Before I get into what games I’m looking forward to, I wanted to mention some personal and blog related things. My wife and I are expecting our second little Kae to show up sometime in June. I’m sure that’s going to kill any time I have to play MMOs for a few months. I really dislike logging into an MMO, when I don’t know if I’m going to get pulled away at a second’s notice. When my son was born, I focused mostly on single player games, since I could pause it and go do father things without worrying about ruining anyone else’s game.

Not playing MMOs will either mean that this blog goes silent for a few months, or you’ll see tons of posts as I’ll have lots of time to read, think, and write.

Writing

Last year, I tried an experiment with posting consistently on week days. I wasn’t perfect about it, but I did well enough to consider it a success. I stopped doing that mid-summer though once it started to take the fun out of writing. I don’t regret doing it though as I developed some good habits and even got to the point where I started to feel antsy if I hadn’t written anything by the end of the day. Kind of like those healthy people who talk about missing the gym. I guess anyway, I’ve never felt that.

Anyway, this year I’m trying a new experiment. I write a lot from my phone and from work, basically anytime that I get an urge to put pixels on a screen. Most of the time though, those posts go into the draft folder and never emerge. I always intend to edit and publish them that night, yet rarely ever do. So this year, I’m going to try skipping the editing stage as much as possible. After all, if there are any really stupid grammar or spelling mistakes, I’m going to be much more motivated to fix them if the article is public, and this way I’ll not have any regrets about not getting an opinion or idea out in a timely fashion.

So now you know, if the blog stays empty it’s just because I have no ideas and not because I’m a lazy self-editor. Finally, let’s talk about some games.

PC/Xbox

This is the first year in a while, that I’m not really looking forward to much. Mass Effect 3 is basically my whole list for the year.

I believe this is a good thing though, because my backlog of unfinished, never played, and never installed games is getting embarrassingly massive. I still haven’t gone back to Skyrim and finished my first play through. I have the last DLC for Mass Effect 2 to finish. I’ve barely touched Minecraft since the 1.0 release in November. Then there’s my Steam library, let’s just not even start on that.

So while there’s not much new I’m looking forward to, I’m still excited for single-player and offline gaming this year.

MMOs

Rift

While I do still have an active subscription, I’m not planning on renewing it in April. As I mentioned in my 2001 review, I had a ton of fun with the game, but between feeling so behind with all of the content updates and most of my friends playing other MMOs, I have no interest in going back.

Champions Online

I fully expect to keep playing in Millennium City off and on as Cryptic adds new story missions and new power sets. Honestly, I’ve already started eyeing the launcher as they’ve added some cool new costume options recently as well as the Earth and Wind power sets. The cool thing about this game is I have no expectations for the coming year, so I’ll enjoy whatever comes.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

I’m playing a ton of TOR right now. I have a Jedi Knight Guardian in the mid 40′s (level cap is 50) and am nearing the end of the story missions. This means I’ll hit the mythical end-game soon. Generally when I do that, I start an alt and lose interest in repeating content after a few days. This is followed by moving on to another game. With TOR, I’m hoping that having some fresh class missions will be enough to keep me interested and get a second character to 50. We’ll see if BioWare manages a first in my gaming history.

Interestingly, I’m already feeling like I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of TOR, so if I do end up cancelling my subscription, I’m not going to feel bad about it. I suppose that because the game really has felt like playing KotOR 3.

Looking at the rest of the year, I hope to still be playing in June but I kind of doubt it given my history at level cap. Obviously once the baby get’s here, all bets are off.

Lord of the Rings Online

After taking most of the year off and then getting in a solid month, LotRO has been on hold since November. First it was Skyrim and then it was TOR keeping me from playing. Eventually, I’ll return to Middle-Earth and resume my hunter Brynulf’s journey into the Gap of Rohan. It may well be the fall, but it seems like I always go back to LotRO eventually, and that makes me happy.

