Paragus Rants

Rants, reviews, and interviews from an MMO veteran and guild leader. Join me in an objective discussion about what went right, what went wrong, and simply how it is.

Author: Paragus1

Darkfall: Community Q&A with Aventurine

A few weeks ago, the Darkfall community expressed an interest in getting a chance to fire off some questions to Aventurine about a variety of gameplay topics as well as some of their future plans.  I passed along the idea to the devs, and they agreed to field questions from the community of current players.

After the questions were posted, I compiled them all together and screened out the duplicate topics and overly vague questions and passed them along to Aventurine.  I also made each player sign their in-game Darkfall name to their submitted question for accountability reasons.

So let's turn things over to Aventurine!

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We made an effort to answer every question sent to us as well as we could. If we seem vague or incomplete on a few things, it’s because they aren’t finalized. Tasos Flambouras, Claus Grovdal and Kjetil Helland participated in this Q&A.
 

What are your future plans to assist new, or returning, players with catching up to veterans in a realistic time-frame? - Wrafe Prevails

We’ve done several things already such as increasing skill gains, increasing skill gains on PvE, increasing monster drops, skill books, attribute consumables etc. and we’re constantly evaluating this making all necessary adjustments.

You can be viable in Darkfall and you can do things and access all areas from day one. You can PvP on day one and you can actually hit other players. You can man a cannon, you can ride a mount, sail a ship you can participate in a massive battle and contribute to it even beyond reviving friends and finishing off enemies. We’re mentioning these things because we’ve done a lot of work so that you don’t actually need to catch up to actually be a part of the game.

What is the main focus for expansion number 3? (Any hints would be great) - Cattboy SiN

An extremely ambitious Darkfall project we’ve dubbed Darkfall 2010 with serious improvements across the board, so much so that it’s impossible to choose one main focus. In Darkfall 2010 we focus on everything.

I would like to know if herbalism is going to get some love in the near future. - Ford Perfect

Herbalism is useful and balanced for what it does, but we’re always looking into improving trade skills. We have some major improvements for trade skills underway which target their depth and add a lot more items to the game.
 

Will the game continue to head towards fast transportation and globalization or can people expect a return to reduced transportation and a return to regional conflicts? - Comrade Zaffa

This is it for now. With the addition to the game of global PvP events such as Sea Fortresses, the Village Control Points, Trade Routes, as well as with the Dynamic Lore Events, we wanted players to be able to get into the action relatively quickly. Even so, “fast travel” in Darkfall isn’t that simple, it needs planning and can always be disrupted by other players.

Will the wonder cost every be reduced, if not, I would like some clarification on what the wonders actually do. Yea, they give a global bonus, but I am sure most would agree that one of the main reasons why no one has ever made one was beacuse we don't want to waste 15k mods, to find out its a +3 global bonus. - Keno Lair

We are considering reducing the costs of wonders. There are 9 Wonders, in 9 cities, for 9 attributes. Wonders do give global bonuses but it isn’t +3, more like +20 and they’re stackable.

Is there any intention on letting people put spell upgrades on ray spells/spells that you currently cannot upgrade/jump cast? - Nacitar Sevaht

Not for the time being

Are there any plans to further improve the economy/trading in DF? - Drasked Guillotine

Yes this is one of the things we’re focusing on actually. We’re improving monster drops and especially rare drops. We’re planning a huge itemization boost almost doubling the amount of items in the game. This will mean more ingredients, more recipes for crafting, and this should help diversify the economy significantly. We’re also planning on Clan Vendors. We’re planning on player/clan vendors in capitals and possibly in clan cities. You need to compete to secure a vendor spot in a capital, or you need to earn one.

These are just some of the direct measures we’re taking to improve the economy.

Can players expect to see an Armor dying system, or some guild identifying crest, or some kind of visual? - Line Six

Yes we are currently testing our system for armor and clothing dyes in conjunction with the sweeping changes in 2010. The colors are craftable and not all colors are created equal.

Are chat bubbles (togglable on/off) for immersion's sake (and roleplaying clans) being considered at all? - Noc Tyerlan

We’re considering them but for now there are no plans to add chat bubbles. It’s not a technical challenge; our issue with chat bubbles has to do with gameplay. If we did implement them, they would be opt-in both ways and they would be as Darkfall friendly as possible. We would rather improve communications without having to use them but we’re not ruling them out either.

Are there plans to changing the alignment system or making it be more attractive to be a non-ARAC clan or less attractive to be ARAC? - Kasmos Melanoma

This is something we’re looking at. If we did anything it would be introduced in a mild way. We’ll also offer an option to select a different race for a small charge. Compatible race clans may already have an advantage when it comes to Dynamic Lore events.

Is there any plan at all for more types of craftable armor or weapons anytime in the future? - Soulless Avenger

Yes, tons

Can we expect to see further player impact upon the world? Eg. Extinction of mob spawns, capture of NPC cities by other races, clan control over regions etc. - Ymgarl Thakgrush

Yes. Starting with the dynamic lore system where players can seriously impact the game’s lore and events happening in the game, it’s in our future plans to allow our players to increasingly affect the world.

Will people that own houses ever be able to use houses from their friends (without transferring their houses to a 3rd player)? - Wyverex Erisian

No, you’re supposed to make a choice. Transportation should not become that easy especially with village control points at stake.

Will the sliding corpse bug ever be fixed? - Fain Arthadar

Yes and it won’t just be fixed but it’ll be replaced with something very cool.

Are there any plans to add a more customizable rank system for clan? For example player made ranks to open the gate. - Torinar Blackhammer

Not in the immediate future but there are huge improvements under way for clans

Will anything be done about clans being able to wardec another clan and immediately start attacking them in NPC towns with no worry of the tower attacking? - Neza Lycore

Yes this is something we’re working on and will be addressing in the near future

With the onset of the new patch, villages and trade routes have not turned into the PvP hotspots that some hoped for. Is there anything in the works to promote PvP hotspots or anything of similar nature? - Syloc deKGB of the Knights of Glory and Beer

The villages and the trade routes, and the Sea Fortresses are only part of the process. Each one adds its contribution to increasing PvP and PvE opportunities in the world. We’ll keep working on improving and adding more. We’re currently working on introducing dynamic PvP opportunities to the game.

Any plans on adding functionality to show when clan members logged in last time? - White Box

We’re looking into it.

Demigods; I know this was originally a planned feature for Darkfall, is this something you are still planning to implement or has the feature been totally scrapped? - Igh Agag

We are totally planning to implement it as planned. Demigods are a part of a bigger design a part of which is the Dynamic Lore System. The Demigods will be introduced when it’s time for them to be introduced.

When will you actually implement the Anti-Aliasing? - Ninogan Swiftstep

Darkfall 2010, along with Directx 11 support and many other goodies.

AV, are there any plans to get rid of "random rare drops" and make items like gathering/crafting tools, house stations, accessories, and possibly houses themselves craftable ? - Ray Pew

We’re not going to get rid of random drops but we’re planning on substantially increasing the craftability of items.

Are there plans to rebalance Alfar racials like how the lore states (global magic ability that increases and decreases based on tribute to the Gods, etc.)? -Amrah Punjabi

No but we’ll add more racial abilities in upcoming expansions.

Could you describe your plans for further marketing of Darkfall and give any timeline for a US box release? - Garful Greatforge, Heroes Fate

We’ve been steadily increasing our marketing spend across traditional channels as our subscribers are steadily increasing. We’re also working on alternative marketing schemes like the Community Publishing program which is going extremely well. We’re speaking with several partners concerning a N. America box release but we can’t give an ETA on that yet.

Is Aventurine considering introducing some type of skill point cap for players? - Agricola Augusta, MAG

We’ve addressed this issue many times, and what we prefer to do instead of imposing limitations on player freedom is add features like specializations for example. We have several further initiatives planned for the near future.

Is 10k players online simultaneously on 1 server still something you consider may happen in Darkfall? - Neptun y3

This is something that has already happened. The question is how much higher we can go.

Do you have any plans to make Rare Ores a little bit more available to the world at large? - Rivers Keylak, SG of Nemesis

Yes we do, we’re considering adding a chance for rare ore drops in regular nodes.
 

Any plans on making ships more accessible by removing or easing the astrolabe requirements on more than just the raft? - Meaty Maggnus

Yes we have slowly been increasing the drop rates of astrolabes.

What are your plans if any to ensure that new players will be able to have fun in the beginning of their Darkfall experience? - Lady DDT, Blackshields

We believe that this is one of the very few MMORGs where players can have fun and be viable and useful from day one. The game is designed for it. You can jump right into the action and make an impact unlike most MMOs that force you to reach this or the other milestone before you can even think of participating.

Now if you are referring to making the game more newbie friendly, then we’re planning several improvements in 2010

After soaking in the new patch for a few weeks now it has become apparent that even with specializations the dominate style of play is hybrid. Does AV feel that this is the play style that should dominate or do they plan to continue to balance the specs. and game so that we see more defined roles? - Chief Thunder, VAMP

We’re continuing to balance the specializations and we’re introducing new ones. This is a gradual step process. We’re moving towards more defined roles and introducing longer term choices players will be asked to make.

Wandering mobs were mentioned before the release of CtS. Is this system 'done' with wildlife, or are there plans to bring actual wandering mobs to the game? (something as simple as goblins traveling between spawns to more complex examples like orcs rallying into a horde to attack a city/hamlet). - SynCaine GodHand

As with most things we do this is the beginning of a process.

Mage Killer's 40% damage increase at the cost of mana and the elemental magic schools requires users to wear heavier armor (plate/full plate). The 40% damage increase is negated however by Full Plate armor due to encumbrance. Is there any testing and rebalancing in the works for Archery Specialties such as opening up elemental school buffs or allowing more than 1 specialty to be chosen at a time? - Fibin Stonesmasher

We’re currently testing adding one extra archery specialization in addition we’re also introducing new specializations including new archery specializations.

Will the community see scavenging (breaking down of completed items into their raw mats) in the near future? - Alaron NeX

Yes this is a feature we’re currently working on

Will we be able to bind multiple actions on one key (change weapon and skillset at the same time for example)? - Elessar Lorwyn

Yes you will.

