MMO Firsts

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how/why I got started with MMO’s.  Partly from filling out the questionaires for Randolph over at Grinding to Valhalla, but also from Syp’s Firsts Meme over at Bio Break.

First MMO Played?

EverQuest

First Character Class/Role Played?

Wizard

First MMO Subscribed For More Than A Consecutive Year?

Dark Age of Camelot

First MMO You Fell In Love With?

Dark Age of Camelot, I could actually level by questing instead of grinding MOB’s.

First Guild You Really Felt Attached To?

Hammer and Anvil from DAoC.  I was in a pickup group with several members of this guild.  We had so much fun, I got a Guild invite while we were in the group.

First Character/Game You Leveled To End Cap?

Brynulf on Landroval in LoTRO both to 50 the original cap and again to 60 after Moria came out.

First “Wow” Moment In A MMO?

The earliest moment I remember is in EverQuest, I was at the beach near Freeport and the sun was rising/setting.  I actually stood there and watched it for a couple of minutes.

First MMO You Burned Out On?

EverQuest after months of playing 8 hours a day.  After a while I just got tired of MOB grinding, and trains, and having elite MOB’s wandering around in the midlevel areas stomping me.  My biggest gripe was how little actual questing there was in the game.

First MMO You Followed Avidly Prior To Launch?

City of Heroes, it was a superhero game and I was a big comics nerd.  This was also the first game I closed beta tested.

First Time You Felt Truly Noobish In A MMO?

EverQuest – I was playing a wood elf and was trying to find my way through the woods in the dark.  I didn’t understand zones and was trying to use the map that came with the game to find my way around.  I ended up running around and around the zone border until the sun came up and I could see.

First MMO You Went Alt-Crazy In?

I’m going to cheat and give two answers: EverQuest and LoTRO.  In EverQuest I kept making alts and fiddling around with them, maybe getting a couple of levels.  In LoTRO I have five alts all at level 20, and my goal is to get them all to level cap.

Ered Luin Revisited

I haven’t been to Ered Luin since the game launched.  My first character was an Elven Hunter on Gladden that I got to 15 during the head-start week.  I ended up re-rolling a Man Hunter on Landroval after I read on the forums that it  was going to be the unofficial role-play server.  So it’s been nearly two years since I’ve spent any time there.  I have an Elven Rune-keeper, Calenel, that I’d started but only played to level 8, so Book 7 seemed a good time to get back to him and see what kind of changes Turbine had worked out.

First thing of course is the XP curve change, I killed a rat and dinged 9.  Pretty nice.

Celondim has been streamlined a bit.  I remember a fair bit more running from Celondim to Nen Hilith and to Limael’s Vineyard and back again.  Now there is a quest NPC that sends you out to Nen Hilith and then is a small quest hub of four NPC’s that the mouth of the dell.  The same thing Limael is now at the tower on the hill just before her Vineyard instead of back in Celondim.  So now instead of two or three trips out and back, it’s one.

Duillond has a bit more running, but it’s still much improved.

As Calenel reached the teen levels, I noticed I couldn’t find any elites and had no trouble soloing all of the quests I was given.  I was especially surprised to find that you can solo all the way through the Prologue now.  I’m working through the Bree Prologue quests on a Man Warden character and there are still Fellowship quests towards the end of that chain.  I’m interested to see if Turbine changes the Bree and Shire prologue quests as well with the next content release.

Overall, the new zone is much more streamlined and enjoyable.  I’m not sure why the Prologue quests were made solo-able but it might point to a general shortage of low-level players in the Ered Luin region.  It’s certainly nice to be able to join a Fellowship as an option, but not be blocked.  I remember the Lone-lands being especially bad for that, I would login with a quest log full of Fellowship quests that no one was doing.

LoTRO 360

The Lord of the Rings Online for the Xbox 360 rumor has been making the rounds again.  The first one I saw was from Destructoid.  It was posted on April 1st, so I immediately assumed it was a joke, but if you check the comment thread Brad does say on the following day that it’s not an April Fool’s joke.  Tony at MMeOw picked it up as did Massively both of which source the Destructoid post.  Massively also references Joystiq who references Destructoid as well and followed up with Turbine PR:

“We’re not talking about what we’re working on specifically, only that we’re making a console MMO and actively working with Microsoft and Sony.”

