9 posts tagged “mmorpg”

Dear priests,
I know you could never tell but I use to play a priest too. I understand how it is. You sacrifice healing for survival or vice versa. Healing people is a thankless job.. but you know why? Because it's a job. That's your class. You heal stuff. No one is going to expect you to rock out the DPS or tank a boss. You might feel you're entitled to a parade because you keep everyone in your group alive, but quite frankly, your group keeps you alive. It is with this symbiotic relationship that any of us are able to survive.

You might feel sometimes that you're being robbed of good gear. I don't think so. In any game, there's usually no other cloth wearer who can benefit from healing gear. If you feel your guild or group is short-changing you, speak up but remember, throwing fits gets no one anywhere.

Oh, and I understand how frustrating it is to politely ask persons to do something contrary to what they're doing currently as so you can heal them properly. Your anger might even cement itself in meaningful threats. It's always important to make a good impression, no matter how well you know people, so it's probably not good to purposely let everyone in your group die simply out of frustration. Put in the good effort even if these people are making your life hard, so long as you speak up. Some people are slower to learn than others.. and well, some people never learn at all. In which case, you should learn not to group with said person.

Be the master of your own destiny and please stop being douchebags. Stand up for yourself without being overly dramatic or crude. Be patient and understand that healing is indeed your job. Your role couldn't very well be adequately replaced by any other class, but on the other hand, you couldn't very well solo the tasks at hand.

It is unfortunate that I haven't met a good, mild tempered, non-jerk priest in years.

- gm

I got my guild up and running in WoW. This is probably the first time (that I can remember?) I've ever run a guild. I've owned property in UO but that only involved a small number of other people. (Real estate in that game is severely overpriced.) While other guilds are recruiting everyone and their mom, I've managed to assemble a small group of awesome people. We don't always agree on things but for the most part, I'm learning who's who and what makes them tick and who they are. It's nice.

I haven't been feeling well lately. Don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe my blood sugar is off or something. Who knows.

You know, back in my (ye olden MMORPGs) day, a guild would court you first before even attempting to invite you. It would take a few group dates before they even considered inviting you because it was just the polite and practical thing to do. You'd get to know the guild members years before you even accepted that little floating title above your character's name.

But everything is so impersonal now that we have the iPod generation. Don't get me started.

So to those of you who run guilds in any online MMORPG, please have a little tact and don't just hit and run with a guild invitation and no dialog. If you really appreciate your guildmates and the quality of your guild, talk to everyone you intend to recruit.. party with them before you invite them, see if they fit into the group dynamic by introducing them to existing guild members. A top-notch guild works well together, has fun together, and makes the hours go by most pleasurably. Guilds are the long term relationships of MMORPGs, not one night stands so they shouldn't be treated as such.

You whippersnappers don't care much for quality though.

I started beta testing this one MMORPG that touts "over 17 years old only." When first playing it, I thought, "oh, there must be some really bitchin' gore or heavy nudity or some sort of Hot Coffee type crap." But no, not really. The age restriction/suggestion seems to only be because of the heavy, heavy, heavy amounts of profanity included within. While intended, jokingly probably, as the WoW killer, it's really horrible to hear one of the peasant NPCs say "fuckslut." I almost want to stop testing it, but I've just resolved to barely read any of the dialogue.

I have to get use to this different banner thing. I always click my Vox blog and have to double-take.

Why don't I ever get recruited for beta testing awesome things? Recently, I had been chosen to beta test, along with pre-orderers (poor, poor souls), Carpe Diem. When I signed up for beta, I wasn't really going to hold their poorly designed website against them. I thought that maybe they were so busy working on the actual game that they couldn't possibly spare any time working on an attractive website.

I understand the trials and tribulations of beta. As a game designer, you just want the game to work first and foremost. All the careful planning and storyboarding and trying to map out designated walking areas throughout the game world has made you tired and cranky and you just want the thing to be done with. That's why you've gathered a bunch of schmucks (read: me) to test your game for free.

I figure things this way: graphics are something that probably won't change between beta and actual release. The developers are probably more concerned about the nuts and bolts of the game, like "why isn't this text scrolling?" or "why can't I click this?"

With that established, even if Carpe Diem miraculously got all the kinks out of the coding, it'd still just be a hideous game to be thrown in the pile of other dime a dozen MMORPGs that no one should have to pay for.

