All Posts by saydur

Oddly enough, I find myself suggesting ROSE Online.

You have to withstand some hardcore grind, but the graphics are very bright and cheerful.  It's not hard to solo as far as I've seen, although I don't know just how far that goes.  There's not much in the way of character development, but that's true for nearly all MMOs I've seen aside from a few Korean ones that you really need to play in Korean to understand rather than rely on the English translations.  Fantasy motif, yes.  Player driven economy, very much so last I heard.

If not for the exceptionally tedious grind and lack of buddies who played it, I might have stayed with ROSE.

A full plate of spaghetti and sauce, topped with melted velveeta cheese, cooked by my little sister when I have chance to come home from college.

A fist-sized hamburger on toasted buns with fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and onions from the farmer's market about a mile off, with a handful of plain Ruffles all on a paper plate, eaten with family on a warm June day.

Chile Colorado at Playa Azul, with the two-for-one margarita special, and topped off with flan for dessert.

Sukiyaki steak, medium-rare, with fried rice off the hibachi at Shiki with Ron, celebrating survival of another semester of classes.  If it's the end of the year, hot sake for the both of us, and tempura bananas with ice cream.

Eel, tuna, and salmon at the Disney World hotel, with hot green tea and cold mint tea.  Pity I missed karaoke night.

A steaming hot bowl of white rice, topped only with Kikkoman soy sauce, at 11 in the evening, after thoroughly humiliating my old roommate at Street Fighter 2.

Two large Pizza Hut pepperoni pizzas, one for me, and one for aforementioned roommate, while watching Hellsing.  $13 courtesy of a magical buy one get one free coupon I found in a stairwell which the delivery guy never took.  That coupon was worth at least two dozen free pizzas.

A cold bottle of Tsingtao on the front porch, staring at the dying 16 day old moon in the middle of summer.

Stolichnaya vodka, straight, cold as a Russian winter, with some hot salted edamame (soybeans) after finding out she was cheating.

A Sizzlin steak, medium, fries drenched in worcestershire sauce, and a cup full of cheese soup.  Also, cheesy biscuits.

Hot and sour soup at Lung Wah's, with whatever looked good on the menu.  Adam, Grant, Jason and myself, all together and enjoying the end of our youth and the beginning of our adult lives.

Adam, my sister, and myself, at Joy Burger.  Even now, Kim is certain Adam and I are brothers, and he's always taken aback when Adam orders coffee at 7 pm.  The gal-bi is absolutely excellent, and the bibim bab is to die for.  Of course, Kim's wife does all the cooking, so it's excellent.  That man is probably the luckiest guy in town.

Adam and I in Tulsa, picking up his uncle from the airport, at Schlotzsky's.  The one in town had closed so long ago, and I had almost forgot how excellent it was.  Even now, Adam will go well out of his way for Schlotzsky's, and far be it from me to stop him.

The memories, that's as important as anything.  If it's not memorable, it's only a temporary pleasure.  Even the bittersweet ones, it's all part of life.

Asking me to pick a favorite wouldn't be fair.  Even though Lung Wah closed a year or two ago because they couldn't cover the costs of redoing the kitchen for safety standards, I can still taste the thick hot and sour soup if I close my eyes and think about it.  Western Sizzlin quit making that cheese soup years ago, probably for the best that I don't eat five bowls of it before the steak comes.  Ron and I went to Shiki not long ago, and it was a joyous occasion once again.  I told him we need to go in matching 80's suits, what with the music, atmosphere, and relevance.  Of course, I could drag him to Dynasty Buffet next time, where we're positive they were playing Castlevania themes.  I'm still puzzled to this day, because it was just unmistakable.

In the end, it's all a matter of what you enjoy.  I'll probably see Jason again in a week or so, he and I will both be in town for a few days.  Catch up with him over a few bottles of Asahi and a package of Vienna Fingers just to remind him of when he found the corner of the round pool.  You know what I mean there?

I want to go to Japan one day, and have a beef bowl from Yoshinoya.  Extra green onions.

Oh, you missed some good times.  Even Runescape had a workable economy where a sly trader could make a killing at one point.  No retail shops where you sit around and make money, you had to go out there and trade actively to get things done.

ROSE had an excellent system involving not only sales, but purchasing items at fixed prices as well, to try and gather base materials from those who'd sell.

