Pattern Ghost Posted February 20, 2015 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2015 Well . . . I haven't really been keeping up with this thread. Maybe I should rename it "This Year in MMOs." I've been mostly playing WoW lately. WoD leveling was cool. Mostly bored at this point. Bad news for EQ Next. Apparently, the studio was bought and a lot of key people for EQ Next and other games were laid off or quit: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/952/view/news/read/33845/EverQuest-Next-Dave-Georgeson-and-Linda-Carlson-Let-Go-from-Daybreak.html This Redit post lists more employees who were laid off: http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/2vmp48/master_list_of_developers_affected_by_the_layoffs/ I have no idea who the new owners are, but the layoffs aren't too encouraging. Makes me wonder if it'll ever get released. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher R Taylor Posted February 23, 2015 Report Share Posted February 23, 2015 Valiant Online, one of the City of Heroes reboots is in beta testing right now. WoW has a new release coming soon with upgrades and changes to the game, I suspect they use these to release materials they wanted to get done but ran out of time because the marketing department insists on a specific release date. Blizzard used to always be late, but always have phenomenally tight products. Now they're always on time but have to tweak constantly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted February 23, 2015 Report Share Posted February 23, 2015 WoW's new patch drops tomorrow -- but it's not a very engrossing patch in terms of new developments unfortunately. About the only thing catching my attention are the new pets and its respective achievement. But nothing in terms of Tanaan Jungle and the like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptPatriot Posted February 24, 2015 Report Share Posted February 24, 2015 Valiant Online, one of the City of Heroes reboots is in beta testing right now. WoW has a new release coming soon with upgrades and changes to the game, I suspect they use these to release materials they wanted to get done but ran out of time because the marketing department insists on a specific release date. Blizzard used to always be late, but always have phenomenally tight products. Now they're always on time but have to tweak constantly. Never heard of it. Got a link to it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted February 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2015 When I search for Valiant Online, I get screenshots of a fantasy MMO. Valiant also seems like a poor choice of title for a supers MMO, given it's a comic book company. Edit: OK, looks like it's Valiance Online. Still seems a poor choice of title, given the existence of Valiant Comics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted February 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2015 A bit of late but interesting news on Champions Online: The resource cap for Silver players is being increased from 250 G to 500 G, with an option to unlock a cap of 200,000 G for 500 Zen (around 5 bucks, and also earnable in game). Link: http://champions-online.proboards.com/thread/3241/resource-increase-silver-players-coming Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted February 25, 2015 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2015 Forum ate my post about 6.1. I'll just summarize: Heirloom tab is here. I have a strange urge to fill in all the blank spots, but otherwise, not too excited about the patch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher R Taylor Posted March 7, 2015 Report Share Posted March 7, 2015 I liked the latest WoW patch quite a bit - it didn't have a big add to the game, but made many nice changes, particularly to the garrison and the heirloom change (plus the flight path change allowing you to drop off at the nearest one in case you made a mistake) is a very welcome patch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted March 11, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2015 I agree on the QOL stuff. Definitely nice additions. Not worthy of a major patch number, IMO. And still nothing added much to keep my interest up. I could advance my main's gear, now, but that would mean grinding out a ton of 670 apexis gear, which is a pretty dull activity. So, here's what I've been doing since 6.1: Upgraded my main's (Ret Pally) weapon to the crafted 2h axe. I got the recipes from the ore trader yesterday (his second appearance; I didn't really play the first time he came around, and was still gathering the savage bloods anyway), and finished upgrading it to 670. Other than completing the axe and doing daily crafting cooldowns, follower missions, and mining/herbing at the garrison, I haven't done much on my pally. I did score a bit of BRF raid gear from a follower mission, though. Mostly, I've been alting. I've upgraded the XP-boosting heirloom pieces to 100 for all armor types. In general, they're a bit weaker 90-100 than they were at lower levels. I'm not sure if they've changed the lower level versions or not. I did test to see if I can use the heirloom tab on my trial account, and some of the heirlooms were stronger than the BiS non-heirlooms they had, so I'm going to guess the power curve is only different in the last ten levels. Which isn't a big deal. With the speed of leveling, even sans heirlooms, gear tends to lag behind anyway, and getting better stuff from Nagrand isn't difficult with even fairly bad gear. The heirlooms top out at iLVL 600. So far, I've taken my feral druid from 95 to 100 (took a day, with