Star Trek Online

After an extremely rough year, I really hope that STO turns things around. The F2P launch is happening (today actually), and the long awaited Featured Episode Series Four is coming as part of the second anniversary of the game.

Past February, I want to see a permanent Executive Producer hired and I really want to see the monthly Engineering Reports and Ask Cryptics restarted. I know there have been a few new hires since the PWE acquisition, but I’d like to see the team continue to grow, and start seeing that investment payoff in more regular updates of new features and new story missions. If we get to December and have seen Featured Episode Series 4, 5, and 6, I’ll be very happy. If not three FE’s (which D’Angelo doesn’t think is likely), then I want to see more single mission story content added.

One thing I do want to clarify though, I’m not at all disappointed or upset with the Star Trek development team at Cryptic. I think they’ve done as much as possible given some pretty difficult situations over the last six months (if not longer).

Last January, I wan’t looking forward to much on the Xbox. In fact, there were just two games: Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Akham City. Unfortunately Mass Effect 3 was delayed, but Akham City more than made up for that. The game had everything I loved about the first Batman game but added improvements, and even though I’ve finished the game, I still pop it into my console occasionally to beat on some thugs.

Outside of Arkham City, my Xbox didn’t get much playtime, which I guess is why it decided to red-ring on me in December. I had hoped by waiting through the first few manufacturing runs and getting an Elite, that I had dogged all of the overheating problems with Microsoft’s console. I was wrong. The repair process was relatively painless: go online and submit a repair request, print out a label, box and ship it out. I just wish it hadn’t cost me $99.

PC

The PC had a few more titles I was excited about: Minecraft, Portal 2, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 – Retribution (could the title be any longer?), and Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. Well okay, Minecraft was a bit of a cheat since it was pretty much already released. Portal 2 was as good as I hoped it would be, and I got to have some extra fun by playing through the co-op version with MMOGamerChick. DoW Retribution I’ve barely touched. I really really loved the original Dawn of War games, but the shift in focus from base building to boss battles has soured me a bit on the franchise. Space Marine made up for my disappointment in Retribution though, the game was over the top gory fun. Some people may try to tell you that using a chainsword on an Ork get’s old, but they’re lying to you.

Unlike with Xbox, this last year also had two big surprises for me on the PC platform. First there was the colossal disappointment of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This was a game I was not anticipating in the slightest, but ended up buying because of the wave of good press and excitement from friends. Unfortunately, I only put five hours into it before running headlong into a boss battle geared for the exact opposite type of character that I was playing. I realize I’m in the minority opinion on this game, but I still strongly believe that you don’t build a game around choice and then take it away during the central moments of the game.

The second big surprise happened in exactly the same way, but with opposite results. Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim was another game that I wasn’t anticipating at all. Like DXHR, I hadn’t played any of the earlier games in the series, and even though the screenshots looked good and I thought I might like it, I was wary of letting myself get sucked along with the ground again. In the end, I did end up going ahead and getting it, and I’m so glad I did. Skyrim has been a Minecraft-like experience for me (which is ironic given the legal battle between the companies). Just like I got sucked completely into Minecraft last year and played nothing else for months, my gaming time was wholly subsumed by Skyrim. Today, I’ve put 117 hours into just one single-player game. One hundred and seventeen hours. That is incredible, considering a good single-player game usually lasts me no more than 40 (like Red Dead Redemption or Arkham City). But even more incredible is that after more than a hundred hours, I’m not even halfway through the main story line.

PC was much more exciting this year than I thought it would be. I’m not sure that 2012 will be though, but I’ll save that for later.

