All Posts by solarine

It has little to do with the state of MMOs.

Looking for ulterior motives and hidden agendas is the name of the game in mass communication now. We have: disinformation, misinformation, mindnumbing information overload. Money keeps pushing to pocket us and our impulse to smarten up against it is driving us to the edge of paranoia. It is the new disease.

All of those are quite valid reasons.

To me the biggest irony is how antisocial a raid environment feels despite all those people playing together.

To me, here's the problem right now:

Science fiction is a genre of ideas, not fight sequences and we're not seeing a reflection of that in the MMO scene.

What we're seeing is mostly space opera... And from Barsoom to Star Wars, space opera is actually just a continuation of the fantasy and colonial adventure genres in space. There is so much more to science fiction than space shooters or colonial marines... But it would be a crime to take the worlds and stories of Stanislav Lem, Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Matheson or Philip K. Dick and turn them into a product of the "I smash U!" nonsense the MMORPG genre has sadly become.

I guess what I'm saying is, to do science fiction some justice as a genre (and a sophisticated genre it is), we have to have some MMOs based on settings, cultures, ideas and stories rather than combat. We need some other type of MMO design where a major part of the playerbase does not get to be Wedge Antilles or Private Vasquez.

Originally posted by Waterlily

..........

Slowly put down the knife and back away from the victim.

Nicely put, Detective Lily

Originally posted by Zhqrxt

...the gem of truly rpg art; Planescape Torment).  Get those dev`s together plz, so they can make a Planescape MMO.

 

 

Here's my instant-approval for a Planescape MMORPG - Torment has to be my favourite CRPG of all time.

As for the likely releases of 2009, I'm in for anything. Will play them all: Aion, WAR, TCOS... Each seem like they could be a lot of fun, though I have to say none really seem to be moving the genre into new ground.

Maybe Hero's Journey could be something fresh, but I doubt we'll see it released in 2009. I hope Bioware thinks out of the box with their MMO - they always value setting, story and character and that's already a huge plus in my book.

What I'd really like to see is a sci-fi MMORP with huge megalopoli... Something along the lines of Blade Runner or Neuromancer would do. Not purely combat based, with lots of story elements, background and puzzle-solving.

Here's how I remember it, from the classes I played:

Hunter and Warlock were the easiest to level. I'd say hunter was somewhat more convenient and fun. I remember loving my hunter pet and absolutely hating the lock pets - to the degree that the ability to Sacrifice them was pure bliss :)

Priest was tough to level till you get Shadowform, then it was quite an easy ride. Fun, too.

I found Rogue to be tougher than the above. Quite easy to *not die* but somewhat weaker overall; I seem to remember a lot of bandaging between kills. Needed good gear to grind efficiently like most melee classes (so if you load on AH-bought blues and purples and good enchants, it'll be much smoother).

Warrior had the heaviest "oops" factor among the classes I played. I remember dying a lot, especially due to pulling unwanted adds! Still fun, I must say.

Paladin was easy but suffocatingly boring.

Shaman drove me nuts in the lower levels, never went past 40.

So I'd say Warrior, Paladin and Shaman for different reasons.

P.S.: Never played Druid past 30, seemed to be easy going, but can't say for sure.

Originally posted by Gröm

I'm talking about the currency system, it's the same as in the pen & paper WFRPG (Warhammer Fantasy RPG), I mean: gold, silver and coppers.
Well I have the french version but it is\was like this (for those who that might be interested):

- 1 gold coin = 20 silver coins = 240 copper
- 1 silver coin = 12 copper

Will it be like that in-game?

Seems like it won't. In those screenshots, the currency field on the backpack shows the player has 19 gold, 42 silver, 24 copper.

Hmm, I can't see a gnoll there. Gnoll faces in Baldur's Gate are supposed to look quite dog-like.

I can't see a bugbear, either.

"...we are very excited about Turbine, its unique capabilities and the obvious opportunities that exist with our own broad portfolio of IP."

Time Warner Investments managing director and senior VP Rachel Lam

"J" is what happens when " :) " gets garbled. In my experience this happens especially when the receiver and sender use different sorts of mail clients. I've mostly seen it in Outlook-to-Firefox messages.

So put a smiley where you see a J

:)

Originally posted by aiwntrmute

A player dies, all their equipment drop (or at least their backpack).  PVP with new games has become pointless.  UO was good and so was shadowbane.

/on

Nope, that's still carebear. You die and you get away with just losing your items? Pfft.The player who PKed you should be given the option to kill your character for good (permadeath) or to keep your character as his pet.

Then your character will be displayed as PlayerName<PlayerKillerName's Pet>. You can only train pet skills as long as you're someone's pet. You get to challenge your master once a week, without any armour and only pet skills active. If you beat him, you'll be set free (back to player skills and not attackable by PlayerKillerName for 1 hour).

You cannot play a new character on any server while one of your characters is a pet.

Pets *will* fetch their master's slippers when asked to and *will* purr when they're patted.

Pets cannot fall to their death.

/off

Anyway, I think the death penalty on AOC is just fine. Any penalty that gives you a noticeable enough disadvantage so as to make you think twice and not be totally reckless should be good enough.

Originally posted by Explodingme

 

Originally posted by Katashi-kun

Probably 3 yrs at the earliest before an exp. for Mordor will arrive!

 

One does not simply expand into Mordor!

Umm, yes you do... :)

Sad but unavoidably true. You have to beat your imitators to new media or else most people will think *you * are the imitator when you step up.

They are making Neuromancer into a movie at last. Majority will think it's a The Matrix ripoff. The irony.

Originally posted by Housam

its funner building your won rig...:)

For the first 20-25 times, maybe. Now I don't want to even open up the case and would gladly pay someone for something as simple as change a fan.

Well, anything is possible. I've seen games come straight out of left field whereas for example Gods and Heroes crashed and burned in the middle of a beta that did not seem that far off from a release.

The more important point is: Does it make any difference, really? If it's out, we get to play it, if it's not, we don't. It's not as if people program their lives around MMO releases - or at least hopefully they don't!

"I think I should take this year off of college because Darkfall has gone gold."

"You know, I was planning to buy a house, but Darkfall is coming out so I have to review my whole budget. Who knows, I might get fired!"

"Happy 12th anniversary, dear. Oh, by the way, Darkfall is going to release this year, so this is as far as it goes!"

Anyway, you get my meaning :)

If it gets released, we all get to have a go and see how it works. To be honest it does not look to be my cup of tea, but who knows?... I tend to reward freshness with a purchase.

Demonologist first, Aquilonian Guardian second for me.

Romantic comedy.

(sorry, could not resist)

Firstly, something truly original would be most welcome... but seeing as it will take a lot of space to describe what sort  of new worlds not yet invented might excite me, I will stick to known IPs here.

1. Blade Runner Online (from the movie Blade Runner)

2. Planescape Online (from the D&D setting we also got to play in Planescape: Torment)

3. The Foundation Online (from Isaac Asimov's The Foundation series)

4. Time Streams Online (from Michael Moorcock's steampunk trilogy A Nomad of the Time Streams)

5. The Sprawl Online (from William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy starting with Neuromancer)

...and...

6. Citizen Kane Online (all players try to figure out what "rosebud" is... just joking)

I buy pretty much anything that looks even remotely interesting, so yes.

WAR, AOC, TCOS, Aion, and then some.

The real decision is which I'll keep on playing after a few months :)