Guild Wars 2

Well started to play Guild Wars 2 yesterday and I must say I'm having fun.

I'm still getting use to moving with my keypad over the mouse.  It's easier to use the usual buttons of A.S, D, W to look around because least for me my mouse feels clumsy doing it.

I'm playing a Guardian, though there are not set roles like healer or tank, this one seems to fit them both enough to be of a well suited support for dungeons and raids.  He makes great use of a shield and some of his weapon abilities have a heal effect to them.

I will not touch the Sylvari they look like a celery stalk or some other green leafy vegetable I can't touch without sugar on it; this race doesn't detract from the game as much as the little guys they put in.

The Asura are too cute and small to be put in as a race for what I thought was a serious style of game.  Just makes me think of the foreign MMO's that each have some anime looking small class (Final Fantasy) or elves where the guys look more feminine then the females do.

I mean come on who thought up this race and the other one below.  Were they all sitting in a room drinking and smoking pot that they came up with these two races?  "Yo man, this celery looks like people."  Another guy, "Woah dude, let's put that in the game!"

Events are one of the aspects I like where you can be doing a quest and get notice of something happening nearby that you can participate in or let it go.  Though the bonus's for doing it are worth the effort.  They're like Rifts zone events only in a smaller area.

The graphics are beautiful to look at, you can tell the scenery had some time spent on them to make it look well placed and eye catching should you spend the time to look at it.  The towns have their own unique life to them where npc's walk around and talk with each other.  Though it would be nice if you could strike up a proper conversation with one, but we're not at that point yet in the gaming world.


With the races and role-less gaming out of the way, I can't see much difference then other MMO's out there.   It's still a level based game, tons of quests to try and keep you entertained even though some of those quests are kill this many or collect this many items for the lazy npc.  The crafting isn't engaging enough for me, I want more action when I'm creating a breastplate not just click and succeed.  I would like to have to make a choice on what the next should be (a quick choice I should say) and if it's a good choice then I get an improvement or damage to the item; similar to Vanguard's crafting or Star Wars Galaxies

Revealing the secrets of The Secret World

Have you heard the secret?  The Secret World has come out and what a game it is.  If you haven't it's a game you should be giving a try.

Secret World is a new breed of MMO's it takes you away from the fantasy setting of old days and keeps you in the modern time.  It doesn't exactly follow what other MMO's have with the World of Warcraft model and that's a good thing.

The Secret World revolves around three factions/sects/cults whatever you want to call them.  They are The Dragon, Illuminati and the Templars.   You play the role of a human infused with a magic bee from Gaia that grants you powers and other abilities you'll see through the game story.  It takes place on earth in a modern setting so you have some familiarity with what you experience. I just can't help to not like a game where I fight werewolves, vampires, fairies and other super natural monsters; while not being trapped in the past or future setting.  Doing all of this while wielding two pistols, a rifle or using magic all in a modern setting.

You go through a story based on your faction that introduces you to the world and to the possible skills and abilities you would like to use.  Those factions have their own set story and ideals on how the world should be affected or protected by them.  Each weapon has two separate skills that go with them one being your damage skill or the other being a support, healing, or tank styled skill.   You do not have levels to fall back on but as you do missions and kill monsters you gain experience points that grants you points after gaining so many.  You can spent those points on your choice weapons to gain new abilities to use.

This leads to you can group with your friends, and not limited by a number.  Though you won't be able to go everywhere with them like the dungeons due to your equipment but at least they can follow you on your own questing and still gain experience points.

Game Play - The combat is your basic point, click and hit a button.  You have abilities that stun or weaken the monster you're fighting which can help give you a little time to either get away or set up your position.  You just only have 7 active abilities and 7 passives unlike some of the games where your whole screen could be filled up with macros to perform a certain attack or spell.  What they added in is the ability to roll, or jump out of the way when a white circle is under you; right before the enemy hits with an attack in that area.  It's not flashy but it works, to what some others may say.

