012-02-02T18:10:00.001Z

Happy birthday STO :)

The event is now live and you've got just a few days to get the new fancy ships for free. Details here.

And just noticed they've got a coming soon trailer out. I'm not trekkie enough to know what all that is, but it has lasers/phasers and stuff :P

MWO - role warfare, hmmm yum

2012-02-01T21:40:00.001Z

Piranha have posted up Dev Blog 3 "Role Warfare". It's well worth a read and gives a great insight into the tactical possibilities that Mechwarrior Online is aiming for. Particularly when you put it alongside the info from Dev Blog 2 "Information Warfare". In many ways it sounds similar to how scouting works in World of Tanks, just expanded a lot, which to be honest was exactly how it worked in MW3-4, if you played in proper premades. So when you think about the "thinking mans shooter-simulator" nature of Mechwarrior games, it would suggest that if Piranha do manage to put their ideas into play... Well, we just might see a game with an unrivaled focus on teamwork, tactical play, information sharing and of course player skill and experience.

Of course it's early days and it would be unwise to make statements of assured success (oh haaaaai GW2 :P ). So far all we have is the (excellent) concept art, the game engine concept video that prompted the whole thing and a lot of good and reassuring ideas from devs. However, as anyone that's been around gaming for a while will know... devs say a lot of stuff. Delivering them is a whole other kettle of fish.

Regardless, this is currently no1 in my MUST-PLAY-NOW!! list for 2012.

HD link

Taking my foot off the SWTOR pedal a bit

2012-01-31T20:17:00.003Z

I've not quit SWTOR and don't currently plan to, but I realised recently that I have been playing a lot less. Perhaps this happened a little subconsciously, as there's been no real thought to it, it just kinda slowed down and I got distracted. My main is fully purpled out, I can compete well in PvP, I've cleared all the hardmode instances I've been in, cleared the Eternity Vault raid (though I'm not much of a dungeon farmer anyway) and Ilum remains a total load of bollocks. Also as an Empire player the warzone we normally end up with is Huttball, which is getting very old, particularly when wins so often don't register on the daily mission. Really I just want Ilum to improve, as that's theoretically providing the type of gameplay I really like (as per DAoC, WAR, etc) but I have serious doubts there.

I have started a proper alt, a Bounty Hunter Mercenary, but I'm not diving full on in to it just yet and not getting that MUST PLAY NOW itch. That said, I have also got a load of major stuff going on in real life which is souring my mood somewhat and as such everything seems a bit shit. Perhaps the fact that I'm mainly spending my gaming time in games where I can be building things, rather than see them destroyed, is fairly telling.

Which leads me to mention the Kill Frenzy Minecraft server has been reset with all the lastest patches and I've found myself heinously addicted... again. When not exploring and fighting stuff, I'm building a multiple tower, sky garden, thing... As everyone knows it is a magnificent game and an incredible time sink, pus I'm a real sucker for exploring and marveling at the cubist beauty of its randomly generated terrain.

Anyway, as I alluded to above, I'm not done with SWTOR yet, but I have run out of pressing targets and am now at the point where normally openworld PvP / campaign RvR would take over. Which unfortunately are SWTOR's weakest points.

STO - 2nd anniversary rewards are a bit good

2012-01-27T17:36:00.002Z

So normally games give you a load of old tosh for their anniversary rewards. A cloak, title or something else decidedly zzzzzzzzz. Sure there's been some decent veteran rewards in games, as in a reward for being subscribed for a certain amount of time; mounts black dye tubs (ahh fond memories), etc. Yet anniversary rewards received just for being logged in at that particular time are usually, well, a bit rubbish.

STO however is slapping that idea down and delivering some properly useful and rather substantial rewards. Everyone that plays during the 4 days from 2nd February can get a quest line that rewards them with proper all new design end game starships! You have to be at least level 5 to get the mission (or level 21 for Klingon, but Klingon chars start at higher level anyway) and then you'll have the ship as an inventory reward ready to activate when you get to Vice Admiral.

Odyssey Class Starship

Bortas Class Starship

Some details of the event can be found here. Klingon ship info here and Federation here.

If you've not played STO before it's probably worth installing, getting to level 5, getting the ship when the event is on and then if you ever decide to play it properly you'll have that waiting. Since it's free and all.

PS: After this event I would expect that these ships will only be available through the cash shop...