Profile: Vasburg
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| Username | Vasburg  |
| Real Name | |
| Rank | Advanced Member |
| Joined | July 24, 2007 |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 27 |
| Location | Vienna, Austria |
| Last Visit | December 2, 2008 |
| Post Count | 54 |
| Biography | |
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Most Recent Thread by Vasburg [more...]
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WAR needs time to develop - But will EA be that patient? on 11/23/08 @ 5:53PM
Viewed 897 times, replied 39 times, last post was 11/26/08
Latest Blog Entry - MWO - New F2P MMO with RvR System (First Impressions)
From my blog Vasburg's Home of MMO Underdogs [Vasburg]
Magic World Online -- a new free-to-play, item mall-based "Concept MMO" currently in Closed Beta II (no more wipes, though) -- caught me by surprise. I rather accidentally stumbled upon this game when I was looking for a fresh MMO or Beta.
Not really knowing what to expect, the Diablo-esque isometric 2D graphics instantly caught my eye - full of details, cool skill/spell effects and animations (not many 2D games have a client that's over 4gb big). Something you don't see that often anymore. Unfortunately - I prefer a good 2D engine over a crappy 3D engine any day.
The Gameplay
First off, you create your character (visual customization is not available at creation, but you can change your hair color and style later) and choose gender, one of four main classes (branching up into many subclasses later on), and one of two Factions - Dynasty and Empire. Unfortunately the Beta does not yet explain who these factions are, other than the obvious difference that Dynasty characters start out in beautiful greenlands while Empire characters are based in a harsh desert. Those two factions, however, are the basis for an elaborated RvR (Realm vs. Realm) combat system comparable to DAoC:
Every faction has its own territories, where you can safely level up without having to fear any PvP (except PKing of own faction-mates, which results in heavy penalties - once you are a murderer you take the risk of dropping equipped items upon death). Later and more rewarding areas are contested, though. There you will have open PvP between Dynasty and Empire characters. There are also scheduled State and Siege Wars to round up the rich PvP-content of MWO.
The core gameplay revolves around hack 'n' slash i.e. killing zillions of monsters, collecting tons of items, and building up your character.
There is, however, more to this game. Some features quite known to full-fledged MMORPGs, such as player housing (with furniture giving special perks to the character), a quite complex crafting system, harvesting, mining, fishing, and even marriages - which again give special perks to the couple.
Other featues are quite unique and controversial. First and foremost the "MWO Robot".
Legal Ingame-Botting and Multi-Accounting as a Game Concept
Bots are always a hot topic in every MMO. And while no online game will ever be able to stop botting and gold sellers, MWO just chose a complete different solution to the problem: They legalized the use of bots. Even better -- and to make the game fairer to those who are not familiar with bot software -- they even deliver a intuitive yet complex bot configuration menu via the game's UI.
Admittedly this concept -- in way more restricted way known from Granado Espada aka Sword of the New World -- sounds quite queer, and I have been sceptic as well. But by now I adapted to the system and even consider it fair and fun.
Basically, it is possible to play the game AFK for most of the time (you can even play it afk on multiple accounts while playing something else, since hardware requirements are very moderate) - my toon fights, collects loot, auto-returns to the grind spot upon death, auto-sells selected loot (from a list in the bot menu), auto-refills potions, auto-repairs gear, uses AOE skills only if there are more than x MOBs clumped up etc. pp.
And even if you don't physically sit in front of your monitor all the time, performing 800234 clicks per hour, there is *still* the same feel of accomplishment to it like in any other MMO.
It is even allowed (and fun) to create multiple accounts and play a whole party at the same time.
This system comes with a few downsides, though.
Grouping with other players does not happen as often as in other MMOs, there is less "community activity" in the chat than in other games, and the massive amount of grind past level 40 pretty much requires you to play AFK 24/7 - no sane human being would sit in front of their monitor for 30 hours straight to level from 41 to 42...
But if you take the game for what it is and adapt, you will soon find it fun and addicting enough. Also fine-tuning your bot settings and finding optimal grind spots is complete different "meta game". It's like playing "Fifa Manager" instead of "Fifa Soccer" - although you can chose to *actively* play anytime.
The Skinny (so far...)
After 2 weeks I am still playing this game (or let it run while playing other games) and I still enjoy it and feel excited whenever I acquire a new good item or grind another level - even if I wasn't physically present when it happened.
Also the DAoC-like RvR system is a great incentive for grinding on - although the latter is a bit too much, with way too steep exp curves.
Since it is free-to-play, I'd say it is definitely worth a try, even if you are cynical about the whole ingame-bot-concept.
If interested, feel free to check it out at http://mwobeta.enjoymmo.com and be sure to get your free starter pack at MMORPG.com
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- Anarchy Online
Tried it right after release (2001?) and didn't like it one bit.