Turbine has admitted working on a console MMO apparently planned for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but it’s much more likely to be a new design rather than a port of the existing game.  Jaxom92 makes several good points, but the biggest one is the controller/keyboard problem.  With the exception of Final Fantasy XI, all MMO’s have been designed around mouse and keyboard.  To go to a controller, the game would have to be drastically changed.  Either the game would have to be simplified or the pacing would have to be changed.  The alternative of course is to require players to get a USB keyboard to plug in or provide a peripheral, after all everyone was willing to buy a plastic guitar.  Even then you have an ergonomic issue.  When I play my 360, I play on the couch.  I’m not going to spend hours on the couch with a keyboard in my lap and a mouse on the armrest.

Apocrypha

I’ve been enjoying EVE a lot.  Being a sandbox MMO, you really have to come up with your own goals in order to have fun, so it makes a nice complement to a more standard MMO like LoTRO (ignoring the whole scifi vs fantasy argument).

CCP does a great job keeping the game fresh and adding enhancements and fixing issues.  Case in point, I’ve been impressed with the scanning update in the Apocrypha release.  It is 1000 times more usable now that it was before.  I have scanned down a wormhole, and I did pop through briefly, but I’m not equiped to deal with sleepers and given that I’m still in an NPC corp I probably won’t be for quite some time.  The other new feature is the new player experience.  I am planning to create an alt and try out, but I’m holding off until I get DOW2 finished.

My only complaint with the Apocrypha rollout was getting it.  When I launched the EVE client, the patcher didn’t update.  The client wouldn’t login because it recognized an invalid build number.  I had to spend about an hour on the forums to find the manual download links for two patches.  I understand that problems happen, but there’s no excuse that the new patch links weren’t listed on the patching page.

Time Flies

Wow, has it been a month since I posted last?

Whoops.

While I have been finding some time to play, I haven’t had time to organize my thoughts enough to write anything.  Work has been especially crazy the last few weeks.  So, after working and spending time with my wife and son, I have just enough time to play some EVE or some LoTRO or some DOW2 before heading off to dreamland.

Dawn of War 2 is good.  I’m nearly finished with the single player campaign, and I’ve played a few multi-player matches against the CPU.  My concern about boss battles was totally misplaced, which I’m glad about.  I’m going to put together a more detailed review after I finish the single player campaign and try a few more multi-player matches, so stay tuned.

LoTRO is still fun.  I’m working my way through the rest of the current Volume 2 Books.  I’m currently on Book 4 and stuck on a fellowship quest.  Between trying to find a uninterrupted hour or two I can devote to playing and getting a pickup fellowship together, I might be stuck for a while.  Fortunately I’m not in any kind of rush, one of the best things about having a lifetime subscription is I don’t fret about not playing.

I’ve actually been spending most of my time playing EVE Online.  Mining and mission running are both excellent activities when I can only guarantee myself 20-30 minute blocks of play time.  If I’m not on baby duty, I know I can pickup a mission, finish it, and salvage it in a 10-15 minute play session.  I use a Vexor fitted with railguns and drones to steamroll through frigates.  If I can’t guarantee an uninterrupted play session, I’ll get out my Procurer mining barge and head out to the belts of Mirilene or some of the other nearby systems.  I can jetcan mine and relax without worrying about having to leave my keyboard for short stretches of time.

I do occasionally do level 2 missions, but I like minimizing my risks by taking a higher level ship than intended.  Towards that end, I’m training up my Battlecruiser skills and planning to get into a Brutix.  Including all of the support skills I’ve planned, I have about 30 days of training remaining.  I’m not in a hurry, though because I only have about 7 mil in my wallet and the cheapest Brutix I could find near my home was 21 mil.  The important thing with EVE is to have goals.

Warhammer Expanding

Lot’s of news and commentary on Mythic’s announcements today.  Keen is excited, while Darren is concerned.  I’m neither.

