Insert Title Here

I quit WoW (again) almost a year ago but have since been playing the somewhat misleading Free-to-Play Lord of the Rings. While it is possible to play casually for free, if you want to gain access to some of the higher level areas (or just not be nerfed when you get there) you're almost compelled to shell out a few bucks. Which I already did by picking up two copies of the Collector's Edition of the expansion Mines of Moria (on Amazon for $10 each) which granted me & my son VIP-status (& all the associated perks) for one month, then downgraded us to Premium status when I didn't continue our 'subscription'. But the perks of being a Premium member are still slightly better than for Free Player. (The perks listed on the linked page are out-of-date. Premium players actually get a better deal than what's listed, for example, I can have 5 active characters per Server, not 3.)

When I first tried LOTRO (shortly after release) I was not overly impressed, but at the time WoW had just got its hooks into me so even though I liked the mythos of Lord of the Rings, I was not enamored with its translation to MMO. But times change, games improve, and with it now being a mostly F2P game vs. WoW's $15/month that's a hard price to beat for the quality you get. In fact there are several, quite decent F2P MMOs out there.

Like Blizzard, Turbine know how to keep you hooked, and the makers of LOTRO have greatly embraced the concept of Titles & Achievements. Start killing a few critters for a quest and suddenly you "discover" a deed, where if you kill 30 or 50 of these critters you earn an Achievement and a Title to go along with it (Wolf Slayer, Spider Foe, etc.) Continue killing those same critters and you may unlock achievements which in addition to the snazzy Title, can also result in permanent Buffs to your character.

Another Title you can 'earn' is achieved by making it to level 5 without dying, which is not a difficult task by any stretch of the imagination. In fact it's so easy to survive to level 5 that I would even argue that dying before then should be a Title-worthy achievement, especially given that your lvl 5 Title is "...the Wary." Seriously now? I followed a couple of characters through the Tutorial (which you can skip, by the way, and thus probably start playing the game proper at level 4), killed a few bandits, a couple of spiders or other critters, and bam! There I was at level 5, titled Cap'n John the Wary (well I would have been if my in-game name was Cap'n John.)

If you can make it to level 10 without dying you get the more awe-inspiring Title "...the Undefeated." which in my opinion is the wrong way around. Making it from level 5 to 10 without dying, unassisted (as in playing on your own, unaccompanied by a high level friend) is a more daunting task than hitting level 5. In fact I'd hedge my bets that the average player who makes it to level 10 without dying probably played a little more cautiously, and thus "...the Wary" or even "...the Cautious" is a far more appropriate title than "...the Undefeated." Sure, they didn't die, but you know they also didn't take a lot of unnecessary risks. Then there's the lvl 14 Title "...the Indomitable" which I actually rather like, a lot more so than the level 17 Title "...the Unscathed". I've been fighting critters for 17 levels now. No, I didn't die, but I'm not exactly unscathed, either. The final Title for not dying is awarded at level 20 and is, appropriately, "...the Undying". Now that's a Title worthy of making it to level 20. Although I still like "...the Indomitable" and will probably wear it until something better comes along.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya

The Perfect MMO?

I wonder how much fun an MMO would be where you skipped the time-consuming-and-apparently-boring-but-necessary-to-recoup-our-development-costs level grind, and went straight to the "end game" with its gear-grind?

With no zones, no exploring, and no leveling up to do, players would not have the opportunity to gradually learn how to play their class, so the classes would be limited to the bare minimum required, being three, with each of the three classes reduced to their simplest form. Players would also be able to switch classes at will , and to facilitate this and preserve valuable bag space the character's "paper doll" would be able to hold up to three different outfits, one for each of the three classes, being:

DeePeeNes: Named in accordance with current MMO class stereotypes, DeePeeNes have 3 Damaging abilities or attacks.

• Take this! - An Instant Cast attack with a 1-second CD (Global CD) which severely damages a single target.
• And this! - An instant Cast, high-damage attack with no CD, but which can only be cast on the recipient of a Take this! Critical Hit.
• And that! - An Instant Cast moderate damage attack with the 1-second GCD which affects all opponents within 10' of the Target.

For simplicity's sake the effective range on all DeePeeNes attacks is 0' to 65-yards, allowing players to play melee or ranged DeePeeNess based on personal preference.

The Tank: Like DeePeeNes, The Tank also has 3 attacks or Aggro-generating abilities, also with o' to 65-yard range.

• Hit Me! - An Instant cast attack with the 1-second Global CD. This ability targets one Mob and greatly encourages it to hit the Tank;
• Everyone! Hit me! - An Instant cast attack with 5-second CD which encourages all Mobs to hit the Tank. Does not encourage Mobs to hit the Tank quite as much as Hit Me!, and;
• HIT ME! NOW! - An Instant cast ability with a 25-second CD which forces one target to attack the Tank for 10 seconds. Works even better than Hit Me! but only works on Mobs not currently attacking the Tank.

The Healer: In keeping with the perception that Healers are a hard class to play, Healers get a couple more abilities than DeePeeNes and The Tank.

• Little Heal - Does what it says. Heals the target for a small amount but makes up for it by being instant cast with the 1-second Global CD.
• Big Heal - Heals the target for a larger amount than Little Heal but has a 1.5-second cast with a 5-second CD.
• Lotta Heals - Heals everyone in the Healer's party within a 30-yard radius of the Healer for H/X, where H is the Maximum Heal (modified by +Healing gear) and X is the number of characters being healed. Has a 10-second CD but also has a small chance to apply an additional 5-second HOT.
• HOT - Single-target, instant cast heal with a 10-second CD which applies a 5-second HOT (modified by +Healing gear).
• GET OVAH HEAH!!! - Immediately teleports the targeted character to a spot 6-feet in front of the Healer. No Saving Throws, no Resists, no chance of failure. In combat or out, it doesn't matter. It works all the time, every time. Can be used to save the Healer by dragging The Tank to their location, or to save stupid DeePeeNes by yanking them out of the fire. Through strategic use of terrain can also be used with hilarious effect to drag & drop annoying players off cliffs, into lava, etc. Works especially well on characters with giant mounts standing on top of important NPCs.

With no levels there are no zones to explore, only the starting City where you'll spend your downtime & gold, and the game's Dungeons where you'll fight Mobs and find new, better gear. In keeping it simple you don't get to choose the Dungeon, instead the Dungeon Runner tool will automatically assign you to a group and a dungeon based on your character's gear or iLevel. Characters can also form parties of their own and enter Dungeons via the DR tool, but the Dungeon will still be chosen at random based on the lowest iLevel character.

As you conquer each Dungeons' denizens and find & equip better gear, you'll gain access to new Dungeons, with tougher foes and even greater rewards. Play long enough, conquer enough Dungeons, and you just might acquire enough gear to gain access to the Most Uber Dungeon of them all.

Facebook, WoW, and RealID

"Facebook is the only (big) place where people interact, play games and spend time by their real name, not behind some avatar..." - Okrane S. commenter on Spink's Blog

Except for many of those 'games', Zynga's games in particular, you need at least 501 friends WHO ALSO PLAY if you want to be 'successful' in them.

In Mafia Wars, if you don't have 501+ people in your Gang, you're guaranteed to get attacked by other players. Having 501 (or more) doesn't mean you won't be attacked either, but having less than 501 means you certainly will.

So you have two choices:
You can spam the message boards asking hundreds of people to add you as a Friend while you also add as many new 'Friends' as you can;
Or you create a second Games-only account where you don't use your real name or picture;

I did the first but slowly grew frustrated at having my wall filled with countless messages from all the games all these Friends-I-hadn't-met were playing. The final straw came when my brother-in-law posted a status update commenting on his broken foot, I asked what had happened, he said he'd crashed his car a week ago...and hadn't I seen his status update?

No. I hadn't. Because my FB Wall had been filled with the random crap of countless strangers. (In my defense I do live in another country, 8,000 miles away.)

So I pruned my Friends List and went the second route, creating a Games-only FB account using a fake name and picture, and started over.

With the speed at which you can level to Cap in WoW these days then Epic-out your character via the LFD Tool, starting over is not the set back many might think. Sure, there's the $100+ to purchase WoW, BC, & LK all over again, but by starting over and using prepaid Game Cards you can give yourself a brand new name, which seems to be the concern of many. So that's one way to bypass RealID.

