MMO Addict. Finding the right MMO.

Blog of an MMO addict trying to find the right MMO. From Linux gaming to reviews.

Author: gaiusmarius

To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity:

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice!
3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that..
4. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.
5. In the Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write ' For Marijuana.
6. Skip down the hall rather than walk and see how many looks you get.
7 Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.
8. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is 'To Go'.
9. Sing Along At The Opera.
10. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You have a headache.
11. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream 'I Won! I Won!'
12. When Leaving the Zoo, Start Running towards the Parking lot, Yelling 'Run For Your Lives! They're Loose!'
13. Tell Your Children Over Dinner, 'Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go.'

And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity

14. PICK UP A BOX OF CONDOMS AT THE PHARMACY, GO TO THE COUNTER AND ASK WHERE THE FITTING ROOM IS.

- Received in an email today.

Well hello,
Over the last, month, I had left my guild in which I was close to becoming an officer, I had joined in pre-ulduar after leaving my guild of a long time since pre-wrath, it just didn't work out in the end.
But I left the newest guild due to the members not liking my methods of raid leading, but I'll summon it up into a few points:

• If you talk in vent when you aren't meant to, I'm going to tell you off.
• If you be a *insert bad word* in my raids, I will be that to you as well.
• Don't stuff around during boss fights, only talk when you are meant to, if you aren't a healer, tank or other important role, you just do your job, and do it properly.
• I try to do things ASAP so we can have fun, I make my raids fun for everyone, so don't be bad.

I had a few complications with 2 members, one being *the 8th best priest* on the server, yet, a very bad individual, he was later gkicked after an officer left due to the *8th best priest* saying bad things about him - so instead of the priest talking to the officer about the bad things he did what I consider, immature.
The other one was someone who turns up to raids in a bad state, and used donations to gain leverage, I had sorted any bad tensions with him, and I assumed the first individual had sorted it.

After the priest was gkicked there were some unhappiness, he was a good priest but if the officer has his name run through mud, what was done was done, he cannot expect to get away with it, he was a previous raid leader, his title was taken off him due to abusing his powers, his last warning and then he got gkicked.

So all through that and crap sorted aside, I was demoted as the priest used his gear to gain leverage and got me demoted.

Moral of the above story - I'd take better people, rather than better geared, to a raid. As a raid leader, I would like things to be efficiently done.

So that made me think how much of a bad community WoW is as a whole, so I decided to quit WoW for the time being, as I don't feel like forking out $50 to transfer to a more mature community (I hear the RP servers are more mature) well, I just can't fork out $50 for it.

So I decided to pick up Eve during the WoW phases in Ulduar, which as I hear has been nerfed to the point of PUGable.

So for now, I am playing Eve, it isn't as hardcore friendly as one would think, but it's good none-the-less.

As an adult, I normally DON'T watch cartoons.

I saw my nephew, who's 10 years old watching Avatar, he's been watching it on Nickelodean since season 1, and I'd sit and read and watch the TV for an episode here and there, and thought most Anime was the same, but Avatar wasn't really anime by looks, and after reading about it, I see it's inspired by Asian culture and history and stuff.

So, I watched all seasons over the course of 3 days and found that it is a totally awesome show, and I feel a part of me has gone, now that there's no more left.

True story, it's a cool show, even for us adults. I tried the Nick game thingy, which sucks, but hey, it's meant for kids, not adults.

The shows very dramatic and such, and reminds me of HBO's Rome, in terms of dramatic music.

Good show, I reccommend it to anyone who dislikes Anime, but likes the ideas behind it.

I mean, who doesn't like people flinging magic and such at people? It's a win-win situation.

Personally, I must admit Eve has had a major overhaul in the past 2 expansions since I started playing 2 years ago when the new graphics just came out (might have been earlier than that, I forget how long ago it was).

I really admire CCCP and their updates to the game, and you can see the latest changes in this article.
The aformentioned article is the only reason I went and picked up the 14 day trial, it's more player-friendly for newbies like me, and we get some nice features such as faster skill training until X amount of skill points, a nice epic mission arc to get us on our way (which I just completed today) - very hard mission arc in the last 2 missions, and I managed to get about 10 - 15 million ISK from it, more if I salvaged. So it is by far a great starter mission, and the tutorials are morei n your face, so newbies will learn what to do when an event happens, and the tutorials also give skill books and such.