It's a fun experience, but trading hinges a lot on keeping cheaters and gold farmers out of the picture as much as possible.  Sadly, many of the best games fail horribly in that respect.  Keep your eyes open, there'll be another good MMO for trader types sooner or later.  I'm hunting for one myself.

Well, while I'm sure it misses the point a little, A Tale In the Desert does do away with combat.

What you're looking for is best reproduced in MMO games that aren't RPGs.  FPS, RTS, etc, that's where you get more PvP interaction.

Or you could go for one of the group-enforcing games, like FFXI.  Sure, there's PvE, but you can't do it alone.

Successful MMORPG in the US- Enforce grouping, ignore gold-farming, create mega-mobs that require massive coordinated efforts of a bunch of 12 year olds who forgot their Ritalin, and release it at a time when most other mega MMOs are dead or dying, but make sure you have enough clout and advertising to be #1.  UO was the first major one, EQ took advantage of UO's troubled times and advertised themselves up to #1.  FFXI had Square-Enix money behind it and an unbelievably successful franchise name.  WoW had the reputation of Blizzard behind it and some intense advertising.

Due to the limitations of TCP/IP packet transfer, I doubt we'll see what I'd think is ideal.  Real-time action-RPG style combat (Think anywhere from Crystalis to Star Ocean) is just too lag-sensitive.  The best combat systems there are the most control responsive.

Outside of that, I think of it this way.  A clan system similar to Fung Wan (Storm Riders) Online which creates multiple factions that present a potential balance of power.  Needs to be balanced well enough that we don't end up with the troubles of RF Online.

In-game combat is the most difficult aspect.  Without real-time action RPG combat (Absolutely no 3-d first person either), the available alternatives are a bit weak.  Too much emphasis on grind, not enough on battles and survival.  Also, no enforced grouping just to fight enemies like FFXI, rather go for mild grouping incentives that reward cohesive teams yet are not worth struggling with ignorant fools.

Large world, but not too much travel time between places of worthwhile interest.  ROSE had too much travel time between towns, and I was always fond of games that didn't require a fresh load just to go into town.  Seems only Fung Wan and D.O. Online managed to do those very well.

Variable economy.  No fixed X gold for X item, get X hundred items for rich guy ASAP junk.  Particularly tricky, especially when item crafting creates an infinite demand for some items.

Item crafting with variable results, and craft specialization that encourages different paths.  This would require various weapons to have various upsides, instead of everyone flocking to two-handed swords for superior attack power and speed and everything else being secondary.

Non-combat professions and quests.  This is one thing Runescape has at least the beginnings of.  There's a long list of quests, although many are too simple fetch quests.

A playerbase which prefers having fun over a 24-hour race to level 99 with Legendary Sword of Ultramob +5 that took weeks of guild runs to get.  Also, a sense of communication.  I've met plenty of players that have English as a second or third language who speak quite well.  Also plenty of children who think "u give heal" is an appropriate request for assistance.

Server based in US/Canada.  I've seen plenty of Korean, Malaysian, Singaporean, and Taiwanese games that would have been quite fun with better English translation and a US server that had some sort of population.  Sure, the server is in English, the players speak English, but it may as well be a foreign language sometimes.  They can keep it, I prefer my games entirely in one language or another.  If I knew Chinese, I'd play on those servers and it'd be much nicer than the mixed-up English.

Active game admins who do not accept cheating under any circumstances.  No automated-tasks/grinding, no hacks, bug abuses, duping, gold farming, or item selling.  Absolutely no looking the other way, especially in p2p games.  WoW, I'm looking at you and your gold farmers.  Bad Blizzard.  You should be ashamed.

Rewards for performing well instead of just grinding.  Make the most of what you have to improve.

Limited PvP, restricted to a few zones or specially marked players.  No incentive for PvP, pkillers are plenty motivated to do this on their own.

Call me odd, but I like some of the Korean MMO soundtracks.  Something lighthearted, but mood-setting.  Also, either do the 3d right, or stick to 2d sprites and anime-inspired graphics.  Badly done 3d hits what we call the "uncanny valley", or just human enough to be creepy, not human enough to be sympathetic, and all around just looks ugly.  I liked Dofus' graphical style, but the use of Flash and tiny sprites was just unacceptable.  Some stylized backgrounds like Legend of Mana can be excellent, although difficult to do right and navigate well.

