Interesting read.  Nothing I didn't already know, but I did find the following rather funny:

"MMORPG: What different options do you allow on a Mech Warrior suit for players? Are there lots of customizations?"

If a mech is a suit, well, the pilot must be absolutely gigantic.  I mean an Atlas, for instance, is 13 meters (or 40+ feet) tall.  :D

In canon, the pilot of a battlemech actually sits in a cockpit and controls the mech with joysticks and foot pedals.  To quote somebody, somewhere, whose name I don't recall, "Battletech is a game about giant, stompy robots."

SWG was an absolutely awesome game once upon a time. I, too, agree that it was better before player Jedi, though for a different reason: simply, Jedi were an alpha class in PvP. That meant that if you weren't a Jedi or didn't have one very specific build made to counter them, you could no longer compete once they started showing up. Personally, I never wanted to be a TKA or Fencer, so I found myself constantly on the short end of the stick with my master Rifleman/master Swordsman/several skills from Pistoleer build that worked well against everything except Jedi.

I eventually quit the game completely for EVE (which I had been playing alongside SWG for about a year), but came back for the Combat Upgrade, hoping that would make it possible for normal folks to compete. I was leery of the fact that they'd added levels to the game, but since I was already maxxed out I figured I could live with it. In any case, I gave it a shot, hoping to find the CU as awesome as SOE touted it to be.

No dice.

The first time I ran into a Dark Jedi, he use some force cloak power or other and became completely invisible. The only thing I could do was frantically mash buttons while he beat me down.

At that point, and with a heavy heart, I cancelled my subscription for good. For the next several months I kept hoping to see some sign that SOE would make the game playable for normal folk who didn't want to spend 6 months grinding out Jedi, but it was not to be. About two months after I stopped following news of the game, the NGE happened. It was so large that I found out about it despite the fact I was no longer really paying attention.

At that point, I was both desperately glad that I had quit the game, but also saddened that the game I'd once loved more than any other was gone for good.

-Wrayeth (EVE)

-Raytheon Kednallen,

Master Rifleman/Master Swordsman/Pistoleer

Former Master Commando/Master Pistoleer

Shadowfire (SWG)

P.S. If I might ask, who was your character on Shadowfire, Isabelle?

Shadowfire?  That was the server I played on!  If it's not a secret, who were you in game?   I only remember a few of the crafters' names, primarily weapon and armorsmiths (Bliss, Iaka, Gruelokk), but I might've run into you.  (Gruelokk is playing EVE these days, btw, and was running a good-sized alliance last I talked to him.)

I agree that the article was something along the lines of pitting a toddler up against a rottweiler - it was just not going to end well for STO.

That said, there have been a few interesting match-ups mentioned that I'd like to see:

Darkfall vs. EVE would be a good one given the similar player-bases.

SW:TOR will be really interesting after it's been released.

...and for nostalgia's sake, pre-CU SWG vs. EVE.  I love both games, but I'd personally have to give EVE the nod here, though it'd be close; pre-CU SWG just had too many awesome and unique mechanics and methods of gameplay.

Originally posted by Deewe

and MMO players mostly don't care about story at all.

That's an...interesting...premise, but I'll have to disagree with you on that.  I play MMOs, and in non-sandbox games I most definitely care about the story.  In fact, I'm going to be picking up The Old Republic specifically for the story.  I'm hoping for something like a multiplayer version of KOTOR, but one that can also be played solo if your friends are busy.

Originally posted by Vinterkrig

#5 ) Personal Story for Your Character - Nope and no thanks, most people don't even care about the stories in MMOs, I doubt they will bring this back to life, as its far been lost over the years, and most of the people involved in MMOs prefer the social aspects rather than the story aspects.

I think you're wrong on this one, but time will tell.

I know that I, personally, will be picking the game up just based on the fully fleshed-out story for each of the classes, and to hell with the MMO portion of it.   Don't get me wrong - if the multiplayer aspect of the game makes the story more enjoyable, then I'm all for it.  But I am NOT going to be picking up the game just because it's an MMO; I dislike most of the standard MMO tropes and game design philosophies.