Any plans to implement a tiered clan bank access system? - Mobed Starr

Yes

What other "advanced" mounts (besides Battlehorns) are waiting in the wings, and when may we expect to see them in game? - Ktorr Shadowfell

We do have new mounts on the way but we don’t want to reveal anything right now

Has there been any thought into combining the destroyer/indestructible skills and/or allowing them to be permanent bonuses against all players(even those without staffs out (for destroyer)?. - Strife Aldaelon, Sinister

Perhaps, or perhaps we’ll do something with a similar effect. We’re currently investigating all specializations introduced while keeping the upcoming specs in mind. We’re balancing it up against the new things that are going to come.

 
Are there any plans to make the game more friendly towards non-hardcore players? (i.e. more customizable options for housing, things to do besides pvp.) - Conn Bloodbane

Yes we’re always adding more things and we’ll keep adding elements to make the game friendlier to new players, solo players, and more casual players.

Any plan to make it so that your enemies cannot use your clan bank? - Big Badaboom, Section 8

Yes but you’ll have to upgrade your bank.

Is 4-legged run still being considered as a racial trait for the mahirim? - 50 Cent

This is a very difficult feature to balance. We are still considering it and it’s actually developed and ready to go. We’ve already started with the racial differentiations, we’ll keep adding new ones, and if we can ever balance this properly, then we’ll add it.

Will there ever be any continuation between the east/west or north/south edges of the world (allowing travel around Agon in circles from one edge continuing and appearing on the other edge)? - Vucar Dumat

No there won’t be.

Since we've seen the game become more about alliances than individual clans, will we see any features aimed more towards alliances? More political tools, in game political map, shared city buffs, that sorta thing. - Rahkim Whitehawk

Alliances are informal so far, we may take some steps to formalize them a bit. We are considering offering an Alliance Map for starters.

Are there plans of making/adding more complex dungeons to the world of agon, maybe with some levers , triggers, traps etc. - BLOB Lukic

Yes, we have big plans for dungeons in 2010

Is a new chat window being worked on? The current one makes it almost impossible to see incoming tells or local chat because it defaults to a new tab. - Signus Melkorr

There are sweeping changes for Darkfall 2010 and these include everything associated with the user interface

Are you planning on diversifying the different melee skills by adding unique attacks/moves or specializations for each weapon type? - Erwin Carius

Yes we’re planning on both

Do you feel that polearms are underpowered and intend on tweaking them some more? - TNoD X, VAMP

Polearms were considered grossly overpowered. All we did was slow them down by 11% and everyone now thinks they’ve been seriously nerfed. We’re always working on balance; we’re always investigating discrepancies and making changes wherever we feel they are necessary.

I seem to remember new spell school(s) being hinted at. Are there currently plans to put in new "schools" of magic? If so can we get an example of one or two spells from these new school(s)? - Kelsen Ravenheart

Part of a larger plan for the future that we cannot discuss yet, but it’s definitely on our list.

Thanks for your time!

Paragus Rant
Co-Leader of Inquisition
http://www.inqguild.com

Review: Darkfall Revisited

It's been a few months since I last played or wrote about the status of Darkfall and recently a bunch of my guild decided to scout out how the game has progressed in the last few months. With news of the second expansion, we decided to jump back in about a week before Conquer the Seas went live to get an idea of how the game has matured since the NA launch.

What I am going to go here today is gloss over just some of my personal observations on some of the changes that have been added since my last time I played, which was before the first expansion and NA server.  I've noticed a lot of people on various forums and communities asking about what may be different now, so hopefully this will shed some light. I also have to mention that in my return to the game, I have opted to reroll and start a new character from scratch as a different race (Alfar).  This should help add some extra perspective since this will be from the vantage point of what many new players may experience.

Skill Gains

Quite possibly the biggest change I noticed in revisiting the game is the ease and speed at which players are able to advance their skills.  During my last tour of duty in Darkfall, the game was plagued with people who would use "blood walls" to gain skills while AFK. One of the most welcome changes is the fact that blood walls are pretty much a thing of the past or drastically diminished.  Aventurine not only changed the speed at which skills are gained, but made it so that many skills will increase up to six times faster in PvE.

As a freshly rolled new character, I was shocked to see how fast my melee, archery, and magic skills were advancing compared to what life was like months ago.  I had never macroed last time I played and I remain determined to never go down that road.  These new changes seemed to have reduced a lot of macro activity drastically because the game now has major incentive for players to go out and PvE instead of macroing inside their cities.
 

To help put this into perspective, I will give some examples of where some of my critical skills were at the end of the first week.  I spent most of my PvE time in the first week fighting goblins and skeletons, both who seem to drop arrows and go down pretty easily.  At the end of the first week, I was able to raise my primary melee skill to a 40, and my archery skill to a 50 just living off of the bows and arrows dropped by these mobs. My lesser magic shot to over 80, and my greater magic to around 50 with a bit of effort. Previously reaching these skill levels without macroing would have taken me upwards of a month or more depending how much time I spent focusing on them.

The only real hurdle I think for new players in terms of character advancement is raising their base stats.  Players who have been around the block a lot longer have a significant advantage here because higher base stats leads to having a higher max HP.  I think I'd like to see them make the stats increase at different speeds depending on how high they are.  As an example, maybe have stats raise much faster between 15-30, then maybe only slightly faster from 30-40, and keep it as is now beyond that.  This could help newer players catch up a bit, but this is just my personal suggestion.

Quests

Who would have thought anyone would have cared about doing quests in Darkfall?  Since the last time I played I have noticed a lot of new quests, especially in the early part of the game experience.  These quests seem to do a nice job at teaching new players some of the basics of the game's fighting, harvesting, and crafting.  They also help give the players some basic tools and cash to help get them going.  Each starter town has the same quests, but new players can travel to each of the towns and do them over again for an added gain.

The most substantial quest addition comes in the form of title quests that are available in every race's capital city.  These quests will have you out fighting literally hundreds of PvE mobs, and reward you with thousands of gold and titles that boost your base stats.  While there is a title for every one of the base stats, you may only have one equipped at a single time.  Upon completion of the basic title quests, players receive followup quests that chain together to get better titles that add even more stats with more cash rewards.

The icing on the cake in this area is that the Conquer the Seas expansion seems to have revamped the in-game quest journal.  The old slow journal was often clunky and awkward to navigate, while the new ones seems to load faster and has a much cleaner look to it.  While Darkfall still remains to be a game that is not heavily quest oriented, it's good to see the journal more user friendly because it a part of the game that new players will probably be interacting a fair amount.

Character Specialization

One of the new aspects of Darkfall that has popped up over the last few months involved new forms of character customization that allows you to tweak various aspects of your character.  While Darkfall has no skill cap, the new system in place still add an element of choice to what type of character you want to play without having to worry about hitting a skill cap.  The character specializations introduced seem to offer way for players to fine tune their magic, melee, and archery in ways that help set them apart from others and fight against certain play styles.

In terms of customizing magic, there is a system in place that lets you tweak the properties of many of the games spells.  Many spells have several different variations that can be purchased for 1000 gold per spell, but you will have to pick a choose because the game only will allow one modification per spell.  Spells can be modified to have their range increased, travel speed increased, or the ability to cast it while jumping.

Archery specializations allow players to pick one special ability from a list that have a variety of effects.  Players can now decide if they want to be able to jump shoot, shoot in water, have increased magic resistance, or do extra damage against casters.  All of these abilities have trade-offs as well such as mana penalties and limited spell access, but the option remains to switch should you want to change your mind.

Finally melee specializations offer players a variety of options to make melee viable as combat method. Players can chose from some mobility related options that allow them to double jump or double tap dodge FPS style, as well as a second group of choices that increase effectiveness against mages or defensive boosts. Melee offers 2 different groups and players are allowed to chose only one from each forcing them to decide which route they want to take.

PvE

PvE seems to has had some changes made to it as well. The recent patch has introduced a system where monsters have varying strengths and weaknesses with different types of damage. The new system reminds me of old Asheron's Call where lugians would take extra damage from lightning and so on. This adds another layer to the PvE side of the game that should hopefully make certain mobs easier to kill once their weaknesses are discovered.

The other interesting and I think needed PvE change is an overall boost to the rewards.  There were many mobs last time I played that simply were not worth killing due to the rewards they dropped.  Monsters overall seem to be dropping more cash and items making it worth the time and trouble to tackle some of the harder monsters in the game.  It's not perfect yet, but adjustments continue to be made in this area so I remain optimistic.  I think my only beef with the PvE at this point is I would like to see more camps of some of the easier monsters in places outside of the starter areas.

Conquer the Seas

One aspect of Darkfall's world that sets it apart from most of the other MMOs is the fact that the water areas of the map are viable playfields.  The new expansion seems to have introduced a variety of new elements to these watery areas by adding the Sea Towers, villages, and even a kraken.  I thought of doing write-ups and taking pictures of these to try to describe them, but instead I will direct you to watch some of player made videos floating around showing some of these features off, as well as some of the game's first real naval battles.

Kraken Video

Sea Tower Video

Naval Combat Video

The patch seems to really opened up a new aspect to the game as you can see in some of the videos here, and I would argue makes the game offer something that you really won't find in any other game.  I think I speak for most players when I say that I hope this aspect of the game really takes off.  They seems to have reduced the cost to make the ships which helps foster this sort of activity.  I think I would like to see the astrolabes become easier to obtain as they are required to build most of the game's ships, but I think most players find this aspect of the game very exciting.

Minor Changes

Given it has been 2 expansions since I last played, there tons of little things that have been changed for the better.  I couldn't possibly list them all here as this is getting a little long as it is, so again I'm going to gloss over some of the minor things that I have noticed at this early stage.

In the recent expansion, one feature added that made everyone in my guild sigh collectively was the ability to name and label your bags.  It may sound trivial, especially if you have never played Darkfall, but this is one of my favorite new features.  No more trying to fumble through my bags trying to remember where my tools or armor is located, a task which can be even harder when you have bags within bags.  It makes sorting your bank much easier and it also makes it easy to tell what belongs to who in the guild bank.