Graphics - You have some beautiful scenes to gaze upon.  Nothing like watching the sun, disappear from the horizon; even though the land is covered in black gunk from the evil you're suppose to be paying attention to.  There are some graphic flaws with the cut scenes where not everything clashes together or your hair sticks out from a under a hat; it's still new so they can be easily fixed as are most things when a new game is released.  They're not mind blowing, or explosive styles of graphics but I won't or don't expect that much yet; not till everyone can upgrade their computer to the best system or you won't have many players in that game (marketing and money all that stuff that gets involved in this).

Story - I liked the main quest line, following on the trail of a guy in search of power and watching his world crash around him.  Every quest character I meet had some interesting appeal to them, especially when I went to the desert and one guy was performing with an imaginary guitar.  Though some of their stories seem to drift off to them talking with themselves (your character never says a word) you tend to hit the button and skip that part to get to the killing part.  You can be drawn in to their story or shrug your shoulders and move on.  They are at least scripted well with the movement and talking, with only a few glitches to them walking into a wall and not realizing it.

PVP - It's not something I've always loved but I gave it a try.  Though these styles of games in the beginning will be fun to play but as the game ages and people gear up/skill up you start to see how broken they become.  With the right skills you can be almost unstoppable having everyone's attention on your while your team picks them off one by one. It can get annoying without your own skills to try and counteract that.  I just find this is where a game starts to fail as the developers are trying to improve skills but then it takes away from the other part of the game.

It's sad that not everyone knows of the Secret World yet (mostly due to Funcom's tract record of games) and it may be covered up some by the release of Guild Wars 2; but I think Secret World is a nice game to play if you want something different then the World of Warcraft games that are currently strangling the market.

DC Universe

I started playing this when it went F2P I tried a little of it at beta but my old computer kept crashing it so I had to stop.

It had a few bumps in the terms of lag and bugs. Lag was due to all the people attempting to play it and only 2 servers being up to try and handle all the people. So I figured that would smooth over soon. The other was bugs that should of been fixed a long time ago but were apparently still there and after it went Free to Play did they bother to fix them.

The game plays a little different then others, it's level based of course; but your attacks are based on what weapon you have equipped and that weapon gives your character stats or moves depending on where you put your skill points. You can at least add a new weapon to play with after level 10 plus.

You select from a small list of powers that have two branches you can put points in depending on the role you want to play. Some have different versions of a role in either tree just different ways of doing that role with them. Light was released near the time it went Free to Play but you either had to buy it or be a subscriber to get it; just recently Electricity was released which is a new healing power.

Hero creation was not as extravagant as City of Heroes or Champions where you had a decent amount of costume pieces to use. City of Heroes (in my own opinion) had the best costume creator. You can build up a nice selection in Champions or DC universe but you had to either find or buy the costumes.

You will have some fun with this game if you liked the other two hero games, but which one you choose in the end is up to you.

Star Wars The Old Republic - A game I've played before

I've been beta testing Star Wars for about three months. I had high hopes being a BioWare game with their story telling, and I wasn't disappointed in that aspect.

The plus area

• Great Voice acting for missions and story plots. I am glad that I'm able to skip some with spacebar after already experiencing that part.
• The stories are written out very well which like I said I wasn't surprised with Bioware.
• It's Star Wars!

The Negatives

Really these are the big negatives I find and what makes them stand out the most.

• They didn't branch off from World of Warcraft/Dark Age of Camelot or Rift (to name a few). It still has that leveling grind feel from constant questing with quests that don't stimulate or capture myself in the world.
• Once you max level which I know some will attempt with-in a week or even less. What are they to do next in a level based game? PvP and Raid constantly in the same area, or make a new character to meet the same fate at the end. It's the eventual wall you meet with these types of games which I'm glad that the eventual ArcheAge is going to remedy (hoping, always a dread there)
• Crafting is done by companions, there's hardly any involvement by you, they really wanted people not to have to bother with this; and that's a very sad feeling I liked doing crafting in Galaxies.
• Planets - They say there are numerous ones, but it's limited to a small area of that planet. I'm left wondering why am I traveling to these when so little is explored of these huge planets
• Space Combat - There was no free flight in this, you are left on a set patch only using the mouse to move your cursor to attack. I hope they improve this feature with a later expansion.