While creating a fake FB account (and likewise a fake WoW account) may be against their Terms of Use (if they even have one, and I can't be stuffed looking), there are thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people with Game-only accounts, accounts created by people who didn't use their real name and/or picture. For the most part it's easy to tell if it's a Games-only account, especially if their profile pic is a centerfold, or a graphic from Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc. In my case, I trawled a random guy's pic off the 'net, gave him a name, and even created a fake profile/history for him. What's really funny (not 'Ha Ha' funny) is he gets well wishers posting on his Wall on his 'birthday'. But he doesn't exist. He's just an avatar. My avatar. My avatar which I use to play Facebook games.

That's what Facebook and Blizzard need to understand: Many, many, MANY people do NOT want to use their real name when playing computer games, and their reasons for doing so are numerous, varied, and quite often valid.

RealID has set the 'net ablaze. Many are angry about it, some blasé, and some creative types have produced humorous responses (dryly ironic, but amusing nonetheless).

I liken this to those who say, "If you have nothing to hide, why can't the police come in and search your house? I'd let them search my house if they wanted to."

Fine. Let them search your house then, because even though I have nothing to hide, that doesn't mean I'm prepared to let the police poke around in my private belongings. I value my privacy, thank you very much, so I'll share what I choose to share and when given the choice, I'll keep private what I'd prefer remain private.

This is why I enabled Parental Controls on my account last night and deactivated RealID, or I would have, if it wasn't already unchecked once I got in.

By coincidence my 6-month sub expired yesterday and my Mum is coming to visit for several weeks next month so when I renewed WoW last night, rather than buying another 6-month block at $12.99/month, I just bought 1 month at $14.99. I don't intend to play during August so why pay for it? Sure, July cost me $2 more but I'll save $13 in August so by that reasoning I'm $11 ahead. I need to cancel that 1-month recurring Sub before August because I don't want to continue paying $15/month so when I cancel it, in protest against RealID, I intend to state it as the reason why I'm doing so. Who knows, with LOTRO apparently going free-to-play in a couple of months, maybe I won't even renew WoW after Mum leaves.

And in the meantime? I still have both Mario Galaxy games to complete, along with Zelda: Twilight Princess, Muramasa, Sky Crawlers, Zack & Wiki...the list goes on. So many unbeaten Nintendo games. I'm getting slack in my old age ;)

Review: Warstorm on FB

Warstorm is neither your typical Facebook game nor your typical card-based war game. (It also has a browser-based version but I'm not sure how well that works.)

Unlike Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc., you don't need 500+ friends to get maximum value from Warstorm, so it doesn't require you to create a second Facebook "Game" account, spam a load of strangers with Friend requests, or fill message boards with ADD ME!!! LOL!!!. And yet in spite of this the typical comments on the official Warstorm Facebook groups are still "Add me!!!" Go figure.

With that said, it does help to have a couple of Friends who play because every now & then the game gives you a bonus 'Rare' Card. But it's not for you, it's for your friends, and in the typical FB Game spammy fashion you can't just Send it to them, you have to post a message on your wall so your Friends can Click the link and collect the Card themselves. Likewise your Friends can post Rare Card messages on their own Wall that you can click and collect. But there's a catch. You can only collect one Rare card every 24 hours. Not one Rare Card per Friend per day; one Rare Card per day, period. So having hundreds of friends spamming your Wall with Rare Card posts every day is no more useful than having just a couple, as long as they're regular players of course. (Which makes me wonder how the browser-based version works, unless you can somehow add people as your Friends...perhaps via email?)

As you play the game and win battles/duels you earn Silver which you can use to buy more Card Packs, and when you do buy and 'open' a pack you will sometimes get a Bonus card. Unlike the Rare Cards these can be Sent directly to a Friend but only to one Friend, and you can only send one Card to each Friend every 24 hours. The game does ask you to post a message on your Friend's Wall so they know they got the Card, but in this case I don't think posting is actually necessary. I believe your Friend still receives the Card whether you post a "Hey! I sent you a card!" message or not. Now while you can only collect one Rare Card every 24 hours, and you can only send one Bonus Card to each Friend every 24 hours, if you have 100 Friends they can obviously each send you one Bonus Card if they get them, but! Do you really think someone is going to send a Bonus Card to you, a complete stranger, when they have Real Life Friends who also play? Of course not. You only get Bonus Cards from opening Packs, or from buying Hero Cards via RMT, so unless you spend real cash you just won't get that many Bonus Cards to give away. Are you going to send some stranger a Bonus Hero card you only got because you spent real money? Or will you send it to your Brother/Cousin/Best Friend4Life? Yeah, I thought so.

That's a big plus to Warstorm over the other FB Games: you simply do not need to add a bunch of strangers as Friends in order to play the game. Of course your Real Life Friends still need to actually play.

I said earlier that it's not your typical card-based war game, and it's not. In MTG and other games of its ilk you build your deck then duel other players by, usually, dealing yourself a hand, then playing out the game and using your cards to the best of their ability (and your own) to defeat the other player and their cards, in a process requiring a combination of both luck and strategy. In Warstorm, the only strategy comes from the deck building itself, because once a game starts you're even more of an observer than someone playing a low level Paladin. Yes, once a duel begins you'll do nothing more than sit back & watch, and maybe hit the Fast Forward button if you want to speed up the pace a little, which I did.

This may sound boring and/or frustrating in not having any control over how your cards are played ("No! Don't give the Sword of Power to the Mage! He's going to be killed on the next turn! No! Don't Zap the Troll Hero! Target the Flying Imp!") but it's a lot easier to accept that style of play once you realize it's actually a very fair way to resolve combat. You're dueling a random player's deck, not an actual player, meaning they're not actually present to manage their own cards, so letting you control your own cards and Zap their low HP Imp instead of the high HP, regenerating Troll Hero would be giving you an unfair advantage over your opponent.

Here's an example of a Hero Card:
There's already descriptions for the bottom numbers and they're self-explanatory for the most part, although just for clarification purposes your Turn and your opponent's Turn makes two Turns, so a card which readies in 10 Turns will be ready within 5 of your own Turns after being drawn. The three numbers in the top right corner of this Hero's card mean his Squad will be comprised of 6 Units, but no artifacts or spells. A Squad is always a Hero plus 6 Cards so you may also get a Hero who commands 4 Units but takes 2 Artifacts into battle, or 2 spells, or 1 Artifact and 1 Spell. I've not yet seen any Heroes who have more than 2 Artifact and/or Spell cards.

As soon as a Card is Ready it can be used immediately to attack, heal, etc. There is no Tapping or Exhausting of cards. Your cards attack and use their special abilities (if they have any), then your opponent's cards do the same, then your cards, and so on, with the goal being to reduce your opponents Morale from 30 to 0, or destroy all of his units/cards. Morale is reduced by cards attacking unopposed, through Spells or Artifacts such as the Drums of Despair, or via special abilities like Demoralize.

When you start you'll play through a Tutorial which both introduces many of the special abilities in the game, and rewards you with cards with the same. So after beating a Squad of Mages with the Blast Ability you'll receive a Mage or two with Blast, and so on. This makes it very easy to learn how combat and the cards work, and what cards are effective counters to other cards. Unfortunately it also makes the game appear rather easy, so the first time you play a real opponent you might be in for a very rude shock.

After completing the Tutorial you can continue to play the Single Player campaign, which gradually rewards you with more powerful cards, or you can try your luck against other players. But as those players tend to already have the more powerful cards, or even RMT cards, it's advisable to build up your Squads before engaging in the Warstorm equivalent of PvP. I say Squads because if you have sufficient Heroes and Squads you can do up to 4v4 Duels, being 4 of your Squads versus 4 of those from another player. Personally I thought 4 Squads took too long (and usually resulted in my Defeat) so for the most part I'll do 2v2 where my chances of success are much greater and the battles are usually over a lot faster.

Now even though, once you hit Start and the cards start coming out, you become no more than a participant, there's still a lot of excitement from watching a battle unfold as you cheer desperately for certain cards to come out, knowing there's nothing you can do but watch the battle unfold. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you get creamed and wonder just why the hell your opponent seems to have so many cards, and other times the cards go all your way and you're the one with a seemingly invincible army carving up everything your opponent's deck throws at you.