MMOs

Rift

Trion had the perfect situation this year. From January to November, they had the only new major MMO title. I think they capitalized in it very well too. They’ve been continually releasing new content and making tuning changes. Honestly if anything, I think Trion’s proved it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. They’ve been updating the game so much, that when I came back after a month away, it felt like I’d been gone for six months or more.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

BioWare ended up releasing much later in the year than I expected. This ended up being a good thing both because they had more time to get things right, but also because they managed to get through the hype backlash I was expecting before release (or even beta). There’s not too much more I can say about TOR as far as 2011 goes beyond I got in at launch, had no problems, have seen no queues, and am immensely enjoying the Jedi Knight story line.

Champions Online

Champions has been a fun game to hop into of f and on over the year, especially the few times I’ve gotten to play with Scott. The game had a successful F2P launch and has released some good story content with their first Comic Series and a third Adventure Pack. While I haven’t had that original love of the game rekindle, I’m sure I’ll continue to login anytime I get an urge to play superheroes.

Lord of the Rings Online

Last year, I was feeling pretty down on LotRO. The F2P conversion caused an explosion of gold store buttons in the interface that just got under my skin. My disinterest continued for most of the year, including well into the development cycle for Rise of Isengard. It wasn’t until I saw a developer diary with some video about the making of Orthanc for the game, that I had any interest in returning to Middle-Earth.

Once I got back in the game, I was motivated enough to finish Volume 2 of the Epic Quests, get caught up on Volume 3 in Enedwaith, and charge on towards Isengard. I didn’t make it to level cap before Skyrim started dominating my playtime, but I was really happy with the new work Turbine has done on the game and I’ve finally trained myself to not see the store buttons.

Star Trek Online

And lastly, we come to the MMO that I’ve had both the most and least fun with during 2011.

The game started out very well. We had an anniversary event, an excellent renovation of Earth Spacedock, and then a third Featured Episode Series, Cloaked Intentions. The Series 3 was the best one so far and featured great missions, fun voice work, and the music from Amok Time.

Unfortunately, that was the high point of the year. We did get the Foundry followed by a good revamp of ground combat in Season Four, but we also got Atari selling Cryptic, Dan Stahl leaving the Executive Producer role, Free-to-Pay announced, and no new story missions.

Whether it was Dan leaving, the change in ownership from Atari to Perfect World, or the announced F2P transition, the high level of communication and transparency that I loved in 2010 has vanished. The last Engineering Report was released in August, with no word about if or when it’s coming back. The last Ask Cryptic was in September. Granted, the temporary Executive Producer Stephen D’Angelo did write a lot of blogs during the F2P development, but I found them pretty thin on details.

Overall, it’s been a disappointing year for me in STO. I guess I have to have at least one MMO to be down on at the end of every year.

This is a mixed blessing as I thought it was good for the STO team to get an extra month of changes, fixes, and tuning in without inflicting instability on Holodeck players. However, it will be nice to finally get the Duty Officer system and other changes on the live server. It also helps keep players subscribed for one more month for those who were planning on dropping to silver accounts, and gives Cryptic a month long shakedown cruise before the (supposed) hordes of new players arrive.

If it all goes as planned, Star Trek Online should be able to open its free-to-play doors and be in the best possible shape.

The early stipend is not as much of a surprise to me.  That’s a pretty standard gesture that other studios have done as well,  both as a thank you and a way to keep any subscribers planning to switch account tiers around for one more month.

The more interesting bit from the announcement is this quote from Stephen D’Angelo, Executive Producer on STO and Chief Technical Officer:

We’ve always wanted the game to be free-to-play, in fact we tried to make it free-to-play at the original launch, but our publisher (Atari) didn’t want us doing that so we didn’t do that.

I don’t completely believe that since STO was their second game for Atari and I never heard anyone at Cryptic say Champions was always intended as a F2P game. Then again, with the way sector space is laid out in blocks, maybe there is something to that. Certainly going with a combination of subscription and in-game store shows a muddling of both models.