The Neutral feeling

• Companions - They are nice to have to fill a spot, but otherwise they make the game more solo play then groups as like I said the companion fills a spot. So you have a healer or a tank companion and you do the other part and go off to do elite quests.

If I was to compare Star Wars Old Republic to Galaxies (early edition not what Sony did to it) I would choose Galaxies as I had more fun, it was open world and wasn't limited by levels or small worlds.

1-5-12 After playing it further

Giving the game that after release play through; I'm still on the fence about the game. One part of me likes it, the other part of me doesn't like all the quests; and I mean there are a lot of quests to do. Even after you think you're done with the planet they throw bonus missions at you as you're heading to your ship. Not that you have to do them, but sometimes you feel compelled to do them.

I noticed something new that a few other share are the graphic glitches. I didn't experience these during beta but now I'm seeing weird flashes of light or character faces act distorted at times; among the bugs or character movements that still lurk in the game.

Space combat is still lackluster with no improvements to it that i've seen.

Why MMO's are losing appeal.

First let's go with saying that Level based games are becoming and should be a thing of the past.

- Once you hit max level you are not left with many options beyond PvPing in designated zones (instants) and Raids.

- It becomes a grind of gear to get anywhere after you hit max level so it's doing the same thing over and over and over.

- You are hard pressed to play with friends as you might be more hardcore and they are casual, so you can't have them in your group with their level being 10 or more below yours.

Why is level based system still used? It's currently what works, as displayed by World of Warcraft and there are few who are being brave enough to leave this style.

Why skill based games work?

- You can pretty much go anywhere with low level skills. You will have difficult time with tougher areas, but still a chance.

- Friends could play together because there was no level requirements; and your friend will gain skill from fighting even if he/she doesn't hit as often.

What are some ideas to include (progressive list)

Crafting

- Skill gain by use of course, higher the skill the better you get at retrieving resources.

- Reading books to gain new ways to get more resources, special resources or new ways to build something

- Let's make it in-depth like Vanguards or Everquest 2, put the player into it, don't hand it to them like other games have. Adventures travel and sell some of the rare items they find to crafters.

1. Books are rare (maybe 1-5 copies)
2. Takes time to read
3. Can set up as an offline thing, but as soon as you start playing you are hit with consequences be it "Tired" where you are weaker or slower gain in skills.
4. Guilds or people would horde these but you can use another skill to try and copy the book, but it will take time and special materials to copy them.

Combat

- Skill use is still the best way to go with this. The more you use it the better you are.

- Use a stamina system for this. You have to get tired from using combat/spell/craft but the better you are the less impact to it the drain.

- Combat focus lets you center your skills in like One handed fighting to a certain weapon. But you can only go into this once you hit a certain skill level to show you are dedicated to that craft.

-Let's go with masters to learn this, but also books can be used to learn a certain stance once you have the basics from your masters you are able to go with the special abilities in your chosen field. Ex - If you want to learn to leap and kick then you need to find this master and then that master leads you to find a book or item to improve that attack.

- Being able to target spots of a body for special injuries but are harder to get at, would bring something new to combat and allows people to focus on healing skills.

Healing -

Spells seem to be a choice, but depending on the game how far do you want to go with them in this area. Where else could you go with this, well there's the bandaging similar to Ultima Online, which would work but hard to do while in combat (should be anyways). Similar to Star Wars Galaxies where doctors/medics were of value and fun to play where they were needed to fix a wound/sprain. Some actually enjoyed this job starting their own business and having customers come up to them, while they are herbing/crafting potions and ask if they can take a look at their leg/arm or some disease they can't cure with magic.

1. Alchemy items to heal.
2. Injuries from combat or other things like critical failure in crafting a new item; could make you have an broken arm that lowers your effectiveness and you need a skilled medical person to fix you.
3. Areas like a hospital or shrine give you that healing bonus when working.
4. Magic can't cure everything so other means of medicine need to be looked at.
5. Books teach special techniques.