The map was also updated to show where the capturable villages are, but more importantly when each of them is vulnerable for capture.  This is critical because now the players can keep track of when they should make their move to try and grab one.  With the information right there for all to see, it also helps to spur more PvP.

Mounts have also changed in a few ways. For starters, mounts now have a weight of 100 kg. Under the old system it was not uncommon for players to travel with upwards of 3 or more mounts on them at a time. Consider that a new player can only carry 300 kg, when you factor in armor and other gear, the days of people riding around with an entire stable in their pack are over. One change I am not too fond of however is the fact that mounts no longer seem to regenerate their life. Players are forced to use the heal mount spell, which can be an annoyance especially if your near a place where someone can steal it. If I can regen my life, I see no reason why my animal can't even if it is very slow. A new mount was also added that costs more to make but also has improved stats.

Crafting also seems to have received one improvement I suggested in an older article.  Crafting a lot of items, such as arrows, was annoying because you had to sit there and click the craft button every time you wanted to make 20 arrows.  Upon my return I was very happy to see a new functionality added that allows you to set the quantity to craft and make it happen with only a single click.

Summary

From all accounts, Darkfall has improved drastically since my last time playing.  There are a ton of features I didn't touch on for the sake of time, such as the new siege system (I haven't experienced it first-hand yet), and auto-stacking of items in your backpack, but needless to say this game has come a long way in just the few months I've been gone, let alone launch.

If you are a former player, you may want to consider taking advantage of the free transfers and checking the game out again for only subscription cost.  If you are considering the game, I would say that now would probably be a good time to jump in as I have seen a lot of new players in the starter towns after the expansion went live.  New players may want to think about joining a clan called NEW that is dedicated for teaching new people the ropes for up to 30 days.  If your like me and getting sick of watching the same MMO being released over and over with a different name on the box, taking the leap into Darkfall may be worth serious consideration.

Paragus Rant (Alfar)
Co-Leader of Inquisition
http://www.inqguild.com

Interview: Darkfall's Tasos Flambouras

With the upcoming Darkfall expansion "Conquer the Seas" coming, I decided to touch base with Darkfall's Tasos Flambouras to see if he would be willing to field some questions regarding the expansion and other recent events with the game.  Let me preface this by saying that at the time I sent the questions, I was unaware of the fact that the staff of MMORPG.com had submitted their own Q&A.  Despite all of this, Tasos was willing to take time out of his busy schedule (and being up for 48 hours straight) do another round of questions here with me on the eve of the expansion's launch.

1) Your upcoming expansion update is titled "Conquer the Seas" seems to have a lot of focus on adding to content to the naval aspect of the game including sea towers and villages, new boats, a kraken, and making boats more accessible. Tell us a little bit about each of these and the effect they should have on gameplay.

It’s not so much about the individual additions to the naval aspect of the game; it’s actually the bigger picture we’re looking at here.  A so far untapped resource of the game is now being activated in a variety of ways.  Ships add a completely new layer of gameplay. It’s a lot of fun for a group playing on a ship and it’s also very challenging. Naval strategy and tactics need to be considered, created, drilled and executed.  Teamwork within a ship and running a fleet of ships suddenly become very important given the worthwhile objective. A whole other element of the economy will unfold with ship related trading and building going on.

We’ll keep working on the sea element we’re introducing in this upcoming expansion.  There’s so much untapped potential there and it’s very exciting contemplating and exploring the possibilities.

2) One of the major balance issue players have is the dominant role magic plays currently in combat. You have stated that players can expect to see some balancing done in the upcoming expansion to help bring melee and archery up to par with skill specializations and extensions. Could you elaborate on some of these changes players can expect to see coming up to help bring more balance to combat?

We started off by correcting some things that were causing imbalances, most of which were never meant to be this way.  The global cooldowns we’re introducing stop the cycling of area of effect spell casting.  After the new expansion you’ll get a cooldown across magic schools so you won’t be able to blast away like before.  AOE spells were not meant for small scale situations, they were meant to be used to soften up large numbers during massive battles.  AOE spells will still be very useful in large battles but they won’t be the main attraction anymore.  Another fix is that the AOE spells will no longer go through objects.

The skill extensions and specializations are meant to help players with little interest in magic become viable using melee and archery.  Some of the balancing aspects vs. magic allow these players to get bonus resistances against magic, do extra damage against spell casters, while suffering some penalties to their max mana and some of the more powerful extensions can completely block elemental schools, arcane magic, or necromancy.

Melee fighters and archers will also receive special attacks that can stop people from blocking, others where some of the damage they take is taken away from mana rather than their hitpoints, and there will be several other enhancements which are designed to help players fight against magic without having to use magic.

These changes came about from our own observation of what works and what doesn’t and from listening to a lot of good player feedback.  There’s extensive testing being done and we’ll keep evaluating and making all necessary changes to keep the game balanced.

3) A recent update on from your twitter page talks about the addition of 2 new trade skills to the game to enhance items, Bloodcraft and Shadecraft. Could you talk about each of these tradeskills and give us some examples of what sort of enhancements players will be able to craft.

Shadecraft adds a permanent mana bonus at the expense of hitpoints.  Bloodcraft adds hitpoints at the expense of mana.  They’re new crafting skills which provide another way for players to specialize even further by making choices and compromises in the general spirit of specialization.  There’s much more to come on that front, we’ll keep at it and there are some pretty exciting changes ahead to look forward to.

4) One of the longest requested features has been the inclusion of racial traits, which looks to finally becoming a reality in the near future. Will all races be getting their skills in this update, and could you elaborate some what the various races will be getting?

All races are getting traits which are small enhancements connected to the background story of each race.  Alfar for example lean towards magic, orks towards melee, etc. we’ll keep working on differentiating the races even further.  These are not huge differences at this stage but they will help give the races more individuality and these differences will be felt in the game.  We’re taking small steps to keep everything well balanced and we’ll not stop at this.  We’ll evaluate every change and build on it.

5) Your recently announced "Community Publishing Program" has sparked a lot of talk in various communities by rewarding players for helping to advertise. Tell us a bit about this program and if there are any other forms of advertising in the works?

The community publishing is our way of thanking our players for spreading the word but it’s also a marketing initiative. It gives a substantial payout for every Darkfall sale and several players are already doing quite well with it. We’ll be contacting the best community publishers about a more formal cooperation and this could give some people a real opportunity in the gaming industry. We’ve limited this program to our active players because they’re the ones who are most knowledgeable and most interested in Darkfall and we wanted to give them a piece of Darkfall’s success. We’re going to expand on the Community Publishing Program and we’re of course also engaging in more traditional forms of advertising in print and online media.

6) A lot of potential players have long asked about a free trial offering found in many other MMOs. Any plans on putting something together to give potential customers a chance to try before they buy?

We’ve been distributing some sponsored trial cards in local markets and it’s something we’re looking at but there’s no immediate plan to offer an open free trial yet.

Thanks!

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Rant: Modern Warfare 2

Sorry for deviating from the normal MMO stuff for an entry, but there is something bothering me that I can't help myself from touching on.  During our time in between MMOs, Inquisition likes to dabble in a variety of other games to help pass the time.  One of the most popular games in my vent has consistently been the various incarnations of Call of Duty, be it Modern Warfare or World At War.  First person shooters are a genre near and dear to our hearts coming in a close second under MMOs, so naturally when we heard Modern Warfare 2 was coming, there was a lot of excitement.

Then it happened.  The most blatant display of a developer literally taking a hot steaming deuce on its playerbase.  Infinity Ward breaks the news to the gaming community that the PC version of the game will not have dedicated servers, but instead will feature a peer-to-peer match making system akin to what is commonly found on console systems.  The heads of Infinity Ward tried to justify this decision...

"We're just prioritizing the player experience above the modders and the tuners," says West. He points toward the mounting feedback IW has received from PC fans of Modern Warfare who couldn't find a decent server to play on between all of the cheaters, the insular communities, and huge skill level disparities that the original game's community fractured into. "We thought maybe it would be cool if the fans could play the game," he laughs.

Does he really think PC gamers are too stupid to figure out how to find a good server to play on?  I've been playing Call of Duty 4 and 5 for the last year and it has never been a real issue for us.  Chances are if you are smart enough to know how to operate a computer, you are smart enough to look at a server list and pick a game that best suits your needs.

So what does a loss of dedicated servers really mean to PC players?  First of all, it means that a player with a residential internet connection will be hosting the game giving him a perfect ping advantage while the other players are at the mercy of his connection.  This also means the days of large epic battles on server with upwards of 64 people will be traded for servers with about 18 people max.  No more tweaking the servers to turn off cheap noob tubes, martyrdom, last stand, and other common unskilled cheeseball tactics that destroy the balance of the game.  Clans can also kiss their private servers goodbye used for competitive play.

Worst of all, no dedicated servers means there will be no mods and custom maps.  One of our favorite aspects of Call of Duty is the "Zombie X" mod which we still play regularly on CoD 5.  This game mode features one randomly selected zombie who has to infect all the hunters until the entire map gets turned into zombie or the hunters hold out for a set amount of time.  Often times this gets combined with some amazing custom maps for an extremely fun and heart pounding experience.  Nothing gets you going like having 40 people trying to break into a house your held up in with the last remaining players.  Alas, these days will be gone in MW2.

In response to all of this, a petition was put online demanding the addition of dedicated servers to the PC version of the game.  As of me writing this, the petition has been signed by over 190,000 people.  Yet they continue to stick their thumb in the eye of the PC community, who is greatly responsible for their company's success.

Did I mention they are charging $10 more for this game than previous installments on the PC, and every other PC game in general?  That's right, for $10 more you too can buy a sequel with half of the online multiplayer functionality.  In fact, when you compare it to MW1 in terms of features, it makes no sense.