For the record, I play EVE and Fallen Earth, and played SWG until they changed the game to the point where it was no longer fun.  I have given both Vanguard and Age of Conan multiple tries but always end up cancelling my subscription because I just didn't enjoy the lack of immersion and the standard MMO "holy trinity" of tank, healer, and DPS.  I hate the way classed MMOs lock you into one predefined role or set of roles and say "because you can do x you aren't allowed to be any good at y," such as not being able to both dish out lots of damage and be able to take a hit at the same time.

Now, I'm very much afraid that The Old Republic will go the same route as other MMOs are far as the way the classes work, but I guess we'll all find out one way or another.  I can, however, probably live with it if - and only if - the story is as immersive and in-depth as what I've come to expect from Bioware titles.

'Listen up, you primitive screwheads!.  This is my BOOM GUN!" - Ash from Army of Darkness, if he ever got his hands on a Glitter Boy.

Also, I would love to see a Rifts MMO.  Not much more to say.

Originally posted by Rockgod99

heh toss a Large shield extender and Invul in mids and DCUII in low and you could make any ship BC sized and under a gank boat with a decent buffer.

I fly Gallente and everyone these days is shield tanking. I fear CCP may nerf passive shield tanking soon.  your almost a moron if you stiick to ship bonuses on alot of ships. I dont think CCP intended most of those ships to be setup like that.

I mean is it me or is everyone using projectiles on gallente boats? lol   Shield tanking and using projectiles on hsips meant as armor hybrid platforms...

CCP nerf inc. or a buff to armor and hybrids maybe?

Anyway... back on topic.

OP good write up.

TBH, the reason everyone shield tanks is that they want the most mobility possible.  Who cares if you can't web your target and hold them down - it's all about running away more easily, right guys?  Right?

:P

Finding good PvP can be difficult or easy, depending on where you are and what you're flying.  There's a large element of randomness to it, but there are a few things you can do to give yourself a chance at a better fight.

First, pick your targets or area of operations.  In an empire war, choose a corp that will fight back but that doesn't outnumber you so massively that you can't win, even with superior quality on your side.  If you're not talking war decs, find an area of lowsec or 0.0 with many active combat pilots.  Again, you'll want to be careful to match the expected opposition against your capabilities.

Second, timezone, timezone, timezone.  You may have found the perfect target to fight or the perfect area of operations, but if all the good combat goes down during hours when you're offline, what's the point?

Third, pick your ship classes appropriately.  You'll want to bring ships the enemy believes they might be able to defeat, no matter if that's actually true or not.  If you bring a remote rep battleship gang of five people and the enemy has eight battlecruisers and no EW, they're likely to avoid the fight (if they're smart, anyway).

Fourth, engage in deception.  The enemy will generally attack when they believe you are weaker than they are.   This is a tendency you should encourage by appearing less deadly than you actually are.  Use baiting tactics; bring cloaked recons, stealth bombers, and black ops as force multipliers; have capital ships on standby in another system.  All of the previous tactics help encourage the enemy to engage you by reducing your apparent threat level.

Let me give you a small example of how this works.

A couple of weeks ago, my corpmates and I were roaming around lowsec trying to find people who would fight us...or who had sufficiently juicy ships for us to waste sec status ganking (faction loot is good, mmkay?).  Our gang consisted of my alt in a megathron, my main in a widow (cloaking black ops battleship with jamming capabilities), a corpmate in a vexor navy issue, an ally corpmate in a hurricane, another of my corpmates in a falcon (cloaking recon cruiser with jamming capabilities), two corpies in an AF and an interceptor, respectively, and one blackbird (the latter had to log off partway through the op).

We were checking out the Kubinen-Enderailen-Tunudan pocket and not having much luck, initially.  We knew that Veto (a well-known pirate corp) had some members living in Tunudan, but there were only a few of them there.  With only three showing up in local, no ships on scan during our first check, and none of them passing in and out of the system, we figured they were AFK and didn't bother with them initially.

