Mystic Worlds

Is 30-days worth 50 bucks?

In the past couple of years I’ve purchased several games where my subscription only lasted a couple of months after release.  Age of Conan and Aion both earned that distinction.  I feel like 60 days of enjoyment is worth box price + 1 month subscription, beyond the 30-days that typically comes with the purchase, if I enjoyed it so much that I clocked a lot of hours  However, if your enjoyment wanes before you even complete the 30-days for free, was it worth the $50+ box price?  I’m not so sure.

Playing casually as my time permits these days, being involved in a game for only 30 days probably means I played less than 40 hours in total.  And obviously, that time played wasn’t all that great for me at least, or I wouldn’t bail so early.  50-dollars here, 50-dollars there, starts to add up.  Star Trek Online wins the award for shortest play-time for a subscription game.  I’d canceled my pre-order but forgotten that I’d ordered a copy for my son and/or nephew to share, until it arrived. 

I thought the BETA was enjoyable if you took STO for what it was – not so much MMO as cooperative play.  There was also lots of little busy work for progressing your character, your ship and your bridge officers.  Space combat was really fun and usually exciting, combined with passable land combat I thought, “Eh, it’s enough for now.”  Unfortunately, what happened was a more rapid decline in a desire to play.  I was having a similar experience as I had with Aion but worse.  I had fun when I bothered to log into the game to play.  However, nothing excited me enough that it drew me to bother signing in to play.

EQ2 could be my future, Allods is a keeper, ROM back on the menu and STO on hold.

In another 18 months EQ2 might be home

News is in, EQ2 is adding Battlegrounds.  At this rate, in another year or so, EQ2 will probably have most of what I want for my main-stay MMO.  I'm not being sarcastic either. If the game continues adding in the things I enjoy, the fact that I don't like the questing system will become increasingly over shadowed.  I can't run back to a subscription at this point because the PVP is for max level characters only.  Boo!  Besides which, they need to get through the PVP issues nerfing PVE skills, class balancing, crowd control whining and twink drama that have plagued WOW BGs since forever.  Yeah, I'll skip the initial onslaught of teeth gnashing and QQ.  Grats EQ2!

I canceled my STO pre-order

As much as I enjoy being there with the opening day masses, another week of the BETA left me feeling more uneasy about the game's future. In the past couple of years, I've bought too many games that I was sincerely excited about but didn't last long after the 30 days that came with the box, to go with the lower percentage of lasting past the 30 days, for a game that I'm only marginally enthused over. 

The 180 on the skill cap mechanic was the tipping point for two reasons.  First - class skill tree design in a game with infinite skill points is VERY different from a game DESIGNED FOR FINITE SKILL POINTS.  From what I can tell, the decision has changed without an overhaul and/or thorough review AND TESTING of impact.  You won't know how gimped the situation is until nearer to max level.  Second - Skill, attribute and item descriptions are so poor, it's hard to know if you're even making the right choices for your class, role and spec.  Poor documentation is tolerable when you have an infinite supply of skill points to spend but unacceptable when you don't.

Star Trek Online - Does Randomly Generated Content Get Stale?

I don't know if the randomly generated mission zones will become stale over time.  Right now, they're anything but.  I find the space combat very white-knuckle.  The over powered NPCs in the space combat missions is what makes my heart race.  Like W101, the content scales based on the number of participants.  However, you're always out numbered and flying noob ships against NPC cruisers is a battle.  You go in knowing that you're outclassed and out-gunned.  The question is, what are you going to do about it? 

Some groups know how to handle the situation and we complete the mission with no deaths.  Other groups struggle and ships get popped left, right and center until they stop charging in alone and let someone else get things going.  In either case, no one is communicating in chat, myself included.  Action trumps words and the players who have a clue about to do go for it. 

In a recent "State of the Game" letter to the players, the Alpha strike behavior of the NPCs has been deemed unintentional and will be fixed before release.  I hope they don't tone them down too much.  It's space.  It's war.  Shit - err, death happens in space.  So far there's no death penalty so I don't see what the problem is anyway.  With a DP that isn't lose your ship and it's gone permanently, I'd rather have exciting over-powered NPCs, instead of easy encounters that we'll be repeating.

I WISH I'd thought to record the mission previous to this one.  OMG, what an insane ride.  I'm damaged spec'd but acting as a tank in many groups and doing pulls when no one else seems up to the job.  I definitely won't go DPS for Live.  So far, I'm liking the tank role in space even though I've never wanted to tank in other games.  I'd like to try out the science/support ship role too.

It's also exciting to realize that I'll be able to play with anyone without worrying about what server people created there characters on.  I don't know how easy it will be reality, to get together with people you know.  For all I know the tools in place to facilitate such grouping might be inadequate or crude.  But at least the whole rick-roll of starting over to get on the right server with friends and acquaintances won't exist.

Star Trek Online Open Beta
Noob in Space - Lowbie PVE Mission

Download for Full Screen Viewing

The Rise of Coop-Play Styled MMOs

Personal definition of a MMO gaming experience
When I think MMO, I think of an open minimally instanced virtual world where players co-exist with infinite opportunities to interact with each other while carrying out game objectives.  Everyone that is on the same server, and in the same zone, is in the ONLY version of that zone.  And while existing within that world, the primary use of transitions (load screens) is for changing zones or entering into dungeons for group content.  This is what I consider the best case scenario.  I’ve only played three MMOs that came close to this ideal - Asheron’s Call 2, EVE Online and World of Warcraft.

I’ve come to accept other divides in virtual content that require the immersion wrecking load-screens, such as, the way EQ2 zones you into the different sections of a city, crafting workshops and instanced player housing.  Other games zone you into structures they expect may be heavily populated.  I can live with these sub-divisions of content.  But make no mistake, I’m never entertained while watching load screens.