I also like how they point you to 3 different ages, 1 for combat, one for industry and 1 for mining, each have their own rewards, the industry one gives you a Navitas if you're Gallente and 2 mining lasers, as well as a Iteron, to get you out into the world of Industry in Eve. The combat one points you to the Epic Mission Arc and also has it's own rewards, a nice frigate for us Gallenteans as well as some other stuff.
I have yet to try the mining one as it doesn't interest me all that much, but I will be trying it out just to see what rewards I get.

All in all, if you're new, give it a shot, though I can't comment on the community, it's a mixed bunch and sometimes questions go unanswered, and the guides can be a bit daunting for new players as it's a heavy read, but once you get the hang of it, you're set. And to be honest, you have a long road of skills to go before you get half decent, so it will be appealing for Industry related characters, as industry remains pretty much the same as far as I know.

I myself am going for a jack of all trades route.

Australia currently only has capabilities of up to 8Mbits speeds in areas that have broadband enabled, those without broadband enabled areas (exchanges) are either left with dialup, or have a chance to get high speed wireless broadband - with a choice of 1 provider, or in rare cases, multiple providers, the 1 provider choice being Telstra, cunningly having areas where no competition exists enabled for high speed wireless.

Mane exchanges are left on RIMS, with limited port availability for ADSL, and ADSL2+ (DSLAM). Premium ADSL - speeds of up to 8mbits, from 1.5mbits were recently introduced mid to late last year, and prices are through the roof; let's look at my providers plan that I am on:
Home-Plus-40
$99.95 per month
ADSL Plus Speeds (8mbits, 1.5mbits guaranteed)
40 Gbytes of bandwidth each month.
My ISP I am with is one of the few that only count downloads with the bandwidth, uploads are unmetered so I can only download 40Gb per month, where as I can upload 40Gb per month and more, some providers only allow you to download and upload a set amount (say 40Gb for the example) so I can download 40Gb, upload 40Gb. And other providers such as Telstra (with the exception of 1 plan) count both uploads and downloads in a shared pool (40gb for example) so I can upload say, 10Gb, and download 30Gb, and my bandwidth will be all used up.

Now on to the headlines, with the government in power at the moment, one of their election promises was to give Fibre to the Node high speed broadband, new technology in a old technology country. Such capabilities coming close are only ADSL2+ and cable (in city areas). And they've lived up to the promise, yet the ISP's such as Telstra and the Govt. never came to a decision and it was going nowhere, so the Govt. did one better.
Headline: Government to go it alone on FTTH NBN (NBN is national broadband network)
What does this give us?

• Fibre to the HOME.
• Speeds of UP TO 100MBit (unprecedented in residential areas).

However, only 90% of Australians will get it, with the other 10% being stuck on standard broadband, or ADSL2+ or in other areas, wireless, however the Govt. will upgrade these wireless areas and allow higher speed wireless or some crap like that. This was yesterday's news.

Todays news is that over 1,000 towns (1,033 to be exact) are left out of the FTTH NBN, these towns having less or exactly 1,000 population, Sky News saying 500,000 Aussies are left out of it. Source: http://www.skynews.com.au/politics/article.aspx?id=320011.

The whole overhaul of all this stuff comes to about $42 Billion, with the government funding a lot of it, and 51% being left to private investors such as Telstra,  Optus, Internode (my ISP) and many other companies, with Telstras track record over here a lot of us are worried of how much a part the company will have in it, Telstra is basically running a monopoly, Telstra owns all of the exchanges and has ADSL2+  enabled in every broadband exchange and only recently being forced to flick the switch to turn it on (wheras they'd turn it on in select exchanges when a competitor would install their own DSLAM equipment). So we have a right to be worried.

The Liberal party will block the bill in the senate as they say there is no evidence it is commercially viable (but they don't say it's not viable from what I see) so it's a bit of a stalemate IMO.

I will keep this blog updated with the NBN news and such as headlines reach, feel free to comment on this and so on.
 

According to this report on the F13.net forums, City of Heroes players have been receiving in-game messages from Cryptic Studio's inviting them to beta test Cryptic's Champions Online Game.

[quote]Let's not pretend for one second that the MMO industry is a friendly place, full of friendship, flowers and bunnies. When a multi-million dollar product and dozens of jobs are on the line, competition will be fierce and taking market share (read: players) from your competition is going to be a basic business practice.

