More Famous than I Realized

I logged into LotRO recently because I wanted to check out these mysterious obelisks that had popped up in Eriador. I found the last obelisk in Enedwaith, which reminded me that I had unfinished business with the Grey Company. This led me to notice that my reputation with several factions had changed.

When did I become kindred with the Iron Garrison Miners?

I don’t know of something changed or I’ve just not been paying attention, but either way I headed to the Twenty-first Hall to see if there was anything new that was available to me. I bought the Jolly Hunter tome which unlocked Improved Fleet Stance, which is pretty useless to me but I wanted to unlock all of my class traits.

Unfortunately that and a short crafting session wiped out the small three gold savings I’d accumulated recently. So I’m more famous than I was but much poorer.

Level Up

Today I’m thirty-hmphfpdfsph. Ok, thirty-seven. That’s actually a funny number now that I think about it. I’m taking the day off from work and trying to play as many games as I can today. I may take time out for lunch, not sure.

Update: Thanks for all the well wishes from Twitter today, was a great surprise for me when I checked Twitter this morning.

Champions Launched… Again

Yesterday was the big F2P relaunch for Champions. The patch notes are pretty extensive, which I think  highlights how much work Cryptic has done to improve the game both for existing subscribers as well as new free players. There were two surprises about the launch that I wanted to highlight, and you can see them both in the minimap image to the left.

First there were thirteen instances of Millennium City when I logged in last night. I’ve not seen more than two or three in a long time. I honestly wasn’t expecting such a large turnout for the launch, but I’m pretty excited to see such a large turnout. I’ll be very curious to see what the population looks like a week from now and then a month from now. How many people were old players just popping in to check things out like me? How many were former subscribers trying out the silver-level version of the game? How many were brand new players? I wasn’t paying much attention to the chat last night so I’m not too sure about any of the answers to those questions. Yet.

The second surprise was the new store icon. It’s the orange circle with the Atari logo on the bottom left of the minimap. Atari and Cryptic are dropping the idea of Cryptic Points in favor of Atari Points, apparently you can now buy Atari points which are good for more than just C-Store purchases. The Atari Points stipend that subscribers get though is locked to the Champions C-Store only. The original C-store button was just a menu item under the Champions C button (top left in the minimap) so the new store button is more visible. But I do like that it’s less conspicuous than the LotRO store button.

While it’s much much too soon to declare Champion’s F2P switch a success, I’m very surprised by the initial level of interest and pleased at how subtle the C-store integration has remained.

WoWed Out

I cancelled my account today.

I realized this morning that I hadn’t logged in at all this month and I wasn’t sure what the renewal date was (turns out it’s February 13th), but I wanted to make sure I didn’t give Blizzard money when I wasn’t even playing. It’s not like they need donations.

It’s not that I hate the game, I’ve just had no interest in finishing the Worgen starting area or trying a Goblin. Everytime I’ve sat down to play something recently, I’ve found myself clicking on either Minecraft or Star Trek.

So, why hasn’t it clicked for me?

I’ve felt very little nostalgia on my return to Azeroth. I think there’s two reasons for this. One, Warcraft was not my first MMO so there’s none of that first love feeling. Two, in my opinion the lore has taken too much of a beating over the last few years. So there’s been no emotional connection for me while playing.

Besides the nostalgia, I’ve noticed I spend more time thinking about features that are missing than having fun. I still like the stylized cartoony graphics and I was impressed with the no-modded UI improvements, but every time I get a quest reward I start missing LotRO’s cosmetic system. I’ve never been a fan or giant shoulder pads, and I miss being able to dye my armor. WoW is not a game for someone like me who will vendor better armor than I’m wearing because I don’t like how it looks.

So I’m letting my subscription run out, I would like to jump back in and at least finish the Worgen starting area just to say that I did, but I’m not sure that’ll happen. Magicka just released. I’ve gotten back into the deep end of the Minecraft pool after splashing around in the shallow end for a few weeks. Champions just went F2P and I hope to roll some alts to play with friends that are returning to the game. Star Trek has their third Featured Episode series coming out this week, and lot’s more exciting changes are coming soon. You get the picture.

Map Glitch

I don’t know if it’s a problem with the current 1.2 beta or with the server mod I switched to recently, but these map glitches are kind of fun. It’s a looong way down to the bottom. Thankfully logging out and back into the server is enough to reset it and there’s not actual damage to the map.

By the way, Notch added a screenshot function in beta 1.2, just press F2.

Still Alive (Minecraft Remix)

Minecraft beta 1.2 came out on the 13th, and among a host of fixes and new features were these three things: note blocks and cake.

Of course any mention of cake among gamers leads to Portal reference and comments about whether the cake is or is not a lie. I should have known that someone would take the note blocks it limit. After all this is Minecraft, the game where someone built an actual arithmetic logic unit. Watch the whole thing, you won’t want to miss the finale.

LotRO – PC Gamer’s MMO of the Year

PC Gamer named Lord of the Rings Online their MMO of the Year. Normally, I would be happy to see a game I play and love recognized, but I can’t agree much with their reasons for awarding LotRO.

When it came to keeping us entertained all year long with small updates, plus throwing us the occasional party with huge loads of free content, LotRO treated its fans the best.

What? I’m not sure they were playing the same game I was.

They  mentioned two new regions and two new Epic Books. They must be including Mirkwood (which released at the end of 2009) in the new regions because the only new area in 2010 that I remember was Enedwaith. Did I forget a content release? Could they be including the new Yule Festival village? It is true that Books One and Two were released for Volume 3 this last year, and at the time I was pretty happy with Book 1 too. Of course that was when I thought there would be a few months before the next Book, not the six months it turned out to be before Book 2 came out with the F2P release.

One part of the article that I whole heartedly agree with though: LotRO has some of the best server communities of any MMO.

As a LotRO player 2010 was a disappointing year, I hope 2011 turns out to be an amazing year for the game.

Champions Free-For-All Date Announced

Champions has announced their F2P update will launch on January 25th. With DCUO having just launched on the 11th, I’m very interested to see how many new players the F2P release brings in, how many stay, and how many upgrade to a subscription. I’m not expecting to see a doubling or tripling of revenues though like Turbine experienced with LotRO.

I’m a little more excited about this than I thought I would be. Not much changes for me since I have a lifetime subscription, I’ll still have access to everything I did before, but now I’ll also have a stipend of 400 Cryptic Points a month. I’m very curious to see if I can use those points in the STO-side store as well as the Champs-side store.

Besides the points, the F2P launch also includes a substantial revamp of the 1-20 experience as well as a few new powers for each of the existing frameworks. I’m definitely going to roll a new hero to check out the changes.

I know a few people were upset that the free players wouldn’t have access to the fully customizable hero system, but since they are allowing full access to the content (with the exception of adventure packs) they had to do something to incentivise people to subscribe. Like Turbine’s games, Champions is not a true F2P game but a hybrid subscription model.

The more I’ve thought about it though, the more their plan makes sense to me. The open system for building a hero is great for experienced players, but can rapidly get confusing and not-fun for a new player. Things like passive and active defenses, energy forms, etc. are probably more than a new player wants to worry about right away.

Featured Episode Series 3

In case you missed it, Cryptic announced today that Series 3 of the Featured Episodes will begin on Saturday, January 29th at 11 a.m. PST. The series is called Cloaked Intentions and the first episode is The Vault. The initial contact is still unknown.

The crew find themselves in a tight situation when they are ordered to investigate an energy surge on an abandoned Romulan starbase.

Also, if you haven’t checked it out yet there’s some interesting tidbits in the latest Ask Cryptic.