The old cliche is true that people should speak with their wallet. Modern Warfare 2 is not an MMO, so you only vote once when you buy it instead of every month.  If you buy the game and get burned on it, it's a win on their bottom line since they already have your money.  If they decide to reconsider their stance and stop trying to roll back a decade of progress in the genre, then I would definitely reconsider.  I can only hope that in the meantime that the PC community holds them accountable for trying this sort of nonsense.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Aion's Issues

This will probably be my last write up regarding Aion.  If you have been following my previous articles, I have detailed my play experience with the game by focusing on the 1-10 experience, 10-25 early Abyss, and the 25 and beyond.  This will be my last word on Aion for the time being because some of the game's issues have forced most of my guild to step back from the game.

Now I am not one to make "I quit" posts typically, but all thing considered, I believe my assessment of the game in previous articles has be pretty fair and objective.  So what I would like to do here today is talk about some of the aspects of Aion that ultimately ended up turning us sour in a constructive and informative way.

The Grind

It seems you can't read anywhere about Aion without reading about the grind, and this blog has been no exception to that.  That being said, it has to be mentioned because this is probably the first of several pitfalls that is going to be cause people to throw in the towel.

This is a graph that fairly accurately plots the experience points curve in Aion at each level that was made by a member of the community here.  As you can see by the graph, right around level 35 the amount of exp needed literally makes the graph look literally like a wall.  Often times when you read on various forums about people saying the grind is fine, make sure you put it into the context of what level they have made it to. Now to be fair, the amount of exp needed by itself is not necessarily the problem as you start to enter your 40's, but the way in which questing starts to play far less of a role.

When I hit level 42, I quickly completed all of the new quests and looked down at my 60 million exp bar to see only about 10-15% of it had been filled, leaving the remaining 50 million to be obtained by pure mob grind.  Now I am well aware of an upcoming patch slated to increase the quest exp and mob exp, but I think the problem goes a bit deeper than that.  There is a real lack of quest content that becomes painfully obvious at the higher levels.  Quest content is very good at masking grind in other games, so the lack of it in Aion at this level range really only adds to the pain and tedium.

The best comparison I can make is for those who played Age of Conan at release and hit the wall around level 50 where the quest content dried up almost instantly forcing people into grinding cannibal caves for levels to get through the gap.  This problem only gets compounded more however as the exp needed to level continues to grow exponentially, but the amount of content does not.  This only helps feed the bot epidemic and will undoubted crush the will of non-hardcore players as they reach the higher levels.

One final note on the grind that really bothers me is that Aion seems to punish grouping.  As a ranger, I found in most cases I was able to solo grind far more efficiently than in a group killing elites a few levels higher than me.  I would highly recommend adjusting the experience modifier for grouping to make it more appealing to group.  So with all the above factored in, players struggling with the progression in the game are going to start to ask if it's worth enduring for the sake of PvP.  Let's take a look...

PvP

I like to break the PvP elements in Aion into pretty much 3 different categories.  First you have your rift PvP into enemy territory, then the fortress fights, and finally your small scale encounters that occur in the Abyss.

1) Rift PvP

A week or so ago, my guild got a group together to through a rift into the Asmodian level 30+ area to go cause some trouble.  I think it was a real telling moment to me personally when it became glaringly clear that at least half of the people we were killing in this zone were bots.  When attacked, bots would simply stand there or continue to attack their mob, and when killed they would run the same exact route back to the same spot literally upwards of 10 times.  Each time they would take the same exact route, to the same exact spot, and not even stopping or deviating when getting attacked.  Granted killing the bots was a good source of Abyss points, but the fun of the PvP leaves something to be desired when a PvE mob offers more resistance.  Again in all fairness, there were probably 50% real people mixed in who had guilds, who would react to being attacked, and change tactics after being killed or spotting us.

In this regard, I really have to say that NCSoft's bot detection team or tools, or whatever they are spinning as is either completely worthless, or they think their customers are stupid.  Who the hell is in charge of the bot spotting team, Stevie Wonder?  Anyone with a working pair of eyes can see dozens of bots infesting the level 30+ area on both sides.  They are so blatantly operating out in the open that there is no way possible anyone could NOT see them.  Frankly when I read NCSoft press releases about how they have tools in place, it's insulting to my intelligence.

2) Fortress Battles

I think most people can agree that the fortress fights make up one of the key elements of the PvP aspect of Aion.  In my last article, I touched on the fact that crashing seemed to be somewhat of an issue during some of the sieges.  Since then, I have had the chance to participate in many more sieges to see how much of an issue the crashing really is.  I can say with all honesty in almost every siege I have been in since then, the game crashed at some point during the sieges, except for one where the Asmos never showed up to defend and I had all of the character models turned off (Shift + F12).

This is a major problem for me on so many levels.  First of all my PC is pretty serious, and judging by all the posts on forums and conversations with most of my guild, people having this issue are a pretty sizable portion of the playerbase.  This is pretty much game-breaking because the fortress battles are the only way to get medals, and medals are needed to get the top PvP reward gear, so crashing during sieges pretty much makes is close to impossible for you to get the medals needed to pursue the endgame gear.  With the game being out so long overseas, and 4-5 rounds of betas in NA, I am somewhat confused how the game went live without anyone knowing about this being picked up, let alone not being hotfixed.  It's even sillier when someone in the community posts a fix on the forums before your professional coders can do it.

Another issue is a flaw in the overall fortress system in general that also Warhammer Online suffered from, a lack of incentive to defend a fortress.  Medals are not given for a successful defense, and enemy fortress guards are actually a better source of Abyss points than most other mobs and players.  Killing a handful of guards seems to net more AP than running the instance you get access to for holding the fort.  So when you think about it, you are somewhat better off not defending because you will be granted a better source of AP, and a chance to earn medals when you go after it again later (assuming you don't crash).

3) Small Scale PvP

Small scale PvP overall remains one of the game stronger suits to me personally.  The only zerging that really goes from what I have seen so far is during the fortress fights, which is completely understandable.  The rest of the time people tend to roam around solo or in small groups making for some pretty fun encounters.  A smaller group of players who play smart is capable of beating a larger group if the right tactics are used along with the right crowd control.

I think if there is anything I would change, I would make other players worth more experience points.  Although it wasn't in the game originally, the amount of exp given for killing a player is so small that they pretty much may as well not give you any at all.  One other aspect is the fact that low level players give virtually no AP, but at the same time your enemy's level is hidden.  This can be annoying when you opt to chase someone for quite a long distance only to be rewarded with 1 AP.  Had you known the person's level you may have been inclined to not even bother chasing them extensively.  I also understand the benefit though of hiding levels, so it's a double-edged sword I suppose.

Summary

The way I see it is that players will need to start asking themselves this question: Is it worth enduring a steep and tedious grind that becomes exceedingly light in content for PvP that has 2 of out 3 aspects not meeting expectations?

The prospect of increasing exp sounds good in theory, but there is no mention of any much needed quest content.  NCsoft's word is losing a tremendous amount of value to players due to their inability to find the bots that every player with a pair of working eyes can see on a daily basis.  I can understand that many players may be willing to hang in there a bit longer given the game's polish and small scale PvP, but at this point I have to say the answer to that question is "no" from me personally, but to each their own.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
 

Aion: Post Launch Impressions

It has been about a few weeks since the NA launch of Aion, so I wanted to take some time to update my impressions. In these first few weeks I have been exposed to a variety of gameplay experiences in the game, so I am going to talk about a few aspects of the game that have struck me as either being well done, or needing improvement.

Looking for Gold Channel

I used to to think LFG was about finding groups, but in Aion is seems to be more about finding gold.  There is a serious gold spammer epidemic that has rendered this channel pretty much unusable.  On any given day, this chat channel is literally flooded and spammed by gold sellers, that you can't even read anything.

I find it very hard to believe, despite the rhetoric from NCSoft, that there is a serious ongoing effort to target and ban the accounts of gold spammers.  In fact it's downright absurd.  You might think that given the number of servers they have running, that they could afford to have one GM on each one who can spot and ban these people.  The money generated from the banning of these accounts and spammers rebuying them should easily justify the price of paying someone to monitor it.

Aside from the rampant gold spamming, the LFG channel needs to be broken down into level ranges.  It makes no sense that people in their late 30s and 40s have to sift through level 25's trying to find a group.  This could also work to the advantage of forcing a gold spammer to level up as a deterrent if they want to spam mid and higher level players.

The Abyss

Now that the game has released in North America, I have had a chance to spend a lot of time in the Abyss experiencing PvP and some of the various mechanics surrounding it.  There has been a lot of discussion over whether or not the wings are just a gimmick or if they really add anything to the table.  I have to say that after spending quite a bit of time in the Abyss since release and doing some PvP, I am starting to lean more towards this feature adding an element to PvP combat that is not found in the competition.

There is the obvious element of flying and fighting in the air, but I think that doesn't fully explain it.  It's not so much the fact that you can fly to me, as much as it is the environment that is possible because of the flight element.  In games like WAR and even DAOC, the standard battlefield was typically a flat plain or maybe a mountainous area where battles would unfold.  In Aion with the element of flight, battles are able to take place is the very surreal looking environment of the Abyss with its floating islands, comets, upside-down ruins, and other interesting locales.

I have had some interesting fight situations that just would not be possible in some of the other traditional RvR MMOs out there.  Me and a friend had a chase underneath a floating continent weaving and bobbing through stalactites.  I have had fights where me and my opponent were hopping from island to island blasting each other, and recently a large fight with one side holding the ground against an aerial force.  Of course I have to mention one incident where a bunch of people, including some of my guildmates, were completely obliterated when a stray comet plowed through a crowd of people fighting near an artifact.

Speaking of artifacts, Inquisition decided to have a small guild event to go test the waters on taking an artifact on the bottom floor of the Abyss where thing were lower level.  Taking the artifact was a pretty simple task overall, and reminded us as being on par with some of the smaller battle objectives in WAR in terms of difficulty.  The artifact was protected by a group of NPC's of the opposing faction with an elite boss.  While we brought 2 groups being uncertain on how hard it would be, one solid group of players would have been an adequate force.  Once the boss goes down, a broadcast message told everyone we had taken it, and our guilds emblem was stamped on the site and displayed on the map.  There is however no message to let you know when your artifact is under attack by the enemy faction.