After being sufficiently bored due to lack of fights, we decided to check Tunudan again.  Our falcon went in to scout the system, and there were two of them outside the station in a hurricane and myrmidon, respectively.  That being the case, we sent my alt's mega in as bait to see if they would engage.  The gang waited on the other side of the gate while my alt jumped in and warped to the station, promptly engaging the myrm.  Surprisingly, the myrm fought back, likely figuring that it would take a while for my alt's megathron to kill him and that he would be able to deaggress and dock.  The hurricane, on the other hand, locked me up but never fired.

As I told the rest of the gang to jump in and warp to my alt, a third BC undocked and locked me, but promptly re-docked along with the hurricane as local spiked with my gang's jump-ins.  At this point, to no one's surprise, the myrm de-aggressed.  Shortly afterwards, though, the rest of the gang landed on station and helped finish off the mrym before his timer could expire.  It is important to note that I jumped my main's widow into system but cloaked up at the gate, never engaging the enemy with it or bringing it into their scan range.  This would become important later.

http://eve-frick.net/kb/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13541

In any case, with the myrm dead we went back to Enderailen and Kubinen and sat on the gate between the two while our probers tried to localize some juicy mission runners (can't recall what they were flying, now; we didn't get any of them).  Our gang was on the Kubinen side of the Kub-Ender gate and had been there for a few minutes.  I sent my alt through to the other side in his mega to scout/bait, and sure enough four Veto in an armageddon battleship, hurricane, harbinger, and one other BC which I can't recall jumped into system.  They warped to the Kubinen gate and promptly locked up my alt.

Seeing their willingness to engage and knowing that my gang was properly set up on the other side, I jumped the alt through. (Note that we were now a man down as our blackbird had logged.)  Sure enough, they followed.  When my alt decloaked and started reapprochaing gate, all of them aggressed, trying to take out what they thought was the largest threat.  At this point, the rest of my gang primaried the 'geddon and I sent my alt MWDing at him from about 22km, getting into range and opening up.  Our falcon uncloaked and jammed some of the BCs, but my alt was still taking heavy fire.

Now that I was sure they were fully aggressed, I uncloaked the widow and jammed the 'geddon and the last BC, firing on the 'geddon with torps while MWDing to my alt and activating a remote armor rep.   At this point, with all of the targets jammed the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and we killed the armageddon quite handily (though my alt was down to about 60% armor on his plated mega--the Veto folks had some serious DPS).  Unfortunately, all of the BCs got away when my gangmates failed to spread their points and webs, but it was still a fun fight.

http://eve-frick.net/kb/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13542

In any case, the relevance of all of this is that we got the myrmidon kill by making it appear as if we only had the megathron and an unknown, cloaked scout in system when we engaged (aka baiting) and the armageddon kill by holding back some of our forces (my widow) in the initial engagement with the myrm (they wouldn't have later engaged with that gang composition if they had known about it).

Wootin, it may surprise you to know that a LOT of people don't have multiple accounts.  I have played EVE since June of 2004, and I only acquired a second account this past February.  That's 4 and 2/3 years with only one account, and I count myself as having done just fine.

A couple of things that weren't in the article but deserve mention:

Projectile Weapon Revamp

Projectile weapons have been significanly modified with Dominion. 

To begin with, the most sweeping change was to ammunition.  Whereas each ammo type previously had a different range and damage type combination, there are now only three range categories: short, medium, and long.  IIRC, short range inflicts a -50% range penalty, medium inflicts none, and long range has a 50% range bonus.   All three types of short range ammo (EMP, fusion, and phased plasma) inflict the same amount of damage, but have different damage types.  Short range ammo still inflicts the most base damage, medium inflicts moderate damage, and long range inflicts the least.  At the same time, there's one more change worth mentioning: medium and long range ammo applies a tracking bonus to the weapon its fired from.  Medium has a 20% tracking boost, and long has a 5% tracking boost.