If there's anything negative to say about Warstorm it's that (for me) there was a wall around level 10-12 that I needed to crash through where I just couldn't defeat the next stages in the Single Player campaign, and where I likewise went from seeming to win most of my PvP Duels to just getting crushed in almost every single game. It almost seemed intended, as if to convince me to engage in RMT to advance, instead it made me want to throw in the towel. But I stuck it out, and even losing duels got me silver, and eventually I was able to buy some more card packs, tweak my squads a little more, and I started to win a few more duels. That was also when I accepted that "You can't win 'em all", which made the game more enjoyable as well.

All up I'd say check it out, at least to level 10 or so, to see whether it's your cup of tea. It's free to play so you really have nothing to lose but an evening of messing around. And even if you don't have a Facebook account you can always give the Browser version a try.

Allodds online

Yes, it looks a lot like WoW, but I'm not complaining about that. This video was taken from Massively's website/review.

A Raiding/Loot Grind alternative

It's already been partially implemented in the form of Badges & Reward gear, and this topic has sort of been done to death anyway, but could Loot distribution as described below work? Would it be feasible?

Forget backpacks to carry around gear. Give us a "wardrobe" with multiple outfit slots. Diablo II did this to a small degree in allowing you to "equip" two sets of weapons, i.e., two 1-handed weapons and one 2-handed weapon, that you could switch between with a single key press. Now change this up and allow a character to equip multiple sets of armor, i.e, a Healer could carry DPS gear AND Healing gear (although +Spell Power is negating this to some degree), a Warrior could carry Tank Gear and DPS gear, a Pally could carry Healing gear, Tank gear, AND DPS gear, etc. All kept in their multiple Wardrobe Tabs, all ready to be switched in & out at the press of a button. We can switch weapons mid-fight, so why not allow us to change armor as well?

Tank goes down, the DPS Pally switches gear and takes his place, while if the Healer gets taken out, the DPS Druid can switch gear and take over. If a fight requires both a Tank and an Off-Tank, when the Off-Tank's target goes down he can switch gear and help out with DPS, or vice versa.

"OMG!" You say. "Are you crazy? We spend enough time Raiding for our gear as it is, and sometimes we never get our full set before the Guild advances. And you're advocating something like this? Forget you!"

Hold on a second. Hear me out. That's where the change to Loot Distribution kicks in. If you've got a 20-man Raid then defeating a Raid Boss takes a coordinated effort by all 20 of you. Sure, maybe one or two of you are tapping 1-2-1-2-1-2 while watching NCIS or House or Simpsons' reruns, but in most cases you will not bring the Boss down unless everyone is pitching in and helping out. So, why not reward everyone who's there when the Boss goes down?

If you help defeat the Boss you get rewarded, it's that simple.

If you're part of a raid that defeats a Boss you get presented with your own personal Loot screen with a choice of 3-4 randomly chosen, class-specific items. They might be weapons or armor or accessories (rings, necklaces, etc) but they'll be specific to your class and you don't have to spend DKP for them, or /roll, or watch the Night Elf ninja your rifle because "Agi & AP? Rogue-weapon! LOL!"

Being random loot it's possible that if you run the Instance multiple times, or there's multiple Bosses, that you may be presented with items you already have, but that's just the luck of the roll (or the unluck as the case may be). But at least you wouldn't spend hours during the week preparing for the Raid, farming Mats, making Pots, etc, then spend a couple of hours on Raid night downing the Bosses only to see all the Loot go to everyone else. Of course you're happy for your Guildmates, but man it sucks to put in all that time during the week only to turn up on Raid night and not a single Drop goes your way. This would change that.

Welfare Epics? Hardly. You were there, you contributed, you get rewarded. How is that Welfare? Are they Welfare Epics when your new Guildmates run low level Raids on off-nights to gear you up? You may not be contributing as much DPS as everyone else, and just maybe they could do this without you, but you're still contributing, you're still present when the Boss goes down, so you still get rewarded.

Of course being Raids and to avoid the system being exploited Raid Lockouts would need to be implemented with the Instances being reset & unlocked every Sunday night/Monday morning (or following routine maintenance if it's a regular, weekly occurrence), so there would be no constant rerunning of an Instance to Gear everyone up. If your Guild beats the Instance and defeats all the Bosses then SOP means you wait a week before you can go back for more Gear. And if your Guild is still getting their act together and you spend 3 hours downing just one Boss? At least everyone will have something to show for it, so next time the run might go a little smoother because now everyone is a little more powerful, instead of just a couple of players getting upgrades.

Would this work? Would this make Raiding a little more enjoyable? Or would it still foster a forum war between the hardcore Raiders and the perceived Welfare-Epic recipients? Some people just need something to complain about or someone to pick on or they're not happy. There's no pleasing everyone, so why not try to please as many people as possible?

DDO - first impressions (count)

I downloaded the Trial and had a play with DDO this weekend.

*EDIT - I rolled another Ranger last night and played through the first couple of Instances again, so there will be a couple of Edits to this post*

The character creator was pretty good. I liked how the classes were broken up into Melee, Ranged, & Specialist first, then you chose your individual class, and each step showed you how well that class could be expected to perform on its own or whether it had more of a group role. Naturally I decided to go with a ranged class and decided upon the Ranger, a Human Ranger to be precise (no, not a Dwarf ;) because I felt it fit the lore of the Ranger better (and I didn't want to be an Elf). Interesting was that the Ranger class was available to every Race in DDO. Even Gnomes and an odd-looking Race of Ben Grimm-type creatures called the Warforged could be Rangers.

The Tutorial section is a single-player mini-dungeon that gets you used to controlling your character, opening doors, throwing switches, etc, including climbing ladders. I really liked that ladder graphics lined up with my climbing animation so my avatar actually appeared to grip and use the rungs, as opposed to just climbing a texture on a wall.

Combat can be initiated by enabling Auto-attack (via a Hotkey) then moving into range, or right-clicking the Mouse to manually swing/fire your weapon. But while my Ranger had a couple of different special attacks I found myself relying on Right-Clicking rather than using my Hotkeys and specials. As right-clicking actually initiated a swing (or fired an arrow) it just felt more like I was actually doing something than when you simply press buttons, and as most Mobs died after just one or two hits I didn't use or even miss my "Trip" and "Sunder" skills.
*EDIT - I tried using my Trip & Sunder skills and didn't notice any additional animation. Trip seemed to work occasionally when Mobs would fall flat on their back, but that was the only way I knew I'd actually performed the Trip attack *

I remember reading another review of DDO where the writer mentioned feeling like they were being "rushed" through the Instance, and I definitely got this feeling in the tutorial dungeon because I had the support of three NPCs who would frequently run ahead. Not because they were faster than my character, but because running just seemed faster than in WoW, so when they ran off down the corridor they quickly left me behind. Then again, it's likely that an inexperienced player in WoW would have a similar feeling being run through a low level Instance by an 80.

At the end of the tutorial dungeon I was offered a choice of various quest rewards, and it was nice to see a good variety of items from which to choose. I'm sure every class had something they could use. And instant "shiny" gratification was achieved when the Rapier I selected came with a Fiery enchant as did, I think, all of the weapons. This enchant didn't just make my blade glow red but actually wreathed the blade with flame. It was pretty cool, and a great way to give a new player an awesome looking weapon almost right from the start.

Somewhere along the way I'd also picked up a Bow, and being a Ranger I decided to put it to the test. In the tutorial dungeon I didn't have much chance to do that as my NPC party made short work of most of the Mobs. *EDIT - Actually it appears I got the Bow at the end of the Tutorial, along with my Fiery Rapier* It was when I entered the next instance that I got the opportunity to test fire my new Bow, and archery worked quite well. Like swinging a sword you can either Tab-target or left click to select a Mob, then Right-Click to fire your bow. Being in the depths of a Dungeon if there was a maximum range to my bow I wasn't aware of it. If I could see a Skeleton in the distance I could shoot it, and here Ranged Combat seemed a little overpowered. Almost all of these starting level Mobs went down after just one shot. Some needed two but most went down in one.