Finally I was accepted into phase three beta testing for an MMORPG called ArchLord. I was low on the priority list since I wasn't in the guild and don't run a fansite currently. I played straight through twelve hours, took a nap then played through another twelve straight hours. The point to a beta test is to pick out bugs and write down things you don't like but unfortunately a lot of the time no one cares so I'm posting this here. Will I continue playing Archlord? Probably, whenever I need breaks from Puzzle Pirates no doubt.

Character Creation
Here are the current gender limitations among the different races and classes -

Human -
Knight: Male
Archer: Male
Mage: Female

Orc -
Berserker: Male
Hunter: Female
Sorcerer: Male

Moonelf -
Ranger: Female
Elementalist: Female

When I was going to create a character, I was severely disappointed because I always play human archers who're chicks. Instead, I was forced to create some Legolas-looking motherfucker. I opted rather to play a female ranger moonelf. I hate elves but whatever. You can only choose your character's hair and face which is severely limited on the character select screen but there are more choices given to you at the stylist in your respective town. Some choices you have to pay for with in game currency, some choices you don't. It seems no one ever goes to the stylist in their town, so you end up with dozens of characters who look exactly the same.

Armor-wise, there is only one set of armor per certain level. So you could tell what level someone is simply by their outfit. The game relies on upgrading the stats for armor and weapons to make up for the lack of choice.

Initial Impression (first twenty-four hours)
I was a bit hesitant to sign up for beta since the screenshots didn't look that great. The grass looked subpar and the models themselves seemed stiff and flat looking. You can either go two ways when judging graphics, either they didn't spend a lot of time on them because they were too busy making an awesome game or they didn't spend a lot of time on them because they're rushing the game and therefore you should expect a crappy finished product.

The first couple of hours I was playing, I had a difficult time managing the camera. I actually ended up dying multiple times because the camera was stuck. When dealing with a game where the controls to move mean clicking far ahead of you, normally the arrow keys on a keyboard will be devoted to moving the camera. Not in Archlord, god forbid. When pressing an arrow key once, the camera moves a certain amount of degrees, say 90 degrees. It doesn't turn, it sort of flips. This causes an uneasy view of the surroundings around you. The other means to control the camera would involve standing stationary and using the crappy WASD controls they provide you. By standing still and pressing either A or D, the camera will smoothly and slowly revolve around you. This is impractical and slow. The only other way to move the camera around you is to hold down the right mouse button while you've clicked far into the distance and are running. If moving the camera is this difficult while doing something unimportant like running, then imagine how painful it must be while doing something important like PVP or PVE. Eventually you learn to live with it though.

They don't really teach you how to play. That's okay in a beta but it seems like the company wants to push this game into stores as soon as possible. There are no tutorials, scant hints will scroll across the screen at random but really there's no one to hold your hand. You can look up the help section in-game but I didn't find any of it to be particularly useful. I spent five minutes looking for some sort of option to sit down in the game to regain HP faster, but ended up learning randomly when someone shouted about typing "/sit". Funny thing is, sitting doesn't really make that much of a difference.

Most of the games I've played, if offering PVP, they offer it later on in the game. Usually around level 10 or 20. There's always the odd game that enables you much, much later on around level 30. Not in Archlord! Once you hit level six, you're vulnerable to attacks from other people. There's no opting out of the PVP either. So you're low level, just trying to get a quest done when someone behind you just decides randomly to kill you. I'm not sure if you lose XP when killed by another player, but I hope you don't. Because I can see how that would get old real quick.

Work, Work, Work (or why my opinion doesn't matter)
Archlord won't steal people away from EQ2 or WoW or even Silkroad. It seems a bit better composed than recent games that have gone into beta like Hero Online. There's still a lot of work to do that I'm sure will not get done. The camera will still be difficult to control when they release it for retail I'm sure. Limited genders when it comes to classes and races will probably be the same. The game seems like a skeleton, half-assed and perhaps perpetually unfinished. I could waste my time hoping that someone realises they have a lot of work to do still, but why bother. Archlord is a Codemasters game, same as RF Online. Very much a cheap rip-off of a Korean MMORPG with monotonous grinding, same characters, same skills, no difference, lack of cooperation among players and just an excuse to do something for X-amount of hours. The only thing that might hold Archlord up is PVP. But I'd rather play Silkroad at that point.

It's still beta, yeah yeah. There's a lot of things that need to be done and no one seems to care about getting it done. Unfortunate but that's how most MMORPGs are these days. I wouldn't pay for Archlord but there will always be some schmuck out there who's willing to put his cash on the table.. Look at all the kids who support SOE. Ahah.