The next factor in the projectile changes is the increase in artillery alpha strike.  The damage modifier for arty has been somewhat increased on small weapons, moderately increased on medium weapons, and massively increased on large weapons.  At the same time, rates of fire have received decreases commensurate with the damage modifier increase.

The other major factor in the projectile changes is a magazine capacity increase.  This most drastically affects artillery, which previously suffered such from such a small magazine that it seemed you were reloading every five seconds.

Capital Weapons Rebalance

Capital weapons have been "rebalanced".   The general gist of the changes is that the ranges on the short range, high damage turrets have largely been increased enough to make them useful.  Capital launchers, on the other hand have been completely revamped.  A new capital launcher, the capital cruise launcher, has been added.   It has similar DPS to long range capital turrets and also a similar range.   At the same time, citadel torpedo launchers have had a significant DPS increase and a drastic range decrease to put them in line with capital turrets.

Further changes included a massive increase to the signature radius of capital ships and a reduction of the effectiveness (read: adjustment to turret resolution and missile explosion radius) of capital weapons against non-capital targets.

That said, there is one exceedingly large problem with the capital weapons rebalance: the explosion radius of capital missiles is too small.   Dreadnoughts and small towers don't have a large enough signature radius to take full damage from them.  While a target painter can normally rectify this, the problem simple: sieged dreadnoughts are not affected by any forms of electronic warfare.  I.E. it's impossible to paint them to increase their sig radius.

As the owner of a nice, shiny phoenix dreadnought, this aggravates me to no end.

Did anyone else ever tell the proprietor at the Pearl "surprise me"?  The result is rather hilarious...

Originally posted by OddjobXL

I find Dragon Age brilliant as a setting and, if not as a traditional story, as a story told through a game.  I think if folks understand some of the allusions and references they'd recognise that not only is Bioware's storyteller fully aware of what he's borrowing from, and how to change things around to keep you interested, but probably from many sources (including historical ones) that I suspect most players just don't even know exist so they can't recognise what's actually going into the story.  If you don't listen to alot of jazz don't be surprised when you don't find a jazz song interesting and find it sounds like every other jazz song.

This, and much of the rest of the post it came from.  The underlined section was, erm, underscored by this little tidbit from a conversation between my main character and Alistair:

"I'm just here to spout off one-liners and deliver bad news."

I almost did a spit-take on hearing that, seeing how true it has seemed from time to time.  Despite that, there's significantly more to the Alistair character than what he claimed, but there's enough truth in the statement that you can tell the Dragon Age developers were having a good laugh at their own expense.  The moment had a distinctly Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back feeling to it a la all of the times they reference something from real life, then turn and stare at the camera for a moment.

"It's nothing but a 90-minute long dick and fart joke.  Who would pay to see that?"   -everyone looks at the camera-

Originally posted by cukimunga

 I havent played the turorial in a while they show more about mutations? Cuz Im still kinda confused about them, not how to use them but where to find different ones all Ive seen were just the better versions of the ones you start with.  All I know is that there is ones that are faction based but IDK where else to find other ones to uses besides the upgrades.

AFAIK, factions from S2 onwards are the ONLY places to get the advanced mutations.  Only the alpha mutations are readily available elsewhere.

Which reminds me, now that I've actually put some points into Suppression, I should probably go visit the Suppression trainer and see what abilities I have enough skill for.

Glad to hear FE is getting another review.   Even if the review is worse, as long as it's unbiased and has a solid grounding in reality, then I'll have no problem with it.

I still think each full review should be done by multiple people and the end rating should be an aggregate of their individual review results.  Another thing I'd like to see would be two additional sections in the reviews: "most like" and "will most liklely be enjoyed by".  "Most like" would list a game  (or games) that the reviewed game's play seems most similar to, and "will most likely be enjoyed by" would list the demographics deemed to have the highest likelihood of loving the game (i.e. sci-fi buffs, carebears, children, evil griefers, etc.).