Magic

Terraria

Terraria is a game I found via the Steam Network.

There's not much of a tutorial that I found unless you travel to wiki pages or youtube videos of other's experience in the game. But without those you are greeted by an npc that tells you tid bits on what to do.

I started with digging some holes to gather materials while fighting slimes. After gathering enough stone (could use dirt I suppose, but I wanted a better looking house) to build the outer line of my house while gathering wood to make a workbench and further create the materials like walls or doors that I needed to finish the house.

With enough materials and creativity you can make very extravagant house or castle. Once you have the wall set up inside with chairs, table and lighting you will eventually attract npcs to stay in your rooms.

Once night fell that's when you either stay in your house to watch as the zombies try to beat down your door or you venture out to face them.

There is many things to do in this game, and the world is vast for just yourself. You'll dig down below the earth to discover treasures like heart containers to increase your health or treasure chests with some nice little item in it. And that's to get you somewhat prepared for what else lies in the world. I think building my housing area is where most of my time has been sunk.

The deeper you go the stronger the enemies can get as you fight in underground jungles or the "hell" level that awaits below with dangerous lava's and teleporting imps.

Crafting keeps you busy as you have to gather materials from bosses or meteorites that fall from the sky; and there is a wide variety of items to make to improve your combat abilities at what else awaits you. From crafting armor to light saber style weapons.

Even though this game is considered a Beta still it will keep you busy till further material is added.

What makes it great too is the fact you can start up your own world to have friends join your or join their own game. Trade what you find with them and help them take on the bosses that were giving them trouble.

Downsides - you may find it childish graphics and compare it with minecraft (which I haven't played so can't comment on) and yes the graphics are low but that's not something you'll linger on for long as you get enthralled with what's below that next piece of stone.

Reminded me of Zelda in someways with item names and monsters.

Give it a try you won't be disappointed for it's low price of $10.

Runes of Magic

Runes of Magic

A free to play MMO
You can pay money to buy gems which are used to purchase items. Some of these items are rent only which makes it a monthly fee style attitude without actually being monthly.

It looks like your everyday Fantasy game, with only two classes to choose from, Elves and Humans.


CLASS
Where Runes of Magic tends to stand out is that you are leveling two classes on one character instead of just one. Yes when you reach level 10 on your first choice you are allowed to pick another class based on your race.

This second class is something you think will compliment your first one, as select skills from one class crossover to the other one. But only when that character reaches the level of the when your other class gained it. So you could have a dual wielding priest, because of your rogues dual wielding ability.

There is no talent tree, but each kill or level you gain points that you put towards an ability to level it up and make it stronger.

This ability is for those who have hard times deciding on the class they want to play so they can just switch to the other and go off playing that. Still knowing they have some of the abilities from the other class helping them.

Classes in game: Warrior, Scout, Rogue, Mage, Priest, Warden, Druid
Some are only available to one race.

Professions
The professions are some you find in any game, from your blacksmith to woodworking. Best part is you can take up all of them if you want to, you'll just be investing a large sum of time doing them. They may not seem to be adequate in use age, but as you turn to that second class you can have access to items that will help power up that class.

Other parts
Leveling has been increased to 60, so that gives you enough time to enjoy the game and explore. I guess technically it's 120 as you are leveling for two.

The graphics are nothing spectacular but still don't detract from the game. You also have a variety of mounts to choose/buy from. And these mounts can be pretty large in the size area.

You have a large amount of quests to complete; some you will not complete your first round or want to as you will leave these for your second class to complete to help level up.

You have your own house as well, which can be decorated and enlarged as you see fit. With the adequate in game and out game money to help this.

Grouping is out there and needed for some areas. As monsters can seem to be to overpower to be placed in that area. But still some skip those quests in favor of the continual solo grind. Which is sad as socialization in games has turned sour, beyond the zone wide yelling and name calling.