Came back with my bored (back then) SWG guild in 2003, played a lot in Shadowlands and RK alike and I had a BLAST. In fact, I would even say it was the best MMO experience I *ever* had. Unfortunately the people I used to play with mostly quit playing games all along, so at some point I stopped with AO.
Now I am back as a Froob, and I still love the game.
- Posted: 11/29/08 4:00 AM
Anarchy Online
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- Anarchy Online new engine
Yea, who knows if Funcom will even survive that long.
2 days ago they just confirmed mass layoffs, TenTonHammer reported something about 70% of the US Staff having been fired.
- Posted: 11/27/08 6:04 AM
Anarchy Online
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- Anarchy Online new engine
Just to confirm the current ETA for the new engine:
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Q - Is there any eta on the engine and how is it progressing?
The new engine is coming along well. We are slowly being able to strip out the work done by the old engine and soon all basic/core functions will be provided by the new engine entirely. The removal of the old engine means a complete removal of the old effects system...and the re-creation/improvement of all the effects in game. This is of course a very significant amount of pure time consuming work. At the same time work will be done to improve the look of the game where possible...things like character model alterations, new trees etc are all adding to the time required to get this done...and get this done right. We really want to take our time with this to make sure it lives up to all of our expectations. Our current goal is "Summer 2009". I'd like to promise it will be ready...but all I can really promise is that I will not release it until I am certain it looks amazing and is well optimized to ensure excellent performance on the vast majority of systems.
Source: Friday with Means - Nov 21, 2008
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The fact that it might well take yet another YEAR before the new engine goes live (we all know this is not gonna be last delay, and if they say Summer 2009 it will rather be Christmas 2009) is a bit disappointing, but then again it's nice to hear that they are now planning on improving the character models as well.
Originally they said they would only recode the engine so it would utilize modern GPUs, increasing the performance but NOT changing the looks and textures at all.
Then they stated that they were going to redo the enviromental textures as well and also released some eye candy vids/screenshots.
And now they also plan on improving character graphics - which honestly always has been my major gripe with this awesome game, and probably is needed the most.
Also the fact that they seem to have long-term visions for AO (I mean the game will already be 8 years old when they release a new engine for it) is very reassuring.
- Posted: 11/27/08 3:29 AM
Anarchy Online
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- Reminds me of AC.
It also looks like AC, graphics/engine-wise...
- Posted: 11/25/08 3:57 AM
Darkfall
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- WAR needs time to develop - But will EA be that patient?
So it's official, NCSoft just decided to shut down Tabula Rasa forever. Similar to Hellgate: London (by the way also hosted by EA) whose servers will be closed in January '09.
Both games were highly anticipated while still in development, had big names in their dev teams, big companies to host 'em.
And both had very unimpressive launches, gameplay issues *very* similar to WAR (although to be sure WAR at its core probably still is a far superior game) and both hardly survived more than a year before shutting down forever.
We all know the issues WAR has. Pure boredom, lack of communication, an empty world VOID of virtually any living soul (simply because 99% of all players are bunched up in warcamps to queue up for instanced minigame-scenarios), tons of bugs/glitches, and severe population issues (first server merges/mass transfers 1 month after release are anything but glorious, and CLEARLY show that WAR has FAR less subscribers than expected by EA Mythic).Some argue that WAR needs more time to be a great game. Others rather think that the game design is so poor that it can't be fixed (an engine that simply CANNOT handle 100vs100 battles without giving EVERYONE in the zone a 10 second delay on every action, only 2 instead of 3 factions, an endgame map layout that doesn't really encourage open RvR, mechanics that don't encourage keep defending or realm pride in general, too heavy focus on instanced PvP etc.)
But let's just assume that things *could* be fixed, and the game just needs more time. Isn't it still doubtful that a company like EA would just drop WAR all along?
It was supposed to be the WoW-killer, now it's an army of low/low servers that need to be merged. The population-trend is a steep downward-slope, the pace at which Mythic is implementing counter-measures anything but impressive. What will it be like... 1 year from now? I haven't seen any major MMO that unimpressed players at launch, dropped to a low population as a result, but then miraculously recovered to healthy numbers of players (aside from AO with its froob program, probably).SOE would just cut down the dev team to 1-20 people and add another game to their Graveyard Of Failed MMOs, which will be funded by the Station Access MMO-socialism.
But what will EA do once revenues hardly (or not at all) excceed the costs for feeding developers and keeping servers up anymore?
I kinda fear they are not the type of company to feed a starving child.(Hah, I just hope they will sell it to SOE as an addition to their Failyard instead of closing down servers.)
- Posted: 11/23/08 5:53 PM
WAR (Warhammer Online)
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