Personally, I would like to see MMORPG.com change its review policies.  I would suggest that, every time a game is reviewed, it should be reviewed by a total of three people.  These people should not talk to each other about the game, and their scores should be averaged once the reviews are complete.  This would result in more realistic scores that prevent games from getting a poor rating just because they don't suit one person's playstyle.  I do understand that it might take longer and fewer games would be able to be reviewed, but I honestly believe it would result in better information for those trying to decide whether or not to go out and pick up the game.

As others have said, the reviewer's rig is what was causing his lag issues.  I have no problems to speak of running the game with most of the settings maxed at 1680 x 1050 with the following rig:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 at stock 2.66 GHz
EVGA 790i Ultra motherboard
4GB OCZ Reaper DDR3 running at 1066MHz (looking to upgrade to more and faster RAM in the future)
2 EVGA 9800GTX graphics cards in SLI
Vista Ultimate 64 bit

I would like to see him re-review it with a computer that meets or exceeds the minimum specs.

I was rather surprised when I found myself enjoying the crafting in Fallen Earth.  I'm not generally the crafter type; my preferences can generally be summarized by saying "he likes to blow shit up".  Despite that, I find that I get a kick out of scavenging for materials in this post-apocalyptic setting and using them to create my own gear.

I would have to say that the reasons I'm enjoying it are twofold:

First, you don't have to waste time standing there and doing nothing else while crafting; you start your crafting job and then go do something else, whether it's gathering more salvage for further crafting, beating something into a bloody pulp with a golf club, or zeroing in on a mob's head from 70 meters with a sniper scope and using it for target practice.  You can also queue up multiple items to be crafted in succession, so you don't need to constantly keep going back to your recipe screen every five seconds if you need to build a bunch of little items.

The second reason I'm enjoying crafting is that you gain experience points for it.  No, not just crafting experience, though your crafting skills do increase as you use them.  Rather, you gain XP that applies directly towards your normal advancement point and level progression.  This is another reason that crafting doesn't feel like wasting time like it does in most other MMOs (with the notable exception of EVE, as the article mentioned).

And yes, I had problems finding scrap plastic myself at first...until I got to the massive debris fields south of Pass Chris and started salvaging.  Now I have more plastic than I know what to do with.  And, of course, as another poster said, plastic will be dropping much more frequently after today's patch.

Reading through the responses to this thread is like reading the responses to a thread on the official EVE forums by someone who jumped his uber faction-fit marauder into lowsec, got ganked by pirates, then decided to put up a post about how he shouldn't be able to be shot by other players anywhere, at any time.  It's almost like a shark feeding frenzy.  As such....

-throws a bag of popcorn into the microwave and drags out a big bowl and some popcorn cheese-

In reality, much as I may violently disagree with the design theory behind Champions (I play EVE, after all, and that's one shard with one--and only one!--instance), the truth is that, as far as I know, the only-one-shard-instanced-to-Hell approach hasn't been tried before.  This meets the criteria for "innovative" in my book.  As a result, most of the objections to the article posted here have little validity.

Now, as to whether that was a good design decision, that's another matter....

Posting to agree with all the SOE and NGE haters out there.

I absolutely loved the game back in the days before the NGE and before player Jedi.  I originally left because I got sick of being owned in PvP by an alpha class (Jedi) which I couldn't get unless I wanted to make my toon useless in PvP (read: spend months grinding and have no fun in game) until I managed to unlock.  Stupid 1-character-per-server limit.

As a result, I eagerly awaited the promised Combat Upgrade, supposedly a balance to the classes that would make the game fully enjoyable again.  When I found out there would be a level system, I was very leery of it, but seeing as how I was already fully-specced I figured I could live with it.   Imagine my surprise when, after the NGE, Jedi were still an alpha class and those who didn't have one generally got the short end of the stick.

Luckily, this resulted in me cancelling my subscription to a game I once loved before the NGE hit and made it even more dissimilar to the old game I wanted to play.

As a result, I have no intention of playing any SOE game ever again unless it's a pre-CU version of SWG with player Jedi either nonexistant or truly balanced against the rest of the classes.