Entering this first Instance I'd been presented with a choice of Difficulty, from Solo, through Normal, Hard, etc. I did it on Solo and had no problem completing the Instance, especially once I worked out how to Hotkey my Rapier and Bow to allow for quick weapon changes - there's probably something allowing you to do this without hotkeying the individual weapons, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me. Even when I re-entered the Instance on Normal difficulty (which I assumed was meant for a group, as opposed to Solo) I still had no problems with any of the Mobs. If they didn't fall to my arrows it was a simple matter of switching to my Rapier to finish them off in melee.

I guess it comes down to which you prefer. Shooting a Mob 2 to 3 times as it closes to Melee, then taking 3 to 4 whacks with your axe to finish it off? Or shooting it once (or twice) then finishing it with a blow from your sword?

So combat was realistic and satisfying (if over a little too quickly), the game itself looked good, and the couple of times I took a dip my character swam "freestyle" in a very realistic fashion. *EDIT - I remember liking the way my Hobbit in LOTRO swam, also "freestyle" but his running animation was off. DDO's animations a lot better *

What was not so satisfying was leveling, or XP per se. In traditional D&D fashion you do NOT get XP from killing Mobs. There is no grinding here. Instead you get XP from completing Instances and the quests associated with them. After completing the first Instance (not the tutorial, but the first Solo-Instance) I noticed I was a couple hundred XP short of level 2. Completing this Instance directed me (in true MMO fashion) to another NPC who directed me to talk to yet one more NPC, who had a quest for me, which sent me into someone's cellar (another Mini-Instance). Completing this second Instance and quest gave me the XP I needed to level, but I didn't level right away (or didn't appear to), which again is true to D&D leveling. You don't level in the dungeon, you only level when you return to town to "train".

Back in town I found my Ranger Trainer but when I spoke to her about leveling I got the equivalent of assigning two Talent Points to level two Skills (ok, so maybe by the time I found her I'd "leveled" twice ;), and that was it. No flash of light. No "Ding!" Nothing. Just "click to assign a Skill Point". Ok, cool. Thanks for coming. See you next time.

That was it? I just leveled...didn't I?

So yes, I had a Flaming Rapier and a nice leather vest (among other pieces of armor), but there was no real sense of accomplishment with leveling, in fact it was almost rather anti-climactic. Perhaps having access to the manual may have explained the leveling process a little more. Yes, I do RTFM, TYVM, but as the client was 100% downloadable I would expect the manual not be required reading for something as basic as leveling.
*EDIT - You can download the Manual here. In PDF format, it's just 50 pages long. Not as bad as I thought. And...I just discovered I did not Level, per se. From page 49 of the Manual comes this: "Each Level has 5 Ranks, from 0 through 4." So I gained enough XP to go up a couple of Ranks, but I was still Level 1. *

I still have 5 days left in my 10-day trial, and there's a good chance that when it expires, I'll probably create another trial to check the game out further. And maybe if I can find a copy of DDO in Walmart or Target somewhere for cheap, just maybe, I might buy it. Especially if it's going F2P in August.

DDO: Eberron Unlimited to go F2P

Press Release (July 8, 2009): Turbine, Inc. announced today Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Eberron Unlimited™, a free digital upgrade for Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Stormreach™, will launch on August 4, 2009 in North America. DDO Unlimited will raise the level cap, introduce a new player class and add major new content, as well as make the game free to play for everyone.

Considering you can download the DDO: Stormreach™ client for free (with a 10-day Trial), would this imply that you could upgrade your Trial account to an Eberron™ account, for free? Or is it more likely that you'll still need to purchase a retail copy of Stormreach™ to get the free upgrade?

Enquiring minds want to know (although I know which is most likely).

Gamestorming

Like brain storming, only related to gaming.

What if...at every X0 level (i.e. 10, 20, 30, etc) you were presented with the opportunity to take a snapshot of your Toon? And all their gear, Stats, enchants, etc, would be preserved, even though your Toon continues to level on to Cap.

Why might you do this? Or why should a game offer that feature?

What happens when you convince a friend to play? You & your buddies who've been playing for years are all at Cap, while your friend is a lowly Newbie. Oh sure, you can boost him through all the Instances, and power level his quests for him, but how much fun could that be, really? Your friend isn't playing the game, he's just got an Uber Bully of a friend destroying anything around him that poses a threat. Does he even learn how to play the game? What role his character should play in a group? Doubtful.

Now, what if you and several of your buddies could take snapshots of your Toons at 20, then when you convince another friend to start playing and it comes time for him to hit his first Instance, instead of him getting a boost through by your Uber Toon, he joins a party of his friends, all at level 20, and everyone is at just the right level for that Instance. Now he gets to experience the Instance with knowledgeable, but not overpowered friends, and he gets to actually play the game.

Instead what you get is a company with the mindset that the trip from 0-60/70/80 is just a chore, and they do everything they can to boost you to Cap themselves. XP/kill and XP/Quest gets jacked up. Toons at Cap get access to over-powered Hand-Me-Down gear to pass onto low level Alts. Even newly introduced Classes (only accessible to XPac players, mind you) get a speed boost, and start the game with the equivalent of 50-60 hours of leveling under the belts.

What does this tell you? Only that a company with such a game probably no longer cares for their low level content, and they're probably wondering how they can introduce the option to pay for a Capped character without breaking their game (or starting riots). And yet the workaround is simple. Anyone with a capped out Toon (and a copy of every expansion released to date) can just buy one. Oh, you don't have a capped out Toon? Better hurry up and level your Main to 80 then. Seriously, it doesn't take that long now. I mean we've tweaked the level grind so much that you practically gain a level every time you complete a Quest. What more do you want from us? It's either that, or more and more (& bigger & bigger) companies will begin offering paid-for power leveling services.

Seriously, who would you rather pay to have a Toon power leveled? Some dodgy company based in BFE (or God only knows where) who are more likely to get your Account banned during the weeks they have your Toon?

Or the gaming company themselves who just need to press a couple of buttons and Shazam! You've got a Capped Toon.

Yeah, if I was willing to pay for such a service, I know who I'd choose as well.

Of course me being me, I wouldn't be willing to do this, because regardless of what The Company (& its spokespersons might think), for me The Leveling is The Journey. I enjoy the grind to Cap because I can take my experiences and knowledge from previous trips and expand on them to facilitate my present and future journeys. Sure, it's blurring the line between Player Knowledge and Character Knowledge, but I don't care too much about that anyway. I might RP with my Toons sometimes, but it's not like I play on an RP server ;)

Innovation in Gaming

First up, Ysharros has one of the best conversations going on over here. If you're interested in online gaming, for any reason, get over there. Lots of awesome dialog going on.

This weekend what I really wanted to do was play WoW, so I went online to set up another 10-day Trial Account. Except the link I have bookmarked didn't work, so I went to WoW's homepage and followed the links to the Trial Account creation page that way. But when I tried to create a Trial I was asked for an Activation Key, basically Blizzard wanted me to hit up a friend for a 10-day Trial key. I didn't have a Trial Key, and I certainly wasn't going to pay $1.99 for one.

It was a little frustrating because the webpage said I didn't need to input a Activation Key unless I wanted to upgrade to the full game, but it still had a field to input a Key, and when I didn't enter one it caused an error. So I visited the European site, created a Trial there without any problems until I tried to log in. WoW could probably tell I wasn't really in Europe, so it wasn't going to let me log in using a European Trial account. I wonder...how do Europeans go when visiting the States or Australia and they want to play a spot of WoW? Can they not log in, either?

More than a little frustrated I returned to the U.S/Pacific WoW page to give it one more shot. This time I managed to create a Trial account without being prompted for a non-existing Activation Key, and I rolled a Human Mage (my third favorite class, after the Hunter & Rogue, although Priests can be fun, too, if you don't care to be a PUG Healer). Around level 10 I was getting the urge to resubscribe, and was even mentally rolling my new race/class. I played for a bit more and around level 14 hit my first snag: the Defias. The first Defias Mobs were easy to bring down, even in pairs, but the second group you're asked to defeat contains Mages, like myself.

With the realization that I was playing a temporary toon, and with no access to the Auction House, I'd been selling pretty much everything that dropped (such as Linen Cloth) while forsaking any Trade Skills, such as First Aid.