They’re rolling out a new class, a cut class from the beta, new areas, and new events.  It’s a free expansion spread out over the next few months.  I’m glad to see Mythic aggressively marketing and developing their game, and I hope they succeed, but for me it’s a game of wait and see.  My subscription is up on February 17th and I doubt I’ll re-sub before then regardless of what Mythic does with the game.  Warhammer just can’t compete for my free time compared  to the Moria expansion for LoTRO, finishing Fallout 3, and a expectation for Dawn of War 2 coming shortly.

I’ll continue to follow the developments with more than a little interest, but I can’t see getting my Engineer out of mothballs until June or July at the earliest.

Max Level Again

Back in October I hit max level in Lord of the Rings Online for the first time ever in an MMO.  Well two days ago on my birthday, I took a vacation day and brought my hunter from just a little way into level 59 up to 60.

brynulf_level60

brynulf_level60_played

The nice thing is I’m only half way through the Volume 2 quests, so I’ve still got a lot more to do in the expansion.

No More War for Me

So I’ve cancelled my Warhammer subscription.  It doesn’t go inactive until mid February, but if the past two months are any indication I won’t be playing any more.  I played a Dwarf Engineer into Tier 2 before I ran out of steam, so I can’t comment on the PvP or endgame much.  For someone who is primarily PvE player the game is good, but not great, and good doesn’t cut it when Moria’s caverns are calling me so strongly.

The Greatness of Moria

Everyone in the MMO blogging community seems to be on a big Lord of the Rings kick lately Michael, Darren, and John (among others).  As a long-time player, I’ve been very pleased with the response the Moria expansion has gotten.  LoTRO really hadn’t garnered much attention prior to November, so it’s great to see the pendulum swing the other way, even more so since it’s so well deserved.

How good is the Moria expansion?  Let me answer by mentioning that I am a huge Warhammer 40K Dawn of War fan.  I own the original game and all of the expansions.  It is the oldest game I have installed on my computer that I still play on a semi-regular basis.  So of course, I’ve been looking forward to DoW2 and I was excited to learn recently that Steam players who bought Soulstorm were going to get an early preview.  Last night when I launched Steam I found that the preview/beta was available for download which I immediately started.  My plan then was to spend an hour or so in LoTRO to wrap up some crafting and turn in some quests, then log out  and try DoW2.  So three hours later at 1:30 am, I logged out of LoTRO and went to bed.  I didn’t even think about the demo until I was browsing through my Google Reader feeds this morning.  That is how good the Moria expansion is.

New Year Update

Nearly midway through January and I’ve barely posted.  Hmmmm. I have some articles I’m working on, but they aren’t ready yet, so let me just leave you with a quick rundown of what I’ve been playing:

  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • Fallout 3
  • World of Goo
  • Fable 2
  • EVE Online

My EVE time has been solely limited to training since the end of December.  I had been doing a bit of mining both as a way to replenish my wallet and since its pretty easy to do when I’m busy with the baby.

Fable 2 has sat on the shelve since my initial run through.  I had started two more play-throughs intending to try out the other two endings, but no more progress on that (similar to my KoTOR and Mass Effect plans in the past).  I did pop in recently on my original character and buy up some more real estate with the funds he’d been saving up.

World of Goo is an awesome game. I highly recommend it if you haven’t already tried it, and for pity’s sake please buy it.  It’s not that expensive and its produced by a tiny developer.  If you don’t like DRM, this is a way to both vote with your wallet and have some fun.

My main two games since Christmas have been Fallout 3 and Lord of the Rings Online.  I had been playing Moria quite a bit up until the holidays, but took a week off from MMO’s to dig into Fallout 3 while I was on vacation.  It’s a good game although very empty, which I suppose is part of the point.  My only problem with this game is it reminds me of why I so rarely play shooters.

So since coming back to work on the 2nd, I’ve moved back to my primary game of the last six months.  I’ve advanced to level 56 with my hunter and am really enjoying my time with Moria.  My only disappointment so far with the game is how small of an area of Lothlórien is accessible.  I did a fun run from the Twenty-first Hall through Durin’s Way t o the First Hall and then out the eastern gate.  Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much to do east of the Misty Mountains yet.

So that’s been my gaming time for the year to date (really including time since mid-December).  Please stay tuned, there’s more comign shortly.