However, there are lines you don't cross because 1) even competition should follow some rules of professional conduct, and 2) it opens the door for everyone to do the same thing to you. Representatives of Cryptic Studios crossed this professional line in the sand recently by going into City of Heroes / Villains (CoH/V) - their old product, which they sold to NCsoft - and, using PMs sent through the forums and allegedly through in-game message systems, attempted to lure players into the Champions Online (ChampO) beta test - their new product.{...}[/quote]

There is an official comment on this from NC Soft over at the official City of Heros forums :

[quote]Those of us here at the City of Heroes® franchise wanted to take a moment to comment on solicitations our players may receive from outside sources -- either in-game or through our message board system. We would like to acknowledge that we know these kinds of communications occur. It is unfortunate that people do this...but we also recognize and accept the fact that ultimately, we do not have control over the messages our customers with valid accounts send one another. Although we cannot stop someone from initially communicating with you - whether it be RMT (real money transaction) related, another game company trying to lure you to their competing product, or general spamming...we are in a position to investigate the situation (and potentially take action) once a solicitation has occurred, for it is a direct violation of our Rules of Conduct and EULA (End User License Agreement).[/quote]

I was never interested in any of the games mentioned, but I am now even less interested in Cryptic's Champions Online.

A quick glance and reviews of the MMO's I have played:
Gods and Heroes: Great game, I liked it, no one can be sure on to what it would have become.

Age of Conan: Great in theory, but we need the devs to knuckle down and start doing things quicker.

WoW: Great game if you like the same old stuff each day, the community is pretty ordinary.

Eve: It's a great game for people who like that sort of thing - sci-fi sandbox, the quests are quite dull but what you do is what you do, there's endless possibilities and it takes a lot of time, which is kind of meh if you want to wait around doing nothing until you have the right skills.

Guild Wars: Boring to me, I didn't know if there was any end-game, it's quests are unique and has a whole storyline but I just got bored and the graphics are too anime-like for me.

PotBS: I didn't like it.

SWG: Too hard, quests and map sucks, I really couldn't find head from tail.

EQ2: Tries too much to be like WoW.

My introduction to multiplayer games was around 1999 or some-time when Age of Empires 2 was the game to have, I played on a 56k connection at my home in the country, 50c to dial, $30 a month for unlimited downloads, 56k speeds, excellent. I always got around 40k speeds, if I dialed into the city number I would get slightly higher, but the cost to dial was more expensive.

After gaming with strategy games from the likes of Age of Empires and Rome: Total War and also some FPS games, I soon got broadband as soon as it was available and that is how I got into more serious multiplayer gaming...

I played a small MMO game called A-Tractor - now known as The Universal, a cute game that has a player driven economy and is always in beta, and a small community, that was the first MMO game I ever played, apart from browser based MMO's (if you can call them that). I played that on and off...

At the time of the South Park episode of Make Love, Not Warcraft I was introduced to WoW - by the episode of course, I bought it from my local EBGames and brought it home to install on my system - a P4 with a 6600GT and 1GB RAM. The package had no CDKey so I was screwed and I bought a CD Key online off a popular retailer and started playing, I leveled a Human Paladin by grinding - not questing, as I thought it was the easiest method - oh the woes of a noob to Warcraft. I got it to 60 and joined a DKP raiding guild and raided MC on our raid days, I played until BC and got to level 70 and quit, thus ends that period, I went back to FPS and other MP games. I returned and leveled several other characters and played off and on and got back into it more seriously at the release of WOTLK, I now have a Dranei Mage (80) and a NE Boomkin (80) and 1 horde 70 warlock and a horde undead DK (80)... I play the game frequently to do daily CD's and sometimes play for fun but I am awaiting more content and only play to raid.

Around the time of Gods and Heroes being advertised I got into the beta and played that - I have been a heavy ancient time fan and wanted to play a Roman-themed MMO for ages and I played this until it was closed, I was heartbroken, so I had no MMO's to play, until I found AoC.

During one of the phases of my WoW breaks I was following AoC and managed to get into the closed beta, managed to download and install the game on my crappy computer and it didn't play - no surprise. So I upgraded my computer completely and now have a Q9300 and 9800GTX with 4GB of RAM. I managed to get into early access and played a ranger until level 60 and at the time the content was quite dismal so I quit and returned recently and leveled a barbarian to 80 mainly on quests with help of grinding groups, transferred to Bloodspire and now am waiting for paid transfers so I can go to Cimmeria, as it's dead.

I am however, still finding the right MMO for me, AoC wont do it I don't think, as IMO honestly it might be a lost cause as there's not enough financial backing and the company making it hasn't got the best of track records... So I am sad to say I think AoC is a highly niche MMO kind of like Vanguard.