If you’re interested in the game and you haven’t been reading the Path to F2P Dev Blogs, they’re worth checking out. For the most part, they’ve not contained a lot of new information, but they have been a good way to get a feel for the new interim Executive Producer, Stephen D’Angelo. The latest one, part 5, is about to cause a drama storm on the forums. Cryptic is planning to open the C-store for testing on Thursday, and as part of that testing they’re setting up Test Points for people to use to test out some of the F2P changes. Anyone with a character on Tribble will get some free points to spend, which is standard procedure. The other way people will get Test Points, is to buy Cryptic Points. Basically, if you buy a 500 point bundle for $6.25, you also get a matching 500 point bundle for Tribble.

Stephen explains this as a way for Cryptic to get a realistic idea of how well they’re doing with pricing for F2P, since if players had an unlimited pool of free points then they would just buy everything. Since they’ll be using points they actually paid for, then they’ll value Tribble purchases just as much as Holodeck purchases.

I can see the logic in that, but I don’t think it’s worth the bad PR that’s bound to come from it. The thread is here if you want to keep tabs on the community reaction.

The features list and FAQ both mention several times that the details of F2P are subject to change depending on testing and feedback. Overall though, I imagine most of what they’ve outlined will be how the change happens.

The C-store is getting an itemization and price review. The FAQ says that ship prices will not go up, but I assume that consumable prices will based on how Champions Online’s store changed. A few of the premium species will become free (Ferengi, Rigelian, Pakled, and Tellarite) and some will become earnable in-game (Liberated Borg, Joined Trill, and Federation Klingon).

Lifetime and monthly subscribers will become gold players and still have access to everything they do now. They’ll start receiving a stipend of 400 C-store points every month, as long as they continue to subscribe.

New players and former subscribers will be silver players. Silver players will have access to all content: sectors, missions, foundry missions, fleet actions, featured episode series, and special task forces. They can join fleets. There are no restrictions on Federation character career paths, and they will be able to roll a Klingon Empire character. Silver players are limited to two characters slots, will not be able to create Foundry missions, and will not qualify for Veteran Rewards. Former subscribers can keep any existing Veteran unlocks. They will have limits on their in-game chat and mail until they’ve played twenty hours total across all characters on the account or bought C-store points. This is one of the limitations that may change depending on how well it handles problems with spammers.

The initial level unlock for the Klingon faction is being changed from level six (pretty sure about that) to level 25. This means the starting level for Klingon Empire characters will be 25 and existing characters under that level will get bumped to 25 (no one will lose low-level characters). Cryptic states this is to improve the Klingon faction experience, and I assume this is a temporary change until Cryptic and Perfect World develop enough Klingon content to make it a full-fledged faction. It’s honestly not a large speed bump as it’s less than a week of effort to hit level 25, but I can imagine this being one change that the community doesn’t like.

Overall, I think Cryptic’s plan is pretty solid. Existing subscribers will see very little change except for whatever happens with C-store pricing, and free players will be able to access all of the content in the game without paying a penny. The limitations all revolve around customization and convenience items.

Personally being a lifetime subscriber, I’m happy to start accruing some free points to spend in the C-store. Were I a monthly subscriber, I’m not sure if I would drop to silver or not. Overall the only benefits to staying subscribed are the stipend and the Veteran rewards, everything else can be unlocked via purchase except the Foundry editor. It really comes down to whether or not I feel that $15 a month is worth it to support further development in the game, and that’s something I’ve always felt strongly about since I bought a lifetime subscription.

And also Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well.

Unfortunately that’s all the detail we have just now, as Cryptic itself isn’t ready to make any announcements according to Dan Stahl (from forum post):

I can neither confirm nor deny anything (until given approval to).

Update: Except Dan did post again later in the same thread with this:

There are certainly a lot of questions you may have about this news. The team is working on an FAQ and side by side comparison details that will spell out very clearly what this means for Lifetime and Subscription members. Until then, please stay tuned as we confirm all the details.

Update 2: Another follow up post from Dan:

The goal has been to leave subscriptions alone and ensure that you enjoy all the same benefits you have today (if not more). There will be more details on this soon.