Finally, I had the chance to get involved in my first fortress siege in the lower Abyss.  The amount of people involved was pretty massive and I have to say it even made my high end PC start to lose some frames.  One issue I experienced along with many others was crashing during the attack.  This is one area where I think some improvement is needed, but to be fair I have to say the game handled itself better than WAR at this stage in terms of performance.

The door to the keep took quite some time to bring down, but I did not see anyone there really utilizing the siege weaponry which would have undoubted sped the process up.  The keep guardian in Aion makes the Warhammer and DAOC keep lords look like a wimp in terms of appearance and difficulty to kill.  In Warhammer the keep lords usually seem to buckle within a minute of the room being breached, in Aion it takes far longer and actually gives the other team a chance to turn the battle in the final room since the fight is so long.

That chance to turn the battle is exactly what the Asmos in this fight successfully did.  The layout of this particular keep had a large opening in the courtyard that dropped you literally on top of the boss inside.  While we were busy trying to bring the big guy to his knees, the enemy capitalized on us not defending the courtyard and turned the boss room into a bloodbath.  Death from above was an ocean of Asmos pouring into the room from above like a faucet of red names.  The fight was pretty impressive with people flying all over the place killing each other, while an angry Balaur boss went on a rampage.  All in all it was pretty fun with the exception of the crashing.  Hopefully they will improve that aspect for the large fights, but thankfully most of the abyss fighting outside the keeps has been small scale and very reminiscent of DAOC.

The Grind

This has been one of the hot topics regarding Aion, and I have read a ton of threads from people making various claims about grinding as it relates to Aion.  Before we go any further and people jump down my throat, apparently everyone interprets what grinding is differently.  Just so we are all on the same page, my definition of grinding is having to kill mobs repeatedly without any related quest in order to gain experience points.

Aion has a grind.  Yes, yes, I know the classic "All MMOs are and have grinds!" line, but it is my opinion that the grind in Aion can legitimately be perceived by some as steep once you start to level into your 30's.  Of course this statement is subjective, and depending on your prior MMO experiences your opinion may vary.  Someone from Lineage 2 might not find it bad, but someone who is used to WoW and some more modern traditional style MMOs might be in for a bit of discomfort in this area.  I survived old school EQ1 and FFXI in terms of grind just to give a little perspective on where I am coming from.  A lot of players are probably going to have to come to terms with the fact that most people won't be reaching max level in Aion as quickly as they did in some other MMOs.

Up until level 25, I think the grind was not particularly rough until maybe level 24.  After 25, the Abyss opens up as a new area for quests, campaigns, a dungeon instance, and exposure to increased mob exp. In the 30's, the amount of quests and the experience they yield starts to fall a bit short in terms of being able to quest your way through levels.  Combine this with the fact that the amount of exp needed to reach the next level starts to increase dramatically in the level 35+ range.  As an example, leveling from 36-37 required just under 20 Million EXP, the next level going from 37-38 jumps up to 26 Million EXP.  At 37, killing a 39 Abyss non-elite mob solo (which yields more exp than non-abyss mobs) nets in roughly 23,000-25,000 exp a kill.  As a ranger I can kill probably 2 per minute, equally around 500k exp in 10 mins, or roughly just under 3 Million per hour, or 8-9 hours to get 26 Million Exp to level via pure mob grinding.

All of this is based on the premise of course that not a single quest is completed, and you are soloing and not grouping for elites (which has the potential to be faster depending on the group and location).  Whether or not questing is faster than grinding all depends on what is available to you at a given level.  Some of the juicy campagin quests give upwards of 2+ Million Exp, while your average quest can net you anywhere between 400-800k.  Regardless of which is faster, you will not have enough quests to level purely from questing as other MMOs, and you will be forced to grind at some point to clear the remaining exp needed.  The fact is some of the quests just flat out don't give enough exp to satisfy a lot of players, but upcoming changes look to change that.  Depending on your prior MMO experiences this could be perceived as normal or a major turn-off, but there is definitely something to be said for grouping and doing elites in an instance or hard area.  Just to give an idea of how it ends up looking later, rumor has it that you will need 86 Million exp to go from level 49-50.

Instances

I have also had the chance to do a variety of PvE instances in the first few weeks.  All of them seem to have quests to kill the final boss for a blue item of some sort.  Some of them require you to get keys to enter them, some can be entered if you control castles in the Abyss.  Most of them provide a decent source of exp and come with some degree of lockout timer.  In terms of loot, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise when it comes to taking down some of the bosses.

This brings me to one pretty annoying point regarding boss mobs.  In all of the instances ran and bosses killed, probably more than half the time the bosses dropped nothing of any real value with a few blues being seen rarely.  This is something I think a lot of players might find somewhat annoying, myself included.  Killing the final boss of a dungeon and finding nothing but a small amount of gold is going to be received like a slap in the face for many players.  Hell at least give us a random green or something, but only finding 500 gold or a common crafting mat off of a level 37 boss is complete ass.

Final Thoughts

Aion remains to be a solid and polished product, but not without it issues.  Depending on your MMO tastes, some people may be turned off by the fact that max level is difficult to achieve, while others may enjoy that.  As players start hitting the mid 30's and hitting the leveling quicksand, I can see some people being turned off to the game.  The issue of bots and gold spammers is something NC Soft really needs to crack down on in a big way.  Despite all of the flowery language by the devs, I have yet to see any reduction at all in these activities.

On the other hand, if you can get past the brutal leveling curve, there is a very interesting RvR experience.  Aside from the occasional crash in the fortress fights, Abyss RvR so far seems to be small scale and reminiscent of DAOC in many ways with roaming groups outside of the big sieges.  The PvP I have seen at this stage does not seem to be ruined with excessive crowd control like the competition, and the rewards seem viable.  Whether the end game actually works is something we probably won't know until a large portion of the population reaches higher level, and that seems like it may take more time than some may have anticipated.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
(Zikel Server - Elyos)

Rant: Guild Recruit Spam

It's been a while since I've done a rant entry in here, so today I figure I would touch on something that has been driving me up a wall in the last few MMOs I have played, Guild Recruit Spam.  Chances are if you have played any MMO, you have seen these guild recruit spam messages flooding one of your chat channels.  I saw them in AoC, WAR, Darkfall, and now in Aion.  While general chat is hardly the place to have scholarly discussions and intellectual persuits, spamming people with your guild advertisement pretty much makes you about as cool as a telemarketer.

A vent server and a website?!  Holy shit!  Where do I sign up?  Maybe back in 1999 when I was raiding in the original Everquest this would have been exciting, but I don't see how this is really even worth mentioning at this point.  I'm sorry guys, but this is 2009. It is pretty much expected that if you are a real MMO guild, you are going to have a ventrilo server and a website.  That's like me trying to get people to join my swimclub by telling them I have a pool. It's just a given, isn't it?
 

Well apparently it isn't.  During my time in Darkfall, I was in a position where I was able to talk to a lot of people in a lot of various guilds for interviews and political dealings.  I was absolutely shocked at how many people are still using Teamspeak.  Compared to Ventrilo, TS sounds like you are broadcasting on some sort of shortwave radio from World War 2.  If you are really serious about building a guild with lasting appeal and a strong community, splurge the couple bucks a month for the vent server.

I also love when I see a guild recruit spammer claiming their guild is elite or hardcore.  Elite and hardcore groups of people don't take any random jabroni off the street into their ranks.  That would be like having the special forces accepting applications in a kiosk in your local shopping mall.  Let's assume for a minute that you were an amazing player with PvP skills placing you in the top percentile, what guild would you join?  The guy standing on street corner wearing gear from a garbage dumpster looking for friends, or a group of like-minded players who are on the cutting edge?

Aside from recruitment spam being one the worst ways to attract quality members, it also ranks you right up there with gold spammer as one of the most annoying people in the game.  People will always remember the name of a guild who spams the chat box because you felt the need to remind them every 3 minutes.  As a result, don't be surprised if people's reaction towards you and your crew in less than favorable.  Just remember, a gold spammer doesn't have to live among the people they are annoying, your guild will.
 

Up and coming guilds need to ask themselves what is more important; having more members just for the sake of having members, or settling for less members who are solid and likely to share your vision.  I look at guilds as more than just a bunch of people playing a game together, it's a family-like community.  A good guild will not have its lifespan limited to its duration in any given game, instead it will become a community of like-minded people who travel with each other from game to game.  I've used this model in Inquisition, and it is no coincidence that many of the strongest guilds in any MMO are typically those with long histories that span across many games.

The best way to find quality members is obvious and at the same so often overlooked.  MMOs are games based heavily on community, and if your looking to find good players you should be socializing in the game with people you meet.  Spamming chat channels is a good way to make your guild appear as cheap and catering to the lowest denominator of player.  It is far better to have a smaller roster of loyal friends who will stick with you, then a large roster full of random selfish members.

One quick antecdote to wrap this up. Back when I played World of Warcraft shortly after release, my guild at one point had over 130 members at its peak population.  We recruited everyone and anyone we could get our hands on.  I soon found at that peak population did not equal peak performance.  One day me and my co-leader decided we were going to reroll the guild on a new server, and cut the guild roster in half down to our best 60 members literally overnight.  Once we reached max level again on the new server a month later, we were able to defeat content that we could never imagine winning with our old roster.  These were the members who were friends of friends who shared our vision of the guild, many of which still play with us years later.  Consider this a page from a guild leader's handbook.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Aion: Updated Impression and the Abyss

Since my last article covering some of the basics of Aion at low level, I have had a chance to invest a bit more time in the Chinese version of the game.  Having progressed far enough to see the Abyss finally, I wanted to take some time and give some updated impressions on my play experiences since I am a bit farther into the game.

The Grind

The first thing I want to touch on are my experiences with the grind in the game so far.  From levels 1-20, I can say that I was pretty much able to quest through most of my levels.  The campaign quests give a substantial amount of EXP over the standard quests, and there are some repeatable quests to help you through some of those areas where you do find yourself grinding to reach the next level after your quests are all completed.