When I encountered two Mages I wasn't too bad off. I'd set my Focus on one, cast my first Fireball, then Sheep my Focus before resuming the Fireballs on my original target. This gave me a leg up on my original target while ensuring I only faced one Mage. Except after the first Mage died I was low on health and still in combat, thus unable to eat or drink. Then Sheep wore off and the now less wooly but very irate Mage one-shot me.

I realized I needed First Aid, even as a Trial Toon. But to level First Aid I'd need Bandages, and to get Bandages I'd need Linen Cloth. I'd acquired plenty of Linen from the first group of Defias I'd killed...which I'd sold. So I'd need to go back and kill even more Defias to get the Linen I'd need to level First Aid and make enough Bandages to keep me alive while killing the Defias Mages.

And with that, I had an epiphany: If I resubscribed to WoW I'd have nothing to look forward to but an endless grind, killing thousands (or more) of Mobs.

NPC1: Hey there, Cap'n John. Them Foozles is a damn nuisance. They've eaten all the grass in my pasture, and now they're even eaten me cows! I need you to cut their numbers down a bit, so, get on out there and kill 10 Foozles for me.

NPC2: Nice work killing those Foozles for NPC1, Cap'n Foozle. Hee hee hee. I've got a job for you, too. I need 10 Foozle Horns, but they need to be Grade-A Foozle Horns, and not all Foozles is gonna drop Grade-A Horns, so you'll need to kill a lot more than just 10 Foozles to get the Horns I need. Well? What are you waiting for? Get out there and kill them Foozles!

NPC3: Well lookee here. If it isn't the Foozlenator himself. Haw haw! You're just the man I've been looking for. One of them damn Foozles stole my family heirloom! A near priceless, Golden Widget, and I want you to get it back. No! I don't know which one it was! All them damn Foozles look alike to me! Just get out there and kill Foozles until one of them drops me Golden Widget! There's a couple a slices of cheese in it for you. (Seriously, that link points to a real quest in WoW where you're asked to kill 20 Troggs, and your reward is 5 slices of cheese. You can tell the writers were feeling particularly creative that day, can't you?)

Kill, kill, kill.

What I want to know is...where's Harvest Moon: Online?

Where's the MMO that doesn't ask you to slaughter a gazillion Foozles just to level your Toon to some arbitrary number, just so you can join 4 or 9 or 24 other people for hours each night killing groups of Elite Foozles, and maybe have a shot at bringing down the Foozle King himself!

Where's the MMO that starts with you building a house somewhere, then "leveling" your Toon by working the land, or making clothes, or tools & farm implements, or stone & bricks, etc?

Where's the MMO that has one player grow and chop down trees, which he sells to another player to turn into lumber, which is sold to players to be turned into cabinets, tables & chairs, decorative window frames & doors, which are sold/used by yet more players to customize their in-game house to effect visible in-game changes that other players can see? (Phew! Take a breath!)

Where's the game that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator and doesn't assume everyone is happy killing a gazillion Foozles?

Where's the innovation that took us from Space Invaders & Asteroids to Time Crisis & Street Fighter?

Everyone wants to build the next WoW, but they all seem to forget that without games like Ultima Online and Everquest (and without the old text-based DikuMUDs of yesteryear) there'd be no WoW.

Nobody wants to be someone else's stepping stone in the river of life, but without the stepping stones nobody can get to the other side.

Fallout 3

I'm really enjoying this game, in fact I haven't played Wizard 101 since I got it...of course that wasn't that long ago :P

I've restarted my game a couple of times, the first time after I discovered V.A.T.S. and realized it could save me ammunition versus shooting in FPS mode and missing. Then I reloaded again when I wanted to kill a certain quest giver. He's a bad guy (well, that's relative, really ;) who disappears after you help him, or defy him, but you can also kill him if you squeal on him, but if you do turn him in you need a quick trigger finger or good people will die. Thank heavens for Quick-saves and reloads because I wasn't fast enough the first time...or the next few times, either :P

That's the big difference between an MMO-RPG and an offline SP-RPG (or story-driven SP-FPS, what ever you want to call it). In an MMO any choices you make are, for the most part, permanent for your character...unless you want to reroll. My Main in WoW got screwed out of a lot of things, which was shame, because I loved playing him so he was often the first Toon to do things. And because of that he was also the Guinea Pig, meaning he was the guy from which I learned what not to do.

The Timbermaw Furbolg in the tunnel between Felwood and Winterspring? Grind Rep with them to at least Unfriendly before setting foot inside. It doesn't take long, maybe half an hour doing two grinding quests and you're there. Do NOT fight your way through because it just makes it so much harder later when you've either got to fight your way back, or spend money to fly back, and forth, and back, and forth. Yeah, I fought my way through...a couple of times. Took me freaking forever to get back in the Timbermaw's good books.

Now if WoW were offline SP-RGP you'd just reload. You might lose an hour of progress but it's soooo much better than the alternative.

Of course if it were an offline SP-RPG you'd probably never have the thousands of hours invested into your Toon that most of us ended up with. By the way, a thousand hours isn't long, it's just 40 days /played.

So I restarted/rerolled my FO3 "Toon" a couple of times and after the second or third time, I saved my Toon at the exit to Vault 101 which, oddly enough, is where you get a final chance to change everything about your character. You've already assigned points to your Stats, and chosen your Skills/Perks, you've done the Intro/Tutorial but now, before you set foot into the Big, Bad Wasteworld...do you want to change anything about your Toon...and they do mean anything. You get one last chance to change not just your Stats but your physical appearance, including your gender! So I saved a game there meaning now when I "reroll" I don't need to do the Tutorial again, not unless I really, really want to.

The controls are standard WASD FPS controls so if you've played any FPS in the last 10 years you should have very little trouble getting around. Hitting TAB opens your PIPBoy which also Pauses the game. That's something which makes Liz very happy and she's probably not the only spouse...not that I have more than one spouse...other people's spouses, they're probably happy their SO is finally playing a game with a Pause button.

The PIPBoy is where you change weapons, armor, medicate/heal yourself, etc. You can keep track of your current quests in it, track the objective/destination for a quest, view your Map, etc. Because it completely fills your screen it's by necessity that the game also Pauses when you access your PIPBoy, otherwise Mobs would be chewing on your head while you're looking at your Map.

Back in the game combat occurs, for the most part, in Real Time, although Bullet Time is used for some of the flashier kills. You can choose to play FO3 as an FPS, or you can take advantage of V.A.T.S., the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. This means Combat gets paused while you choose your targets. You start combat with a certain number of Action Points (depending on a few factors, your Stats, length of time since last Combat, etc) and you basically choose which opponent (if more than one) to shoot at, and which body part to target. Certain Mobs are more heavily armored in certain areas, so while you might have an excellent chance of shooting a RadScorption's Carapace, you won't do as much damage to it as if you targeted its legs, which are naturally harder to hit.

V.A.T.S. has its good points, and its bad points. It allows you to stop/pause combat while you think things through, which is good you're a more mature gamer (like me) where your reactions might be a little slower than when you were half your age (even if you won't admit it to yourself, or anyone else ;) It's also very good if a Mob ambushes you. Spin to face it, hit V (to engage V.A.T.S. of course), pick your target, maybe select it a couple of times if you have sufficient Action Points, then hit A (or is it E) to Accept your choice, leave V.A.T.S. and resume combat. Now you don't need to do anything until your Toon has completed doing what you told it to...which is where the bad part of V.A.T.S. kicks in.

You just told your Toon to shoot the Mob four times in the head. As he begins firing the camera view changes, and here are two Mobs behind your target, with Assault Rifles, that they've got aimed right at you. Your first shot to your target's head is a good one, it does a lot of damage and he's stunned, so your second shot finishes him off. Queue the almost obligatory slow-mo death sequence as your target's head flies off (yes, body parts are easily separated from their owners during combat) and his body cartwheels through the air and down the adjacent stairwell.

Meanwhile...his two buddies are shooting the hell out of you and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, not until the game gives you back control of your Toon. Before that happens, let's just watch that body slide down the last couple of stairs, shall we? Ok, now, where were we? Oh, you're getting shot. And you're low on health. Oh dear.