Ragnarok Online did great graphically with a talented designer, backgrounds that looked nifty but weren't overdone, and was easy to navigate.  Also, the interface was simple and easy to get into.

Finally, a financial model based on a low monthly fee ($2-$5/month) and supplemented with a cash-shop for aesthetic items.  The monthly fee is to put a bit of weight behind punishments and bans, instead of just making an alternate account and continuing cheating ways.  It's not perfect, but it is a start.  Cash-shops are a great way to help pay for a game without putting undue burden on everyone.  $12.95 a month is bad enough, but $49.99 for the game AND only one free month?  No.  No no no.  Absolutely not.

I suppose I ought to ask for cold fusion while I'm at it, given the unlikeliness of all of this.

To be honest, I'd be pleased with something that was just as fun as early RO, ROSE before it hit the hellish grind, or Fung Wan if it had been tweaked and improved.

Georg Prime from Suikoden 2 and 5.  He eats iron and craps steel.

Ever since my days with Telnet and a MUD, to modern day mega-MMOs, I've wanted to find games with a good playerbase.  Trouble is, this is the most difficult thing to find in an MMO, without question.

It seems that the more popular an MMO gets, the worse the playerbase becomes.  Runescape, while always full of misguided youth, had features such as easy private messaging, people who'd talk, and a variable economy based on supply and demand instead of prices almost set it in stone.  Ragnarok Online had a decent community in early beta days, where many people would talk as well as play well together.  FungWan Online had an excellent PvP system for a relatively simple game, and the population was just proper size for cohesive large clans.  Aside from FungWan, I'm not terribly interested in PvP if only for the ego-stroking contests it instigates.

I haven't been able to find an MMO with a decent playerbase since.  I tend to find the decent players in a game, but it often falls apart due to the entire group losing patience with the community.  I want your suggestions for an MMO with a decent playerbase that isn't focused hardcore on doing things in a specific, rigid manner designed for most profit.

Bonuses- Groups/guilds that are sociable and likable with decent gamers, a large world for exploration and not overcrowded for fighting/resources as to encourage rampant camping, noncombat professions are encouraged- no macrofests please, and relatively young MMOs with a lot of new blood coming in constantly are preferred.

Please, anything that even starts on this path would be nice.

They ask for a Taiwanese ID, apparently. Basically, a lot of stuff designed to scare non-Taiwanese away.

I'm not going to explain anything on faking it, nor reccomend that you do so, even if it can be done.

Perhaps it'd just be easier if we gathered all we know to email in support of an English server? With enough support, it'll only make sense to bring it over here.

In Japan, this game won't inspire people taking panty shot pictures. This game was inspired BY people taking panty shot pictures.

It's rather a popular voyeur pasttime in Japan, to the point where mobile phone cameras are now required to make an audible sound any time a picture is taken.

I find it pretty amusing myself. Shooting people in the face and stabbing every bit of wildlife someone comes across is perfectly fine in a game, but taking pictures of panties is horrible. It's hardly kosher behavior in life, but I can't think of many games that should ever be reenacted in reality. I just laugh at it, definitely a lot less harmful than some stuff that passes for a game anymore.

Y'know, I'd agree with all of that, except for one thing.

If we went by reviews and ratings, we'd all be playing EVE or a mass commercial buy-me MMO. Some of us have seen shades of something different, and we're relentlessly seeking it out. Anything that has potential to be something just different enough and great, and we're as desperate as crack addicts to find it.

Outside of that, yeah. There's already plenty of info on how EVE has a cult following, WoW is good enough for some and they don't see why it's not good enough for all, Flyff is horribly mismanaged, and Runescape is the worst thing ever created since Hitler. That's about the gist of it.

Eh. Screw it. You're trying to do yourself some good. Much as I hate smoking, I oughtn't step in the way of someone trying to quit. Rant on brother. Rant on.

Aside from "Night Elf" being another term for Drow, a common race in D+D and plenty of other fantasy games/books/etc.?

The timetable is unrealistic for having nothing to show, and being hosted on a Homestead subdomain isn't exactly professional. Until I see something serious, color me unimpressed.

