Mystic Worlds

Runes of Magic – Saying no to "rent-a-pet"

I do realize that my tastes aren’t necessarily mainstream opinion.  I’m out there doin’ my thing and dancin’ to the sometimes twisted MMO melody inside my head.  I’ve recently tried free-2-play (F2P) games with their real money transaction (RMT) inducements.  I’ve purchased gear in Wizard101.  I’ve purchased convenience items in Runes of Magic (ROM).  My character’s house, turned crafting tavern, is slowly taking shape in ROM and will soon be made available to in-game friends.

Within a couple of days of play, I’d decided I liked ROM and started putting down roots.  I purchased a permanent mount and purchased extra slots in my house.  I know that F2P games have to make money just like every other game and I’m willing to spend $10 to $20 a month to have some personalized fun.  People opposed to RMT are off wailing about purchasing virtual swords and what-not, as if that’s all there is to be had.  I scoff and laugh at all their teeth gnashing and ignorant fear.  Subscription money or RMT money, it’s all real money for virtual content.  It should be clear that I don’t have an issue with spending real money in a game, so why-oh-why am I peeved about the pet situation in Runes of Magic!?!

Runes of Magic – Dual Class System

Trying out the dual class system in Runes of Magic (ROM) was one of the features that excited me most about this MMORPG.  The default classes are nothing special in and of themselves, discounting the Druid and Rune Dancer classes that we know nothing about yet.  However, the wide open talent specialization allows you to take something common and turn it into something special.  A Knight class alone is the standard defensive based class you’ve seen in other games.  The elemental based Mage is nothing new either.  It’s combining them as Knight/Mage or Mage/Knight that brings something new to the table.  As Knight/Mage, you could create a strong offensive class that can off-tank as well as provide decent DPS.  The World of Warcraft Death Knight immediately comes to mind.  I’ve never played a Warrior.  I’ve often rolled a healing class as an alternate character knowing that I’d never do end-game healing.  Healing classes can be fun to level solo but can suffer from low DPS.  Along comes ROM and I have the option of combining a traditional healer with a DPS class of my choosing which led me to the Priest/Warrior, a combination that plays like a Monk and boasts the highest DPS Priest combo.

How it works
You can choose any two classes for you dual class combination.  And you want to choose two classes as there is no advantage for selecting only one.  In fact, you’d be at a disadvantage in base stats as well as only having talent points from a single class.  At any given time your choice is to play your combo Class A as primary with Class B as secondary, Class B as primary with Class A as secondary, Class A only or Class B only – A/B, B/A, A only or B only.

Bring the Player vs. Bring the Class Raiding

I haven’t played World of Warcraft for the past year or so.  It’s been longer than that since I’ve raided or concentrated on doing instanced content.  Even though I’m not playing WOW, I still listen to a couple of shows on WOW Radio.  Specifically, I’m still following TotalBiscuit’s Blue Blz podcast.  I understand that many of the hardcore raiders are not happy with the end-game content released with Wrath of the Lich King (WOTLK).  It’s too easy from what I’ve read and heard.  Many raiding guilds have already beaten the top bosses and have those instances on farm.  It appears that Blizzard is slowly altering the basic requirements of raiding to what TB calls, “bring the player and not the class.”  I hear what he’s saying but until now have only shrugged at the idea.

Even though I completed a lot of levels and content solo in Asheron’s Call 2 (AC2), everyone did the group dungeons.  The dungeons like Lost Company and Boots were repeatable, and provided too much XP to ignore.  The Master Vaults were much the same and equivalent to raid content, minus loot drops.  AC2 was my first experience with large group content.  We didn’t call it “raiding” but it was close.  I found the vaults extremely fun and exciting no matter how many times I’d done them.  After acquiring the items needed to open the vault and gathering the players needed, it was a mad dash.  We raced to clear trash mobs and complete tasks to trigger the appropriate events that would spawn the boss.  You tried your best to get into a party that had a healer before the final encounter where you’d be dead in a couple of hits without heals.

Part 2 of 2: MMORPG – What makes a good a community?

Character Community
“It takes a community to raise a child,” saying frequently enters my mind when I’m running around ROM.  In EQ2 players felt like a community but not the game.  One of my strongest dislikes was the far flung questing hubs where there was nothing do to there but quest – clusters of mobs hanging around just waiting to be killed.  NPCs standing carefree in the middle of danger zones waiting to give and complete quests.  My character felt disconnected from the virtual community it was playing in and trying to help.  I never understood why should I care about these mobs all the way out in the middle of nowhere?  They aren’t bothering anyone, no one is around.  That type of content design doesn’t incite any level of urgency or need for me to be bothered with these creatures.  We, the players live and conduct commerce over HERE.  The majority of the questing takes place over THERE.  In my mind, this is a huge disconnect in motivation for running between HERE and THERE.  So while there was a great community of players, the game itself never felt like a community of characters, except for within the small confines of the guild structure.

Relax and take a deep breath. RMT doesn’t have to be about buying gear.

Over at Massively, Colin Brennan discussed the stigma associated with Free-2-Play games and Real-Money Transactions, which linked to my post.  After I realized it was linked on Massively, I started following the track-backs from my site to others, where players were discussing my post.  Invariably, the player who started their own post linking to mine understood where I was coming from, even if they had their own reservations and wouldn't personally participate in RMT.  Unfortunately, on Massively and these other sites, not all of the readers bothered to wade through the text before replying – some vehemently negative and full of ignorance on the subject.