Good part of FO3? Hit TAB to bring up your PIPBoy and shoot yourself up with a couple of Stimpacks. Get that Health Bar back up to a more...healthier level. Much better. Your 10mm Pistol is good for taking out a single bad guy, but you've got two guys shooting at you now. Break out the Combat Shotgun. TAB out of your PIPBoy and resume combat, in real time. You're almost back at full health again so you can take a second to line up your shot and KA-BLAM! The second bad guy loses his head after taking a load of double-ought to the face. Unlike the first guy's death which occurred in V.A.T.S., this second guy doesn't get the honor of a slow-mo bullet time death. Now it's just one guy left so...you hit V again. Hellooooo V.A.T.S. and refreshingly slow combat where you have all the time in the world to plan your moves. Close range, guy in front of you in an open corridor. Got to be a shotgun blast to the face...again >:)

It's a Critical Hit, and because it happened in V.A.T.S., there's that slow-mo death sequence that sometimes produces the most hilarious of death scenes. Seriously. Sometimes they're so over the top they're beyond belief. Last night I shot a Raider on a bridge above me. The best shot I had, according to the percentages shown by V.A.T.S., was targeting his left leg, so I did. All three rounds from my Hunting Rifle hit the Raider in the leg, the last one tore his leg off. No, he didn't hop around on his good leg before collapsing in a heap. The game engine decided to toss him into the air, and he practically cartwheeled across a gap in the bridge which, if the guy was 6-feet tall, was a 10' wide gap. He almost made it all the way across, too :D

Speaking of the physics engine FO3's has really impressed me, on more than one occasion.

I had a stupid Raider charge me. I know he was stupid because he was bringing a Pool Cue to a Gun Fight. I dropped him with a couple of rounds from my Hunting Rifle, and he dropped the Pool Cue. We were on the side of a hill and his Pool Cue hit the ground and began rolling down hill. It rolled all the way down to the bottom of the hill then continued on for a bit before finally losing all momentum.

Another Raider lost his head after losing a gun fight with me (it's amazing how poorly heads and limbs are attached in this game) and I watched bemused as his head rolled away from its body before coming to a stop in a ditch.

Then there was a Centaur (not your typical mythical half-man/half-horse critter, something a lot uglier) spitting at me, or tossing body parts, or doing god knows what, but it was engaging me at extreme range by spitting/throwing "something" at me. I pulled out my Sniper Rifle and fired off the last few .308 rounds I had. I hit it a couple of times but not enough to kill it, so I switched to my Hunting Rifle (chambered for .32, not .308) and...the Centaur disintegrated. WTF? I stared in surprise, wondering just what the hell had happened, and that's when the truck behind the Centaur exploded. I ducked, literally (me, not my toon) as the hood of the truck flew across the river and bounced past my toon. I still don't know what happened to the Centaur, whether there'd been an initial, smaller explosion from the truck that I hadn't seen, which finished it off, or if it somehow self-destructed, setting fire to the truck, which caused the explosion. It doesn't matter, the Centaur was dead and I was alive.

Now, is the game worth $50? Which is what I paid for it (that's what you get buying newly released games). I'd say so. Sure, it may not keep my interest as much as WoW or Wrath would, but for them, I'd still be paying to play every month (or every 6 months in my case). Even when I'm done with it, there'll probably be a time in the future when I'll pull it back out and play it some more. Good value for money, in my books.

There's also a large Modding community, who are constantly coming up with changes to the game. Different graphics, different specs for the weapons, etc. So there's a lot of after-market support. If you've an aversion to paying full price for games, then wait for the price to drop. It will come down sooner or later. If you don't mind paying $50 for a game, and you like quasi-Role Playing games with guns, bombs, explosions, and detachable body parts, you'll probably enjoy Fallout 3.

It's very easy to get into, can be played for 5 to 10 minutes, or an hour or two, and paused at will when the wife calls. It may not be Fallout 1 & 2 done as an FPS, but it's still (IMO) a fun game. No, I'm not offering you a money back guarantee if you don't like it. By now you should already know if you'd like it ;)

What WAR could have been...

but would it have been better?

Mythic could have made WAR a squad-based (sort of) game, not unlike the real, table-top Warhammer game. I know, I know. GW's stable of table-top games are almost all Army-based games (as opposed to squads), but that would make you a General and WAR an RTS and that's already been done, in countless incarnations (some good, some bad). Being an MMO, WAR needed to be a little more personal, but to capture that true GW feeling while also making WAR stand out as an MMO, WAR could have been a squad-based game, instead of the individual-based MMO it currently is.

Like all MMOs, to start with you'd create your Avatar, but then you'd get to create your squad, based on the avatar you chose.

If you played as a Black Orc, Orc Shaman, etc, your squad could consist of 4 Orc grunts, or up to 9 Goblins. Your choice.

Want to join Chaos? Then you'll have several Servants of Chaos at your command, maybe Northmen or Cultists.

Join the Empire, and depending on your Class you'd get several Knights or a squad of soldiers at your disposal.

And so on.

You wouldn't be able to customize too much about your squad, because units would die and get replaced when you get back to town and "repair". So it wouldn't be like creating 10 different characters to serve under you. Changing "hair color", for example, would change everyone's hair to within a shade or two of the selected color. Choosing a Gaulish-style mustache would give everyone a long, flowing mustache. Hired reinforcements would automatically (magic, perhaps? ;) resemble your current troops, in order to maintain uniformity. The character over whose appearance you'd have the most control, would naturally be your own Avatar.

Game play would still be remarkably similar to current WAR, where you go out, get Quests, do Scenarios, etc, but instead of fighting by yourself, or grouping up with others, you'd have a Squad at your command, led by your Avatar, and now you'd do battle with more than just one Mob at a time.

A typical battle, in this example with you as a Black Orc leading a squad of Goblins, could feasibly go like this:

You approach your opponents, half a dozen Grudgebringers, and you slowly move up until you're within bow range. Then you give the order to Open Fire.

Your Goblins draw their Bows and 8 arrows soar through the air before arcing gracefully down towards the squad of Dwarves. One of your Goblins looks a little embarrassed as he holds up a bow with a broken string.

A couple of the arrows strike the ground around the Dwarves but most find their mark and the stunned Dwarves yelp in pain. Then they turn towards your squad and begin charging your position.

Your Goblins draw their Bows and loose another flight of arrows. The thud and grunt as arrows embed themselves in Dwarven flesh is particularly satisfying to you, but even more so is seeing two of the Stunties fall to the ground with several red & black-fletched arrows sticking out of their bodies. (Red & Black being the predominant colors in the heraldry you've chosen for your troops.)

Not only undeterred but spurred on by the death of the comrades, the four remaining Dwarves roar a battle cry and charge onwards.

With no time left for another volley of arrows you pick a target and hit your own Charge hotkey, which by default orders your goblin troops to Attack!

With a gutteral roar and much high pitched squealing (not unlike finger nails being drawn down a blackboard or wet fingers across a pane of glass) you and your squad of goblins rush forward, meeting the Stunties charge head on.

And now the game more closely resembles combat in a traditional MMO, with, perhaps, one big exception. You're not going to be jumping and spinning around like you see Rogues and Elves doing WoW's PvP. And you'll learn very quickly not to do this. Oh, yes. You will learn.

You see when you walk around the land, you're not just in control of your Avatar; you're the leader of your squad, they echo your own movements. You move forward, they move forward. You back up, they retreat. And so on.

So if you're fighting, and you try to run through your opponent or leap around them like a hyperactive flea on Red Bull, your squad is going to try to follow your lead. Inspiring Chaos among your troops is good if you worship Khorne, it's not so good when you're leading easily confused goblins.

"'ere! What's da boss up to?"

"I dunno! He's leapin' about like he's a flamin' Elf!"

"Ya fink 'e wants us ta do that, too?"

"We'd better! Ya 'member what 'appened last time we didn't do what 'e said?"

"Oi, yer right! Come on, lads! Make wif da jumpin'!"

Suddenly your squad of Goblins break combat, stop attacking, and start leaping around like they're also flamin' Elves. Because that's, essentially, the command you've just given them.

The Dwarves, however, do no such thing. They quickly carve up your leaping Goblins, who make no attempt to parry, block or defend themselves (Sorry, Boss! Too busy jumpin'!"), and now it's you versus four very angry Dwarves. You were not a good role model for your troops, you just got them killed. If it's any consolation, you've probably just gotten yourself killed, too.