Based on Dan’s comment, I assume we’ll see something official fairly soon.

I don’t think anyone’s surprised by the announcement, I’m certainly not. I’ve assumed that Champions successful shift to F2P meant STO would follow. I originally figured six months would be the “wait and see” time before Cryptic decided of the Champions experiment was a success. I’m sure the delay has been because of the Atari to Perfect World transition.

I do feel bad for the STO team that PW leaked the news in an earnings call, I’m sure there’s some scrambling going on in Los Gatos this evening.

Even though I took my netbook with me and had some small Steam games loaded on it as well as Minecraft and a copy of my current single player world, but I didn’t end up playing anything. I also didn’t miss playing MMOs while I was gone. Which surprised me.

Instead I was mostly unplugged for the week, and read a lot.Although you can’t tell from the massive pile my backlog of books makes. I swear it grows even faster than my backlog of games.

So now that I’m back, what’s going on?

• There’s a demo is out for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and it looks amazing. I played a bit last night and had an absolute ball taking a chainsword to hordes of orcs. If the rest of the game plays the same it will be a ton of fun.
• A surprise MMO came of of Gamescom this year: Wildstar. The videos I’ve seen look great and the features I’ve read about sound promising. The studio, Carbine, has a good pedigree and some experiences people, but the publisher is NCSoft and that gives me pause. NCSoft is infamous for killing games quickly and having security issues. Granted they’ve given a lot of support to ArenaNet and I haven’t heard much lately about account hacks, so maybe they’ve learned from prior mistakes. I also agree with MMOGC and would almost prefer to see the IP done as a feature-length movie instead of a game. Either way, I’m keeping my eye on it.
• Stargrace made a very excellent point about games being a way for people to entertain themselves. I’ve actually worked on a post similar to hers talking about how lazy some players seem to be. There seems to be a growing expectation that a gamer should be able to sit back and almost be forced to have fun, kind of like watching TV, instead of having to invest some effort in the experience.
• Big news at STO… the Perfect World acquisition is finally completed. The game had been in an odd limbo state since the release of Season 4. Because of the acquisition, Dan Stahl and the other developers had been much quieter than usual and the game had kind of stalled out content-wise with the Foundry being offline because of bugs. The floodgates have opened though. Dan posted a very interesting response to one community member talking up PW’s confidence and interest in STO, and Cryptic seems to be following up by posting a lot of job openings. Add in the fact that the Foundry is finally back to 100%, and I think the rest of the year should be pretty smooth sailing.

I’m likely forgetting some things but those are the major events I wanted to catch  up on.

The map is gorgeous. There’s tailor, exchange, and mail services on the map right now. According to Dan Stahl (here) there are plans to use the map for a ground Fleet Action and as a starting zone for neighborhood missions. Eventually it will also be the starting point for the new tutorial.

Part of the fun when I was on Tribble last night was the party happening on the roof of Building Two. There’s a glitch where if you log out while standing on top of the plaque over looking San Francisco, then when you log back in you’re on the other side of the fence and can literally get behind the scenes. It takes a little running, but it’s possible to get around the edge of the map and up onto the roofs of the building.

I like seeing the ship textured as I finally have an idea of the scale of the ship and it does indeed seem massive. I also like that the ship’s class name references journeys and exploration over combat.

I don’t like the angle chosen for the initial screenshot. It makes the ship look whale-like by over-emphasizing the secondary hull and dish and marginalizing the dual necks. Were this the only image I’d seen of the new ship I wouldn’t event realize how different the overall design if from the Sovereign. Besides the bad angle, the image itself is not very large and I’ve found no links to higher resolution images, or to additional images from other angles.

My guess as to why they did the photo this way is that they want to keep the ship still partially under wraps until it’s revealed in-game for the first time. That’s understandable but it doesn’t give a good first impression. Fortunately we still have this image.