Between the levels of 20-24, the grind starts to pick up more and more each level.  The percentage of your levels EXP you are able to get through quests starts to gradually go down in this range for a few reasons.  The first is that the amount of exp to reach the next levels ramps up pretty quickly, and secondly, some of the quest EXP rewards don't seem to be enough.  The repeatable quests really don't reward to well either, as one requiring you to kill X amount of mobs, rewards you at turn in with amount of exp equal to killing 2 of those mobs.  In the time it takes you to go turn them in, you could have kept killing and came out better off.  As a result, I spent a lot of my time grinding in the jungle and desert in Eltnen. Once reaching 25 however, things seem to pick up a lot (I'll touch on this later).

Legions (Guilds)

During my time playing, I had a chance to delve into the Legion functionality with some of my guys on the NA and Chinese versions.  My first beef is that Aion only allows 3 different ranks for your legion members, and these rank titles can't seem to be changed.  While you can set permissions for each of the 3 ranks, you can't have 2 people be the highest rank.  In MMO guilds like mine where there are 2 leaders, this is somewhat disappointing and inconvenient.  The current version I played during the NA weekend and Chinese also only allow 10 characters for your legion name, which I find unnecessarily restrictive.  Since my guild's name is 11 letters long, I can only fit "Inquisitio".  This forces us to abbreviate ourselves to INQ, and I am sure other MMO guilds will have to do the same unless the newer version updates we haven't played yet increase the character limit.

Aion legions also have levels like some other MMOs like EQ2 and WAR.  Unlike its predecessors, Aion only has three levels for legions.  Upgrading your legion to level 2 requires having 10 people on your roster, and a payment of around 120,000 gold.  Once you upgrade, you will have roster limit increased from 30 to 60 maximum members, although in my opinion the fact that there is one at all strikes me as silly.  Once you upgrade, you can also customize a guild emblem for your cloak.  There are only a dozen emblems, but you can pick any background color you can imagine.  You can also change your guild emblem at any time if you so chose for a small fee.

The one really good aspect of Aion's legion system is if you are able to upgrade to level 3.  Level 3 requires a higher roster count and around 1.2 million gold, which is not as bad as it sounds on paper given how much money I was making.  Any decent size guild should have no trouble getting this cash together if everyone kicks in a bit of cash.  At level 3, the limitations of the emblem system redeem itself by letting you put your own design.  This means you can literally use any graphic or logo you want to represent your guild.  During my playing I managed to see some pretty interesting logos as seen in the above screenshot.  Overall I think there is room for improvement in the legion functionality, but specialized level 3 emblems make for an awesome feature.

Rifts

Once you reach level 20 and start to move into the third tier of zones, you will start to get your first taste of PvP.  It seems like every so often, there are rifts or portals that appear somewhat randomly that connect to the other faction's area.  These rifts seem to have a chance to appear in one of many predetermined locations across the zones, which are quite large, and have a set number of uses before they become unusable.  From my own experiences, it seems that at almost any given time there is a rift up that either leads to the enemy area or has the enemy coming into yours.

There are no PvP restrictions in terms of where you can go and who you can attack.  Enemies can even go inside the perimeter of your main fortress if they are careful to avoid guards, which is not difficult.  While you are able to attack anyone of any level, you will not know what level the people on the other faction are.  This makes for some interesting encounters where people misjudge the strength of their opponent.  In one personal experience, a bunch of us ganged up on a single enemy only to have him obliterate all of us by dropping a meteor on us!  In addition to the PvP points awarded, there are special "infiltration" quests that require you to go to the enemy zone and complete tasks there.  In this regard the rift aspect of the game makes the PvP not consentual, which is fine by me but may turn off others.

The Abyss

Once your reach level 25 the game starts to open up and you are allowed to start delving into the Abyss, which is the games central area for RvR.

As soon as you hit level 25, you will receive a new campaign quest series to complete in order to be able to access the Abyss.  The campaign consists of 3 mini trials you have to go through in order to prove your worth, but also double as a minor tutorial.  The first test consists of proving your worth by completing 1 task from 3 available choices.  I chose a challenge to kill some monster under the arena in a certain time limit that was laughably easy.  The second trial tests your knowledge, and has you answering a series of multiple choice questions that serve to educate you a little about the Abyss and some of the game's lore.  It's impossible to fail it seems as picking the wrong answer prompts you to try again among the remaining choices.

The final trial is a test of flight in which you have to fly through a series of rings in a short time.  This serves to educate the player about the use of these rings which are present in the Abyss.  Flying through the rings replenishes a portion of your flight timer and gives a small speed boost during the trial.  Like the previous trials, it was not difficult at all and I was able to complete it on my first run through.  Once all trials are complete, you are shown to the Abyss portal (as seen above) and are free to go through whenever you want.

Once you arrive in the Abyss, you will find yourself in a fully functional fortress area with pretty much everything you will ever need.  The fortress was complete with various vendors, banks, auction house, bind point, and even teleporters to take you to many of the games PvE zones.  You will also notice that there are new standard quests for the Abyss that helps alleviate the strain from leveling, as well as campaign.  The first campaign mission presents the player with a simply amazing tutorial about RvR in the Abyss through the use of various cutscenes.

Abyss Tutorial

Here is a quick summary:

The first thing they explain is that the Abyss has a total of 9 keeps that you can fight over, and they are spread across 3 different layers: bottom, core, and top.  The Balaur are a monster faction that participates in the Abyss wars, and they often take over these keeps.

Each keep has some sort of damage shield that protects it from air assaults.  Trying to attack a keep from the air while the shield is up is supposed to be difficult and damaging.  Inside each of the keeps is some sort shield generator that powers the shield.  If this generator is destroyed, then the shield goes away and people are free to assault from the air without any kind of penalty or negatives.

Each of the keeps has doors to protect it from ground assaults that will need to be broken down in order to gain access.  The doors are also especially vulnerable to siege weapons that can be deployed by the attackers.  In addition, there are also portable bind points that can be dropped in the field so that people can respawn close to the fight.  These bindpoints are supposed to easily destroyed and only be able to be used a certain amount of times before being rendered useless.

Finally they explain about artifacts that can be used to sway the battles.  They are supposed to be activated to provide various effects from mass healing, mass damage, and other assorted abilities.  They also tell you to kill the boss to take the keep, and elaborate on the benefits of taking on for your legion. Benefits range from Abyss points, items (including Abyss medals), cash, and other bonuses in the newer versions of the game we haven't received yet.  They also give you a final warning about some sort of Balaur flying battleship that can drop monsters into areas to mess with people.

The Abyss environment itself look very nice and seems to vary as you go from island to island.  The entire area is flight enabled, and the rings can be used to guide you over some of the longer stretches between islands.  There are teleports that take you from the bottom level to the top level, but if you look up at the sky on the bottom level you can see the upper level far above.

The core of the Abyss can be seen in the center and resembles a large sun-like ball of fire.  In case you were curious, flying into this ball of fire will result in being insta-gibbed.  PvE in the Abyss was getting me around 13 AP (Abyss Points) per kill at level 25.  The fact that you can gain points through PvE can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at things.  On one hand some people might not like the fact people can PvE grind their way up the ranks to abyss abilities and gear.  On the other hand, people opting to take this route do so in an area where they can be ganked at any moment, so it will help drive traffic to this area making people somewhat easier to find.

Rewards

Abyss rewards come in the form of abyss abilities for reaching certain ranks, and item rewards for cashing in your points.

Over on Aion Source, I spotted this thread that shows an example of some of the high ranking Abyss abilities.  One of the more notable abilities this high ranking person has is the ability to effectively turn themselves into a raid boss once every 2 hours for 10 minutes.  This is definitely an interesting dynamic that should be interesting to see in action.

Items are the other major reward you get from PvP.  There are stores in which you spend your Abyss points in order to purchase high end gear.  There are various degrees of gear for each level range that have varying prices.  Most of the green items can be bought purely with points, but some of the high level gold (epic) items also require medals which are earned during fortress sieges.

The Abyss gear actually looks to be itemized well, a problem that WAR had at launch with a lot of its PvP reward gear.  The above picture shows 2 Abyss bows that are both level 30.  The green one costs much less AP then the gold one, but the gold one features more damage, stats, and socketing slots for manastones.  It is up to the player to decide if they want to hold out for the higher end item, or hold out for higher level gear.  Since players lose AP for PvP loss, some may want to cash out sooner depending on their luck.  One final point, spending points you have earned subtracts them from your total, thus reduces your rank.  This means as people purchase items, there will be a constant moving up and down the RvR ranks, and high rank players will have to decide if they want to give up their rank abilities to cash out their points for weapons.

Conclusion

I really am looking forward to seeing how this all pans out when the game releases in North America.  The game has solid PvP rewards, risk, and keeps / artifacts for people to fight over.  For all the comparisons you hear about this game with WoW because of the playstyle, I'm starting to think it might be in many ways like an asian DAOC.  If everything works out, I think this game could offer a lot to people who were fans of DAOC and disgruntled Warhammer fans.  I look forward to continuing my journey on the Chinese version a while longer, and I am curious to see how the patches NA will have at release alleviate some of the issues with the game.  If they can reduce the grind as they claimed in a recent interview, then I think this will be a game a lot of people will probably be jumping into if the end game ends up being solid.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
 

Review: Aion Beta Weekend

After my last entry about some of the upcoming MMOs, luck would have it that I was able to get a chance to play Aion during one of their recent beta preview weekend type events.  Today I am going to try to give you my impressions from playing during the recent weekend event that had a level limit of 10, but did allow players to make characters from both of the game's factions.  While I will be the first to admit that 10 levels is hardly enough to review much of anything, but I think I got a chance to sample the game and take a look at various aspects that were present.

Just to recap quickly here before I get started, I went into this with a few preconceptions about the game in terms of graphics, polish, and whether or not the game would be bringing anything new to table.  I have seen some pretty remarkable screenshots of the game, so graphically I set the bar pretty high.  The game has also been out in a foreign market for a while, so I expected a fair amount of polish.  In terms of innovations I approached Aion with fairly low expectations.  As soon as the log-in screen popped up as seen above, I felt somewhat reaffirmed that graphically I would not be disappointed. So with all that being said, let's get started!