However, if you don't leap all over the place, and instead use your combat skills to fight strategically and successfully, you'll find your goblins are buoyed by the prowess of their fearsome Black Orc Leader. Their morale will increase, and they'll hit a little harder, doing a little more damage. Perhaps they'll parry or block more often, and when one or two of their mates fall to the flashing hammers & axes wielded by the Stunties, they won't mind so much, because you're such a great leader they're more than happy to die for you. Well, maybe "happy to die" is not entirely accurate, but it serves its purpose.

Now had you not been fighting so well, but instead were losing combat to your own Dwarven opponent, your Goblins would be dismayed at the pathetic skills displayed by their leader. As the Dwarves proved themselves to be more than worthy opponents, your Goblins' morale would have dropped. They might parry less often, their attacks would do less damage, and perhaps the Stunties would step it up and start hitting harder themselves. If you think that means you're losing the battle, you're right.

A Rallying cry might help here, or a Challenging Roar to demoralize, even Stun your opponents. If you're losing, there would be ways to rally your troops and perhaps turn the tide of battle back in your favor. While this is squad based combat, the success of your squad depends on you being a successful, inspiring leader, doing the right thing at the right time, and not jumping all over the place like you're a flamin' Elf.

Now picture you teaming up with several other players, each in control of their own squad, in pitched battles consisting of, quite possibly, hundreds of units. Hmm, that's probably why Mythic didn't go this route. We're talking Lag Central. If we wanted a game that played like this to look as good as it should, you'd probably need cutting edge machines just to play it, unless you want the graphics to take a huge hit.

Ahh well, I guess it'll just have to remain a pipe dream...unless, of course, someone thinks they can really do this. So if you can and you want to, go for it. You don't have my funding, but you do have my blessing to turn my dreams into your reality :)

*EDIT* to respond to Joseph's comment, because this was becoming a FHUGE comment of my own ;)

Joseph, it seems like what you're saying is your squad members' AI needs to actually be IAI, as in Intuitively Artificially Intelligent, instead of today's standard AI, being (usually) Atrociously Incompetent.

I would agree with you. If controlling the squad requires too much micro-management, this theoretical game would fall flat on its face (or needs to be developed as a Turn-based game, which can be fun but is not quite what we're looking for here), however, if your squad could coordinate their actions a little better, based on what you're trying to do with your own Avatar...

I'd like to use WoW's Hunter class as an example here, expanding the Pet from a single entity into several entities, which all obey the same command from you...except WoW's Hunter is notoriously known as the Huntard and for very good reason. Part of the problem is the Player, but part of the problem is also the horribly scripted AI of the Pet.

* * *

PET: "You want me to attack the Mob in front of us? Okay! I'll just run down these stairs behind us, out this door, then circle back around through three rooms to come up behind the Mob. As a bonus, I'll even aggro every Mob I find on the way."

Hunter . o O (Where'd my Pet go?)

30 seconds later.

Hunter . o O (Aah, there he is.)

Party: "WTF? Where'd the Adds come from?"

Hunter . o O (Uh oh.)

* * *

That's why I say the Squad would need to take orders from you in a more intuitive fashion (with intelligent pathing and AI).

When you attack from ranged (with a Bow, Fireball spell, etc), your squad would likewise use any Ranged Attacks they may have against the same target (or units of the same squad you're targeting). Of course if you're a Shaman in Melee using what could be considered a Ranged attack, such as a Chain Lightning spell, your squad would need to intuitively know, "I'm in Melee. I shouldn't try to use my Ranged attack just because Da Boss is."

So when you Charge into Melee, your Squad should intuitively recognize you're closing with your enemy and likewise attempt to do the same, to the same enemy/squad, without anyone peeling off to dry hump a nearby cargo ship. (Thanks to Joseph for that line ;)

The less micromanaging of your squad, the better their IAI, and the more it controls like a single-player MMO-RPG where you can almost forget about your squad because they'll intuitively do what you're wanting them to, the better this game would be.

*Last Edit* I just reminded myself of one of (IMO) the best wrestling video games, to date. Oddly enough, from yesteryear on the N64, it's WCW/nWo Revenge.

I could play this game for hours on end, and often had, and one day even after logging hundreds of in-game hours playing it, something happened which totally blew my mind.

My opponent had gained the upper hand, slammed me to the mat, then climbed up on the top turnbuckle. But just as he got to the top and was getting ready to launch himself through the air to come crashing down on me, my wrestler recovered and got to his feet.

Without thinking, literally acting on instinct, I ran to the corner and hit the grapple button...and my wrestler did exactly what I wanted him to.

He reached up, grabbed his opponent, and body slammed him off the top turnbuckle.

Just to make this clear, in all the time I'd played Revenge, and I'm literally talking hundreds of hours, possibly thousands (don't scoff, just check your /played time in WoW...not you, Tesh :P) in all that time I'd never once seen this move before. I'd never done it to anyone, never had it done to me; I didn't even know it existed.

Up until this point turnbuckle moves had always involved beat downs on a wrestler slammed into the corner, or a high risk, high flying move from the top rope that could help you win or cost you the match.

Running to the corner and pressing the grapple button was a purely intuitive move on my part.

I knew what I wanted my wrestler to do. I'd never seen him do it before, I didn't know if he'd do it or not, in fact whether or not he would do what I was asking never entered my mind. But he did. He did exactly what I was expecting him to do.

That's how much work went into the AI and script of a game written over 10 years ago. If they were able to program so much into a 64-bit cartridge-based game 10 years ago, there's absolutely no excuse for poor AI coding these days, other than laziness, and that's not an acceptable excuse.

Harvest Moon: Online

If you're not familiar with the Harvest Moon video game series and want to know more, click here. Basically, the game is an RPG Farming Sim, and it's a lot more fun than you'd expect.

Harvest Moon: Online does not exist. If it did, I'd have a link to it...and I'd probably be playing it :D The following is how I'd like to see Harvest Moon done, if it was ever made into an MMO game.

Like all MMOs, at the start of HM:O you create your avatar. But before you begin playing you're presented with a choice: Do you want to play HM:O as an MMO Farming Sim? Or do you want to play it in the more traditional MMO vein, a la WoW, EQ, WAR, LOTRO, etc?

Cast your mind back to the first Dungeon Siege game. You began life as a farmer, and when you entered the game your farm was being attacked by the Krug. So you grabedb a nearby pitchfork and drove them off. You then set out into the world to become a mighty hero.

But imagine if you'd been able to choose to stay on the farm, remain a simple farmer, and just work the land.

That's HM:O in a nutshell.

Some people want to be the Hero, others are more the stay-at-home type. HM:O would give you that choice.

So your first choice is whether you want to be a Hero or a Farmer (unlike typical MMOs, in HM:O a Farmer is not necessarily a bad thing ;)

If you choose to be a Hero, you're plopped down into the world where you can join up with other like-minded souls, go out, slay monsters, obtain shiny armor and powerful weapons, become a Hero, etc.

If you choose to be a Farmer you'll be presented with a second choice.

Where do you want to "build" your Farm?

You'll be shown a map of the game world. That's a real map, where you'll see existing farms being managed by other players, etc, along with all possible locations in each zone. Naturally most of the prime locations will already be taken if you're coming in late, but, HM:O will have a tax/upkeep system in place so if you stop playing for a while you'll lose your farm, thus making your plot of land available for other players.

If you're a regular Farmer, logging in just a couple of times a month would be sufficient to keep your farm running and your taxes paid. If you do lose your farm, HM:O will "sell" off your assets, deduct any outstanding taxes, and deposit any remaining gold into your toon's bank account. So if you come back to the game after losing your Farm, you can choose a new plot of land (or maybe your old plot is still available) and you'll be able to rebuild.

We don't need to talk too much about the Hero side of HM:O because most people know how traditional RPG MMOs work. However, there will be no open world PvP, otherwise Heroes could just gear up then come into town and slaughter/grief the Farmers. Heroes can still choose to Duel each other, and perhaps there'd be a BG system similar to WoW, but unlike WoW the BGs would just be for fun. If it turns out that one or two classes are the strongest when it comes to PvP, and everyone else gets slaughtered by them, then that's just the way it goes. The designers would not try to balance PvP by nerfing those classes because PvP is just a side game in HM:O, and if everyone rolls a Mage or Priest, or whatever the two OP PvP classes are, then that's fine. Personally, I think a BG would be a lot more fun if every player was the same class, or one of two classes, and everybody was fairly evenly matched. But that's just me.