Real Money Transactions (RMT) does not have to be about buying gear!  For the love all that’s holy, please stop assuming that everyone who plays is a gear whore.  PLEASE stop assuming what motivates you to play and what you deem as important or an achievement, are the only paths.  Sure, there are many players for whom the purples are all that matter.  However, there are many who could care less about those items.  We’ll take them when we can get them but wearing epics isn’t the sum total of the gaming experience we seek.

Part 1 of 2: MMORPG – What makes a good a community?

Player Community
What factors foster good communities in online games?  How much of the community’s tone is impacted by game design versus the player population?  These questions have been on my mind lately having played Wizard101 (W101) and Runes of Magic (ROM).  I’m emotionally vested in both of these games.  Children in W101 not withstanding, the communities inside and out of the game behave very differently, a fact that keeps grabbing my attention.

In W101 there is a lack of in-game community because the game mechanics do not support conversing easily.  Besides whisper (private chat) there’s only one chat channel and it’s the equivalent of Say chat in other games.  ALL CHAT is filtered through a very restrictive chat dictionary.  Attempts at even the simplest conversation is EXTREMELY ANNOYING.  As a result, I don’t bother.  Unless it’s someone I know I often ignore people trying to speak to me because trying to speak phonetically around the chat filter requires more energy than I’m willing to expend on a stranger.  It's not uncommon for me to attempt multiple times to reply to someone only to have my sentence butchered into nonsense.  When I'm already not in a good mood I say, "Forget it," and walk away.   I'm here to relax and enjoy myself.  Not tear my hair out trying to chat.  This heavily restrictive and often nonsensical game mechanic encourages rudeness.  I don’t talk to strangers much anyway.  If you make it painful I’m going bail on it completely.

ROM: Lord no, not another pages quest…

"Lord no, not another pages quest," was my first thought when I picked up a quest asking me to gather the lost lore pages of Taborea in Runes of Magic.  That horrible Stranglethorn Vale quest for the Green Hills pages immediately popped into my head.  Of all the characters I had in World of Warcraft, not a single one ever completed that quest.  After banging my head on the wall on my first two characters, I steered clear of it on the others.  Sure you could beg or buy them on the Auction House.  I’m sorry that felt hack.  I never bought quest items on the damn AH.  And I’m here to tell ya, when players have to resort to doing that to complete a quest, the quest was poorly designed from jump street.

Being that much of Runes of Magic looks and feels like WOW II, I expected the same stupidity in a “find these pages” quest since they’d lifted the idea in the first place.  I abandoned the quest immediately.  As I went about my business completing other quests I kept finding pages in my backpack.  Grrr!  Inventory space being at a premium this started to irk me.  I deleted them as fast as they showed up.

In gaming, gender sometimes matters.

I’m a female gamer and have always created female characters.  I’ve played male characters only when I’ve inherited or swapped with one the kids for a change of pace.  In my early days of gaming, I played with a close group and guild.  There was no preferential treatment I ever noticed based on gender – in game one or out of game reality, it was based on being a member of the family guild.

While bopping about in other games, I’ve never really noticed any difference either.  People appeared to be nice or rude based on their own in game behavior that had nothing to do with the gender of my character.  Conversely, I’ve recently had three encounters in Runes of Magic where the fact that I was a female playing a female character, altered someone’s behavior toward me.

The first occurrence which I took to be a fluke was the gift of the Ventis Robe.  I was complaining in Zone chat that I’d been given a pair of leggings that had no crotch as the match to my new robe, which was only waist high.  I was going on about how only a guy could create that combination and think it was fine.  Seriously, my ass was hanging out and I don’t care if it’s only a game, I wasn’t happy about it.  I couldn’t find a robe on the AH for my level, which I was willing to swap into regardless of stats.  From my complaint it was clear that I was a female having an issue with an aesthetic on my female character.

What's more important to you? Journey or End-Game?

I did a lot of research before choosing my class combination in Runes of Magic.  How is it then that I’m now thinking that I made the wrong choice and am contemplating a re-roll?  It’s simple really, the more choices there are the harder it is to pin-point the right answer.  And since the game is still in BETA, the information you’re finding on the forums isn’t the whole picture.

I tried several classes before choosing the Priest/Warrior combination that can be played as a Monk archetype.  The combination itself is damn amazing.  I’m waiting for the nerf bat once the game goes live.  I’m not sure they really intend for a class that is in cloth to take on 3 to 4 mobs of equal level to +2 levels and consistently to come out on top.  I've gone into areas with social mob aggro and seen player headstones, yet I go there and never even come close to dying. 

A Player and the forums made me do it…

Tips for Leveling the Two Classes
I finally stopped messing around crafting, exploring and taking pictures long enough to hit level 17/17 on my Battle Monk (Priest/Warrior) in Runes of Magic.  My method of only leveling via one character is still proving successful.  However, it’s based on doing quests and not farming/grinding mobs.  If the quests thin out in the upper levels this strategy won’t work.  For now, it's proving to be golden.

The way I’ve kept both classes equal in level without ever having to “level” the other is by performing all the quests using my main (Priest).  At any given time only the primary in the class combo is getting the XP.  So as Priest/Warrior, it’s the Priest getting the XP. As Warrior/Priest it’s the Warrior getting the XP.  Since a majority of the quests are kill quests, the Priest is leveling via the kill XP.  Her rested XP bonus stays high and is aided by rested XP furniture items in my house, which is where I make sure to leave her when I’m logging off. 

When it’s time to do some leveling I ride around and grab all available quests in the zone.  I do them as the Priest/Warrior, she gets the kill XP and first pick at the dropped loot.  When all the quest objectives have been satisfied, I go back to my house and change my class combo to Warrior/Priest.  I return to the appropriate NPCs, turning in all the quests as the W/P and so the Warrior gets her XP.