You want to clean up? Go for it man. If you're tired of this kind of lifestyle, or just don't want to worry about where it'll land you in five years, she's just giving you a helping hand out of it.

As most of these guys have said though, don't do it for her. You'll come to resent that. If you want to do it for you, she's just there to make it that much easier. Plus, you're bound to get a lot of happy grateful sex, which makes things all that much better.

Been playing MUDs plenty long enough to appreciate a good text game.

The trouble is, poor 3d graphics can kill a game. I'd sooner play a game with less advanced 2d graphics than poor 3d graphics. Personal bias in a way. The fact is, today's gamers have certain expectations in a game. Graphics, music, sound, and gameplay need to meet certain criteria in order to provide a gaming experience that people enjoy.

Personally, I believe that graphics that facilitate easy navigation of the game world and music that's well composed help make a good game leagues better. I found Ragnarok Online to be easy to get into due to relatively simple navigation, and the musical score was immersive. I know there's plenty of other games that I would have dived into headfirst, but the navigation was simply horrible.

Promise or not, I've found weak 3d graphics to be one of the quickest turnoffs to a game. Don't get me started on forced isometric view.

If you're in college or work, go for it. That's not a half-bad laptop, and he'll probably give you a fair deal on it.

It's useless for gaming though.

I'll be frank. It's a nice skeleton framework, but the movie shows what is obviously no better than alpha stages, if that.

The 3d is rough. It'd be more forgivable if it were 2d, it's easier to improve graphics as time goes on. The "music" was actively offensive to my ears.

Call it a public test invitation for pre-alpha development, and I may agree with you. If I remember right, the lead coder is 15. For someone that age with only a small group, this isn't a bad showing. Still, they need to recruit a few more skilled people to make something people are going to enjoy.

It's more promising than some of the weak projects I've seen out there, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

Quite some time ago, Runescape was fun. It was simple, easy to play, easy to get into, and free. Skills were varied enough that even if they were repetitive, it was interesting to go through a number of them. In fact, you could be a contender at some skills if you focused on them. When Everdred hit lv 99 in woodcutting, it was a big deal and rather amusing how a relatively useless skill was 99 first. Everyone pestered a handful of the top smiths for specific rare items, which left the smiths either surly or egotistical.

It was an amusing game. I was in high school playing it, and I made plenty of buddies who were only a couple years younger than myself. There were a handful of adult players who appreciated a simple game like Runescape.

Then I went to Ragnarok Online during their beta. By the time circumstances led me to play RS again, it had degraded. The kids had gotten younger, stupider, louder, and more insistent on scamming. Nobody cared about making buddies unless the buddy was rich or powerful. Trades were highly skewed towards a handful who had incredible stores of gold built up. Most grounds for training and item finding were camped 3 to a regular mob. Any wilderness adventure led to a gang of pures trying to hunt you down for the pure griefing factor.

It's probably fun for some, but it lost the charm for me. I'll stick to wandering in limbo until I find something better. Nothing against Jagex. The Gower brothers would actually pop in and talk and answer questions sometimes, and they were pretty nice. It was just the fate of the community.

It's definitely very rough and early in production, but you have a beginning. Personal advice, leave the music out for now. It's... bad.

Wish you luck on this, you clearly have enough so far that you can make something playable.

Aside from the fact that the music industry could care less about consumers, only desiring the sweet sweet nectar of their money, this poses some interesting issues.

Has Blizzard done anything about this in regards to Sony being responsible? Will Blizzard be able to fix this gaping security hole? Will it have any impact upon the most popular MMO of today?

Rocky and Bullwinkle speculation aside, I'm gonna have to say that it's still the hackers that need to be chased down. The tools are no matter, it's those who would use them that cause the trouble. I'm not talking about the white-hat hackers who pick stuff apart from curiosity. I mean people who alter gameplay, obtain generally inaccessible information (IPs for particular characters on some games, for one.), and worst of all, spread the knowledge of these exploits to others.

Even then, I wouldn't mind Sony getting a nice kick in the pants for their stupidity with music copyright protection. It wouldn't be such a big deal if they weren't openly hostile to anyone who even wanted to copy their CD to their portable player.

I'm torn between two snarky comments.

"Show me a man who will say he never masturbates, and I will show you a liar"

or

"The one with the boobs"