Character Creation

Before we can do anything, we have to create a character.  The game is based around 2 main factions that are to be pitted against each other akin to what we have seen in Warhammer and World of Warcraft.  One of the main differences with Aion is that the game only features 2 races to chose from, the Elyos (Angels) and the Asmodian (Demons).  If your used to some of the other RvR MMOs out there where each team has several races to chose from, this might concern you as it did me.

As soon as I saw the actual character creator, my concerns about character customization for my appearance pretty much vanished.  I have to say in all honesty that Aion sports one of the most customizable character creators I have seen. Aion gives you infinitely more options than many of its competitors, and rivals and possibly exceeds Age of Conan.  For starters, the creator has a color palettes that enable you to make almost any part of your character into any color you can imagine.  This opens the door for some very creative and also very silly looking toons.  Hair, skin, and lip color can be anything from standard colors to wild shades of green and purple.

Sliders and more sliders.  This creator has sliders for everything you mind can think of, as well as stuff probably wouldn't have considered.  When you make your character, the 2 main aspects are designing your face and your body.  The body creator has 12 sliders alone, one of which includes a height slider that can make your character as small as a child or a tall as an ogre.  As if that wasn't quite enough, the face customizer has another 25 sliders!  It's very easy to lose yourself at this point, and if it wasn't a beta, I might have been there for quite some time trying to sculpt my guys face.  In conclusion here, there are enough options to make your character look unique despite the fact there are only 2 races to chose from.

The other decision you have to make is what archetype do you want your character to be, as well as the gender of your character (this is actually done before the customizing step).  This probably where my first beef comes into play.  I am the type of person who would rather pick a class right out of the gate, rather than an archetype.  My concern with this route is that you do not actually get to play the class you want until you have put in 9 levels into your guy.  While this is not really a large time investment by any means (took me 90 minutes my first time), I'd like to find out sooner rather than later if the class I am going to be is to my liking without having to invest the time to find out.  I don't want to put in the time and finally get to my class only to find out it's not a good fit for me, then have to reroll and repeat the early content again just to try again.

User Interface

The Aion User Interface is pretty much the cookie-cutter UI we have seen from most of the traditional style MMOs in recent memory.  If you spent any time at all playing WoW, EQ2, AoC, or WAR, you will pretty much feel right at home instantly.

You will find most of the standard UI elements here along with the ability to customize it a bit.  Aion gives you 3 rows of hotbars to be stacked on top of one another, but they remain completely invisible if there are no abilities dropped into them.  Aion also uses the same exact keyboard buttons assigned to some of the basic functions from previous MMOs as well.  Again if you have played a recent traditional MMO, you will find yourself open your inventory, character window, map, etc. without even having to look up the predefined assigned key.

The character window itself is broken into several different tabs of information.  The main screen features the standard equipment paperdoll which is accompanied by all of your characters primary stats, defensive skills, and resistances.  Below that you will find your backpack contents and gold totals.  One confusing things for me was the fact that instead of using the term backpack, Aion calls it the "Cube".  The cube initially only has a limited number of slots, but there is an NPC who will expand your cube for a fee.

Another interesting aspect is that much like Warhammer Online, Aion also features an unlockable title system. It seems that by completing certain quest or quest chains you can unlock new titles to be displayed next to your name.  What makes this system a bit different than WAR's title system is that the Aion titles actually have different bonuses associated to them.  I was able to unlock Tree-Hugger by completing one of the early quest chains that gave me an accuracy boost.  The list seems to have 50 hidden titles in total, so most likely there will be certain titles that end up being favored by certain classes in the game because of the bonuses they give.

Combat

Aion's combat style follows the traditional MMO style combat from games like WoW, EQ2, and WAR.  The game features the standard tab targeting system, and activated abilities that are on various different cooldowns.  The game's mini-map color codes aggressive monsters as red, and when you target them you even see their aggro radius as if it were a tiny radar.

The combat sounds and animations struck me as being pretty well done. While the combat seems to be in many ways the same recycled form of combat we have seen in the last few MMOs, it does feel responsive and look well.  The game's combat does feature positional attacks and a combo type system for chaining weapon attacks together.

They really seem to go out of their way to make the skill chains easy to learn compared to some other MMOs.  As an example, the character I picked was under scout archetype.  One of my stun attacks can only be performed directly after my character evades an incoming enemy attack.  In some previous games, it would be up to the player to watch the combat very closely for the evade message or animation. In Aion, when my character evades I get a visual flashing effect on the ability that pretty much screams "press me!", that get accompanied by another visual in plain view near the center of my screen.  This makes it fairly user-friendly for even new and inexperienced players to know when to seize the opportunity to use a situational skill.

One final quick note here.  This game also seems to feature items that can be socketed with other stat boosting items to give very specific effects much like the Warhammer talisman system.  The stones can be popped into both weapons and armor and seem to drop fairly regularly off of mobs I fought.  They effects I saw ranged from adding HP and MP, all the way to boosting crit chances and evade percentages.  This gives a little bit of room for the player to mess around with various set ups, and the stones can be removed from a special NPC in case you want to try a different stone.

Quests

Questing in Aion is pretty lame to be honest, there just isn't really any other way to say it.  You can tell as soon as you talk to your first NPC that your questing career in Aion will pretty much consist of the same drab recycled kill and collection quests that we have seen in WoW, EQ2, AoC, WAR etc. Quest NPCs can be spotted by the usual floating icons over their heads to indicate quest offerings or turn-ins.

This is yet another game where the work of a hero is to collect flowers, kill animals, collect dingleberries, and do some part time work for Fed-Ex.  I won't harp on this too long as I have already ranted on this countless times in the past, but there really isn't much anyone can write at this point in a quest box to make collecting sacks of grain into something heroic.  I didn't really care for it in Warhammer, but at least Warhammer mixed things up with their public quest system, there just isn't anything along those lines here to help break up what will be a long chain of tedium.

The one thing Aion seems to do a little different in the quest department is their campaign quest system.  The quest journal is divided into normal quests and the campaign quests.  Each of Aion's major zones seems to feature a campaign series of quests.  These are pretty much a long series of quests that chain together that help walk you through the area and give you a little story at the same time.  The initial level 1-10 noobie area campaign seems to revolve around the fact that you have lost your memory and need to try to recall it.  The bad news is these quests pretty much are the same exact kill and collection quests you will find in the other part of your journal.  When the campaign starts, you will see all of the quests listed with the recommended character level for it, although at the start you can't see the specifics of the quests.  As you start to progress through the campaign, you will unlock the ability to see quests further down the list as well as their reward.

The one saving grace about the campaign system is that they do seem to go a little out of their way to help drive home the story element that comes along with some of them.  A lot of these quests will reward you with cutscenes at various stages to help give you an idea of what is going on.  Not all cutscenes seem to be created equally though.  In the quest to recover your lost memory, the final stages have some pretty impressive and entertaining ones (as seen above), but at the same time there are some that tell you a farm has been pillaged that seem unnecessary.  I'll take anything that helps break up the tedium though I guess.

The World

I wanted to devote a section here about some observations I made about the world and some features it has.

The first thing I want to touch on are the graphics and the games performance.  This game probably has the best graphics of all the traditional MMOs on the market with the exception of Age of Conan which I think has a completely different art style.  Performance wise, the game runs great on a wide variety of systems.  I also have to say the sound and music seemed pretty well done as well.  A lot of the musical scores I heard in some of the various areas seemed to be professionally composed and helped add to the immersion factor.

There are a lot of familiar features to Aion that seems to have been copied from other games.  I noticed right out of the gate that they have flight masters for flying you across a zone the same as found in WoW, EQ2, and Warhammer.  The only difference here is that instead of riding a flying animal, your character uses a special pair if wings to fly himself over to wherever he is going.  Aion also seems to have a working mail system and auction house system in place much like its competition.  One good feature that I think is new to this game is a fast way of selling vendor trash type loot at the merchants with a single button.  One thing that I did find somewhat annoying was the fact that binding to a new location costs money.

One of my biggest concerns regarding the world is the layout of it.  The world is divided into 3 parts, one of the Elyos, one for the Asmodians, and the Abyss PvP area in the center.  Each of the race's section of the world map seem to be divided into 5 main zones and a city.  After leveling from 1-10, I had completely exhausted the first zone, leaving 4 more to be explored.  Given the amount of areas remaining, and the number of levels I have yet to climb, I suspect that the game is extremely linear in terms of how you progress through the content and the map.  In a lot of other games, you are given choices on which zone you want to spend your time adventuring in at any given level.  Since other games have multiple races and multiple areas to go with them, in WoW for example if you tire of the human areas, you can head over to the elves for a change of scenery and content.  I fear that Aion will send you down a very narrow set of rails in order to reach the max level with little room for deviation.  This can be worse if you decide to level up an alt because you will be forced to do all of the exact same content you did the firs time around in all of the same places, including the campaign quests.

This leads to me another concern regarding how someone will experience PvP during the leveling process.  In Warhammer Online, each area you level up is connected to an area controlled by the enemy.  This means that if someone really wants to experience the games PvP at any stage, they only need to wander over towards the local hotspot.  While I haven't seen this during the preview weekend, I have heard there are portals that can open up randomly that send you to the enemy area for PvP.  Depending on how rare these occur, your exposure to the PvP side of the game could be very limited initially.  I like to have an opportunity to test my character in PvP even at the early stages so I can see how well the class I picked handles itself in a variety of situations.

Flight

No doubt one of the main selling points and innovations of Aion is the flight mechanic.  Initially you can't fly right out of the gate when you start, but once you reach level 9 and complete the campaign to get your class you will be able to glide and fly after a ceremony.

The flight system seems to work very well and I found the controls very easy to get a handle on.  In the bottom right part of user interface, there is a little flight indicator that tells you if you can fly in a certain area, and how much flight time you have left.  If you are in a flight-enabled area, you simply press the "Page Up" button for your character to sprout their wings and take off.  Once you are in the air, you can press "R" and "F" to fly up and down respectively, or you can hold your right mouse button down to tilt your altitude.  The meter will start to tick down and when its out your wings will vanish sending you plummeting.  You can manually land or turn off your wings by pressing the "Page Down" button. Sometimes I found the fastest way to get back to the ground safely from high up was do turn off my wings to fall, then turn them back on right before I hit the ground (use this method at your own risk). 