delays for an asploding vacuum cleaner), frost mage from 93 to 100, and beast mastery hunter from 92 to 100. So, that's four 100s on my main server, plus my horde DK on our alt server. I'm going to work on my plate guys next. I put a level on my fury warrior after finishing the hunter yesterday. The feral was by far the fastest/easiest of the batch to level. Probably tied with the ret pally there, though she kills a bit faster. Essentially both are immortal killing machines when it comes to leveling. The feral did have one three man bounty board quest that killed her, and I wasn't in the mood to retry it due to the mob density in the area. The mage was a huge contrast. Even as frost, the mage has way more glass than cannon these days. His damage is pitiful when not popping cooldowns, but he becomes a short, green-haird god of death and doom when he pops his cooldowns. The hunter does solid damage without cooldowns, is very close to the mage in bursting when blowing his cooldowns, and his cooldowns are a lot shorter. Neither had any issues bursting down the elites for the three man bounty board quests. Overall, I'm not feeling too bad about any of the classes, though I've had to adjust my playstyle the most on the mage. I don't have any real opinion on the level 100 talents for any of them. For the most part, the level 100 talents haven't had any particular impact one way or the other. If I was still raiding, I'm sure I'd fret over it more, but they seem about the same as all of the rest of the talents, some situationally useful, some more generally useful, and a few that are probably never particularly useful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted March 11, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2015 Oh, I will add one thing: I still don't like what they've done with Fury. Raging Blow and Wild Strike need to be removed, and Heroic Strike added back in. I hate having to watch procs on every single freaking class I play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted March 15, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 15, 2015 Got the warrior to 100 last night. Went pretty smoothly, though I was being cheaty and used a pair of the crafted iLVL 630 swords. It did seem like Sudden Death and the other procs were going off quite a bit more. Made short work of quest mobs, though a few of the silver elites I ran across were a bit harder than on my pally or druid. I've got two days left on my current time card. I've still got a rogue, shaman and another DK to level, but probably will just do some crafting or apexis grinding until it runs out. I need to get in gear with moving, so I'll likely wait until I get moved to renew. Maybe. Maybe I'll give Wildstar another spin, or max out another batch of characters in Champions Online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher R Taylor Posted April 24, 2015 Report Share Posted April 24, 2015 Elder Scrolls Online is free to play now, but you have to buy the game. I don't know what their model is because when I played the beta I was so disappointed with the interface and character design I just am not inclined to play at all. Star Wars: The Old Republic just ended another double xp week. They've made some changes as well. There are additional sequences in some of the quests (such as a bombing run shown from the pilot's point of view where there was only radio chatter before), more dialog bits and sequences with companions, and the holo-twilek dancers in cantinas are now real twileks. They've also changed the talent system so you no longer have a customizable set of talent trees at all, just a few choices you can make every five or so levels. That's disappointing but I guess its easier to balance and design content for. Planetary commendations seem to drop a bit more often as well, but that might have just been luck this run through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted April 24, 2015 Report Share Posted April 24, 2015 Elder Scrolls Online is free to play now, but you have to buy the game. I don't know what their model is because when I played the beta I was so disappointed with the interface and character design I just am not inclined to play at all. Star Wars: The Old Republic just ended another double xp week. They've made some changes as well. There are additional sequences in some of the quests (such as a bombing run shown from the pilot's point of view where there was only radio chatter before), more dialog bits and sequences with companions, and the holo-twilek dancers in cantinas are now real twileks. They've also changed the talent system so you no longer have a customizable set of talent trees at all, just a few choices you can make every five or so levels. That's disappointing but I guess its easier to balance and design content for. Planetary commendations seem to drop a bit more often as well, but that might have just been luck this run through. My brief interraction with ESO beta was equally frustrating. But a co-worker has bought it and digs it, I've watched him play a bit and there are some neat features to recommend it and it looks MUCH better than I remember. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher R Taylor Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 Oh the graphics are phenomenal, its the prettiest game I've ever played. But that interface is horrible and the character structure is not any good. Further, its about as divorced as possible from the game play of every single Elder Scrolls game that came before it. They completely abandoned the flexibility and customization, changed how you interact with everything, and the only bits that are left over are lore and setting, the least important and engaging parts of the game series, for me at least. They couldn't have failed any harder at bringing the joy and fun of Skyrim, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Oblivion, etc to life if they had done it on purpose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted April 29, 2015 Report Share Posted April 29, 2015 Really? I played a few of the earlier ones and it wasn't my cup of tea. but the flexibility there is pretty impressive. Heavily armed wizards and stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher R Taylor Posted April 30, 2015 Report Share Posted April 30, 2015 Well, here's what I mean. Elder Scrolls games in the past were very much like Hero in that you could make pretty much anything you wanted, build any spell you wanted, and even make magic items you wanted. Each successive ES game that came out limited this more, but the basic themes were there: its up to you what you make. If you wanted a spell casting thief that wore plate armor, you could make it. Elder Scrolls Online has specific classes with very limited "skill tree" type expansion which lets you follow a path to make a specific version of your character. Almost all of the flexibility that defined the games is gone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted April 30, 2015 Report Share Posted April 30, 2015 Well, here's what I mean. Elder Scrolls games in the past were very much like Hero in that you could make pretty much anything you wanted, build any spell you wanted, and even make magic items you wanted. Each successive ES game that came out limited this more, but the basic themes were there: its up to you what you make. If you wanted a spell casting thief that wore plate armor, you could make it. Elder Scrolls Online has specific classes with very limited "skill tree" type expansion which lets you follow a path to make a specific version of your character. Almost all of the flexibility that defined the games is gone. As near as I can tell from having it explained to me you could still make a spell casting thief in heavy armor. You get talents based on the armor you wear and the weapon you use. So if you take start with the rogue class and level your mage weapon and heavy armor you get talents from those items. Once you've learned the talent (I believe) you can use it any time. but, I haven't played because each of the Elderscrolls games was so tediously boring I quickly went to something else. My limited experience with the beta was mostly at what a repetitive joke it was. I still haven't bothered to play it so I'm not really arguing it's virtues but it does seem fairly customizable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher R Taylor Posted May 5, 2015 Report Share Posted May 5, 2015 Its much less so than the actual games its from, believe me. Star Wars: The Old Republic is doing a promotion where you get 12x experience (yes, twelve times) for class quests; each class has a series of quests in a storyline that moves you along as you level, quite well written actually. You can theoretically level up entirely using only the class quests and some "flashpoints" (the equivalent of dungeons) and ignore the side quests and main story entirely. They started the promotion today, and supposedly its going to run all summer long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted May 5, 2015 Report Share Posted May 5, 2015 Been playing in the Pathfinder Online beta. It's interesting. This is going to be a complex game, not what I'm used to but theoretically fun as heck. As a sandbox game it seems that solo fun will be limited I've heard it called a fantasy version of Eve Online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptPatriot Posted May 6, 2015 Report Share Posted May 6, 2015 I was thinking to get involved with PFO, but I'm not sure of what sort of character I'd play. I had an older D&D character I might want to recreate for the game. She was a leatherworking two bladed swordswoman. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted May 7, 2015 Report Share Posted May 7, 2015 I was thinking to get involved with PFO, but I'm not sure of what sort of character I'd play. I had an older D&D character I might want to recreate for the game. She was a leatherworking two bladed swordswoman. that's totally possible. The class levels are bought with xp as are all skills, talents, and other aspects of the game. My "Cleric" is actually a Cleric 6 fighter 6. She has not focused on any skill and instead sucks at all of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted May 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 8, 2015 Did you do an early access thingie? Or are they doing non-paid beta invites now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted May 8, 2015 Report Share Posted May 8, 2015 Early Access thingy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted May 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2015 Think it looks like they'll deliver a playable-ish product? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted May 9, 2015 Report Share Posted May 9, 2015 I'm having a pretty good time...but it has a ways to go it's not pretty. Sounds are pretty weak. However, it does the Eve "Player created Economy" pretty well. My cleric has to sneak in to some company's territory to steal copper because they pvp the heck out of their zone and sell rights to mine. If they catch you mining without having paid they will kill you. It's exciting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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