Having a third dimension to the game is definitely a very interesting feature, and flying was genuinely a fun experience. Having that third dimension made finding some quest locations tougher though, as on several occasions I reach the quest waypoint only to realize my real destination was actually high above me on some floating island.  My only beef is that the PvE areas I explored have certain parts you can fly, and others you can't, so you will find yourself hitting invisible walls that force you to land when transitioning to a no-fly area.  I would love to see more areas be flight enabled.

PvP

Unfortunately the limitations of the weekend didn't give me a chance to really be able to check out the PvP.  This is what will inevitably make or break the long term playability of this game.  While I was unable to participate in any PvP, I did notice a few features related to it.

For starters there seems to be a tab on your main character window dedicated to your PvP stats from the Abyss.  The window seems to keep track of your PvP rank, as well as your kills and points earned broken down into various time frames so you can monitor your progress.  Everyone seems to start out as a rank 9 Soldier, and by earning points you can advance through the ranks.  There is also a rank window that breaks down the point totals needed to reach certain ranks, as well as which players on each side are at the top of their game.  Points are earned by killing players in the Abyss, and unlike other MMOs, they are lost when you are killed.  This is one aspect that makes Aion stick out from its competition.  Warhammer and WoW were both notorious for treating people with kid gloves by rewarding them with points even for a loss, while Aion seems to have some sort of consequence for a loss.  This will undoubted stop competitive players from just rushing into fights without any fear of death, which is a good thing in my opinion.

The abyss seems to be the focal point of the Aion endgame and its PvP.  By looking at the map, we can see that it has 3 different layers, and assorted keeps to fight over in it.  I am not really sure how this endgame will stack up against what we saw in WAR, but this is going to be what makes or breaks this game.  The area looks to be a decent size by looking at the maps, and I hope that is the case. If all of the endgame PvP is going to be in this area, it will need to be very large to stop it from getting old.  Despite its flaws, Warhammer had a variety of areas and fronts for people to fight on to add a little variety to the PvP endgame, hopefully this area will offer enough to keep people entertained for a long time.

Conclusion

Aion is a graphically stunning game and has tons of polish.  The game has been out overseas for a little while now, and I think that ultimately that fact will be a large benefit to the North American fans.  Since the game has been out and patched for a while in other markets, NA players will be getting a game that is polished and feels complete.  There are not that many MMOs that have come out in the last few years that players have been able to say that about.  The game has a real focus on endgame PvP, and the patching the game has gone through already has no doubt made class balance less of an issue.  I am glad to see that there is a loss for death in PvP, as bind and zerg rushing seems to plague a lot of other traditional style MMOs that have tried for the same goal.

On the flip side, Aion strikes me as very linear game.  The way the overworld is layed out has me worried that in addition to being constricted, players will be forced to stomach through the same content over and over again every time they level up another character.  Aion also is not a game that is oozing with innovation.  Outside of the flight mechanic, I think a lot of people will legitimately be able to criticize this game for being somewhat of a clone in some aspects of some of the more recent traditional games.  The endgame PvP is going to be the real test of whether or not this game breaks through to people and distinguishes itself from the rest, or if it gets written off as another MMO using an already exhausted formula.  I think despite that, this game will appeal to a lot of people who might be current WoW and WAR subscribers.  The game already has a huge following overseas, so it should be interesting to see how it fairs in a completely different market.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

The Upcomming MMOs

With E3 wrapped up, there seems to be a lot of talk on the MMO community regarding some of the upcoming MMOs that we may have a chance at seeing over the next year.  My guild has been easing up on Darkfall waiting for the NA release so we can have our fresh start, so I figure I'd take a break writing about it for this entry to weigh in on 4 of these upcoming MMOs that have some of the members of my guild talking.

Mortal Online

This is one that seems to spur the most discussion for my guys at the moment, probably because it seems to be marketing itself as Darkfall's competition.  This game seems to be the fallback game for those people who have decided to opt out of Darkfall, although at present time, my guild still loves it.

The game sounds pretty decent on paper or powerpoint, and I sincerely hope it does well.  I am a big fan of anyone who tries to go the sandbox route and give players freedom and open worlds, which is one of the driving forces behind our interest in Darkfall.  So in this regard, I am happy to see some other companies trying to steer the genre in a direction that doesn't offer linear themepark gameplay.

At this stage, I think I have 2 major concerns regarding Mortal Online.

The first concern is whether or not the graphical engine will be able to handle a fair amount of people on the screen at once without bringing systems to their knees.  Darkfall takes a lot of flack from parts of the MMO community over the games graphics not being modern enough, but at the same time it has shown to handle more people fighting in close proximity better than many zoned and instance based games that are seen as being prettier.  Hopefully Mortal will not succumb to Age of Conan syndrome where good graphics become a detriment in certain aspects of the game.

The second concern I have at this stage is the recent announcement to start selling preorders for beta access even though the game will probably not see the light of day for another 6 months, or possibly more.  I don't mind preorders if they are within 4-6 weeks of release, but we are talking about a game that could be delayed until 2010 before all is said and done, and there is not enough footage (in my opinion) at this stage to justify jumping in this far out.  I wonder if the usual forum crusaders and armchair forum accountants will practice what they preached on previous titles or if they will give these guys a free pass on this.  I suppose if there is an option to cancel the preorder, then it might help a bit.  Still it looks like this is one to watch depending on your playstyle.

Aion

This is another game that seems to be talked about a lot lately with their recent North American beta.  I think the one obvious thing about this game that makes it jump out at people are the graphics.  Clearly from a graphic standpoint, Aion seems to be one of the more visually impressive MMOs to come around in a long time.  One of the other good things this one seems to have going for it is the fact that it has already been live overseas for quite some time, so one has to imagine that by the time it releases here that NA players will have the benefit of a game that has already undergone balancing and tweaking from patches.

My main concern with Aion is whether or not it brings anything really new to the table, or will it turn out to be nothing more than "WoW with wings".  The novelty of the graphics will diminish over time, and the game will need to have solid gameplay to back it up.  A lot of attention is given to the fact that you can fly in this game, but a lot of people who haven't been following it may not know that flight time is limited to very short spurts.  I am not sure if there is enough innovation here to peak my interest, but it no doubt might be a threat to WAR and AoC as they share the same target audience.

The other major problem that I think could derail this game's success in North America is the infestation of bots the game has seen overseas.  Much like Lineage 2, Aion seems to have a bot epidemic going on.  Depending on the severity of this, I am not sure if North American players will be as tolerant towards this in a new game.  Hopefully the people behind Aion will find a way to stomp this problem out before the game reaches North American shores, otherwise it may not see the same success it has enjoyed in their home market.

Final Fantasy XIV

I'll be the first to admit that I love FFXI.  This is one of those MMO's that a lot of my guild members have gone back to time and time again.  I think FFXI is probably the best PvE MMO on the market.  The game is relatively inexpensive and gives you an absolutely staggering amount of content for your buck.  Naturally when we heard about another online Final Fantasy game, some of my guildies ears perked up.

FFXI to us is like a spicy food that burns when you bite it, yet it's that burn that brings you back for more.  I think the game's challenge is one of the driving forces behind the game's success.  The sense of accomplishment for doing some of the hard content in this game does feel rewarding.  I think for a pure PvE game to succeed as long as FFXI has, it needs to be difficult to have longevity.

The possible kiss of death to me in the recent announcement was when I read in an interview with some Square-Enix people that FFXIV was going to be geared towards casuals.  To me, that translates into an easy game that will most likely have people breezing through content and possibly bored within 60 days (I hope I am wrong).  They have long stated that this next MMO would not be like FFXI, so I can't say I am surprised.  It also doesn't make sense for a company to release 2 MMOs that would compete against each other (see Mythic).  I just hope that they don't make this game cater to the lowest common denominator and end up giving us another WoW style theme park with Final Fantasy written on the box.  I'm sure the name alone will make it sell a lot, especially for some console players who are not used to MMOs.  Hopefully after all these years SE will come up with a better User Interface than FFXI's.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Everybody loves Star Wars, so it is no surprise that an MMO based on this universe is getting a lot of hype and attention from many corners of the MMO community.  If there is one franchise that deserves to have a good game made after it, this is it.  The current incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies seems to not be doing Star Wars any justice, and with a company with Bioware's track record behind it, it could have promise.  I'll give them credit for being smart enough to set the game in an era where Jedi are everywhere.  Let's be honest for a minute, when most people want to play a game in this universe, do you think they will chose to play a wookie like Chewbacca or a lightning shooting Sith Lord with a lightsaber?  Bioware seems to get it in this regard so despite the other classes, this game looks like it might be on a better track than SWG went down.

The concern I have with the game at this point is the hype.  I watched their trailer of a CGI cutscene of some massive Jedi brawl, but where is the gameplay footage?  They are starting this hype campaign a bit too early in my opinion and are going to end up with a customer base that has unrealistically high expectations.  FFXIV was guilty of this as well, showing no footage of the real gameplay.  Even the biggest steaming pile of crap can have a wicked CGI intro, but that doesn't tell you anything about the real game.  Show me something tangible to get excited about please because I want to be excited about a game like this.  I am buying a video game, not a movie, so show me the money!

They seem to have a strong story element going in this game which is a good sign.  There are not that many MMO's out there I have played outside of FFXI that really had a story with cutscenes, and not little kill quest journal crap not worth reading.  I'd like to hear about any PvP elements this game might have, I am assuming there must be one with all of the Sith and Jedi running around everywhere.  They are definitely running the risk of over-hyping this though given how far away the release date is if they continue to show more CGI cutscenes instead of real gameplay.

Conclusion

It looks like the over the next year or so, there will be a nice variety of MMOs coming out. No matter what game you are playing now, chances are there is one coming down the pipe in the next year that threatens to steal your interest from whatever you are playing now (if any). We also need to make sure to not over-hype these games based on power points or CGI presentations. Hopefully the companies behind these games will start to show us real and extensive gameplay footage so that we the MMO community can decide whether or not these games will actually stack up in reality like they do on paper.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com