Back to the Farming side of HM:O.

Players could grow crops, raise livestock, etc, and sell them on the in-game Auction House. Now I say Farmer, but in HM:O a Farmer could be one of many different types. A Farmer in HM:O would actually be a dedicated Crafter in another MMO. For example, you might have a Farmer who's chosen to settle down on a very rocky, barren plot of land.

Why?

Because he's not so much a Farmer as a Miner, Stonecutter, or Stonemason. Unlike WoW and other MMOs, Players cannot just wander the land and mine random lodes. A Player needs to become a Miner and work their own Rock Quarry in order to gather Stone. And in case you're wondering, two neighboring Miners could not Ninja each other's stone. Now as the Player improves his Farmer/Miner within the game, his Farm/Rock Quarry will likewise improve. The Quarry will initially produce the most basic rock, but as the player levels his Miner and Rock Quarry with new Buildings, learns new Techniques, etc, his Rock Quarry will produce better grade stone, perhaps even ore or gems at higher levels.

The Farmer/Miner can then take his finished goods and sell them on the in-game Auction House where another Player will buy them to advance his own Blacksmith, Armorsmith, or Weaponsmith. If nobody chooses to be a Miner, the game itself will seed the Auction House with Stone & Ore of various grades, but it will be expensive to buy, thus players will be encouraged to create Miners to take advantage of this seemingly profitable profession.

Another Farmer may choose to raise Cattle for slaughter, to provide other players with Meat and Leather which they turn into Pies or Sausages (the Meat, not the Leather), which provide Food Buffs to Hero players. The Leather is naturally bought by Armorsmiths, for quite obvious reasons.

Hero classes cannot be Gatherers or Crafters, which only makes sense.

A Blacksmith may leave his hearth & anvil to become a mighty Warrior, but in doing so he is no longer a Blacksmith. He still knows how to wield a hammer and beat out a sword, but he's no longer a Blacksmith.

The Farmer who leaves his land to become a Soldier and fight for his King will still know how to till the land and raise crops, but he's a Soldier now, not a Farmer. He's not going to do those things even if he still knows how.

Essentially the Hero players will be relying on the Farmers to outfit them, which is how the Real World works. Yes, the Heroes can still do quests, kill 10 rats, and pick up weapons and armor (& vendor trash) but in most cases armor & weapons dropped by Mobs will be inferior to what the Farmers/Crafters can make, with Epic Items from Instance Bosses being the exception.


*Edit* - Just had a thought, that with this being a Harvest Moon game versus your more traditional hack & slash RPG, that Instance Bosses and Raid Bosses should not provide better items than what can be manufactured by the best in-game Crafters. But rather, they should drop Recipes or Patterns which would be used by those Crafters to manufacture the desired item.

PROBLEM? - How can the Hero trade his Pattern for an Uber Hammer of Thumpiness to a Weaponsmith and not get ripped off?

SOLUTION! - A Weaponsmith or Armorsmith's "Farm" could have an RFP Ledger where Hero-types could deposit their Pattern and...Ooh! The Hero providing the Pattern must purchase and provide the Mats along with the Pattern. As said Mats are purchased The Game will check if they have a Pattern in their inventory, and if so, will ask the Hero if they want their newly purchased Mats linked to said Pattern (assuming, that is, said Mats are a requirement of said Pattern). The Hero can also Examine/Read the Pattern at any time and when they do, the game will again check their inventory (& bank) and if it finds required, unlinked Mats, will ask if they want them linked to a particular Pattern.

Once the Hero acquires all the Mats and has them linked to the Pattern it can then be deposited in an RFP Ledger. The Hero will be prompted to pay a fee for the service (yes, on top of acquiring the Mats) which the Weaponsmith can accept, reject, or counter with a higher offer (or a lower offer if they're feeling benevolent). On accepting the RFP the Smith will immediately and automatically begin crafting the desired item, which will be automatically mailed to the Hero on completion. At any time, prior to acceptance by the Smith, the Hero can choose to cancel their RFP, and the Recipe, linked Mats, & fee will all be returned to him/her.
*END EDIT*

Unlike traditional MMOs, the Blacksmith will not need to make lots of super expensive Items for those last few Skills points, because a Blacksmith doesn't level his profession by making countless weapons. Instead he gains the ability to build better Weapons & Items by upgrading his Smithy, perhaps with an improved Forge, a better Anvil, higher quality hammers & tools, etc. He's also not reliant on selling weapons to the Hero players; the Blacksmith can also build superior Tools that other Farmers can use to improve their own lot in life.

A Farmer could just buy a Hoe from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, but if he wants to increase his yield and make more Gold and improve his Farm, he'll till his land with a Superior Hoe made by a Blacksmith. And if nobody is buying the Blacksmith's Tools, or perhaps there's a glut of Tools on the Auction House? The Blacksmith can just vendor them rather than sell them at a loss. Remember I mentioned the game will seed the Auction House with Mats? The Tools the Blacksmith makes will always vendor for more than the combined price of the Mats at the inflated AH price. So he can still make a profit and still, slowly, improve his Smithy.

Just as in traditional MMOs where players acquire more and more powerful weapons and armor and their Avatars become more and more visually impressive, as the HM:O Farmer/Blacksmith upgrades his Farm/Smithy so too would its appearance change and improve.

I could go on, but that's what I'd like to see in Harvest Moon: Online. A vibrant, living community where towns and even cities are built, quite literally, by the players.

Last Chance, allegedly ;)

This just in, from the W101 News Page in the Launcher:

I know, I know. I've been raving about Wizard 101, and I've even become known as the Famous Wizard101 Blogger ;)

$60 for a 12-month subscription. That's just $5 per month.
$60 is about the price of one, new release video game (@ $50+tax).

Now, there's no guarantees KingsIsle won't extend this offer, and maybe they'll even introduce a cheaper offer in the future, but if they do. Well, when they introduced the Family Plan (still not as cheap as two 12-month Subs at $60 each) anyone who'd bought several regular subscriptions and upgraded to the Family Plan got an in-game Crown allowance. Apparently enough Crowns to buy a couple of items, per account. And if you've seen what Crowns get you in W101, you'd realize that's not a bad deal.

At the very least, I encourage you to head over to the Wizard101 site, download the program for free and play it for a bit for free. Check it out, see if it's to your liking, and if you like what you see then now (and the next few days) is a good time to consider subscribing.

Taunting in PvP

Blizzard totally dropped the ball on this, making up some ridiculous excuse about not wanting players to lose control of their characters.Then what the fuck are Fear and Sap and Polymorph? What are Seduce, Banish, Wyvern Sting, and Mind Control? They're all means by which players totally and completely lose all control of their character.

A thumping great Tauren Warrior standing almost 10-feet tall and weighing over 500 pounds wades into Melee and roars a challenge. Are you seriously trying to tell me nobody is going to turn and look at him? Bullshit! You know almost every head is going to swivel in his direction. And when he picks your face out of all those in the crowd, stares you down, then points at you bellowing "You! You're next!" Are you seriously telling me you're going to ignore him?

Blizzard's outrageous statement about Taunts not being in PvP as a "player control" issue is pure bullshit. They either don't want to do it and are afraid of the backlash, as if it's not okay to be forced to target another player for 10 seconds, but it's okay for a Priest to Mind Control a Hunter then have him kill his own Pet, or...Blizzard can't do it. Maybe that's the real reason. Their programmers literally cannot implement Taunting into the PvP game.

Taunting should exist in PvP, and there's absolutely no logical reason for it not to. The only reason it's not in the game is because Blizzard have an ulterior motive for not implementing it, or they physically cannot do it. Claiming Taunting causes Loss of Player Control and they want to avoid that is just a bald-faced lie.

Dual Boxing in W101

JE finally got his 1,600 gold and promptly spent it all on a Red & Black Dragon Pet. But he'd also dinged lvl 10 so for 560g he could have bought a bigger Spelldeck allowing him to field more Spell cards, meaning instead of going into Battle with 40 Spell Cards to choose from, he could have 50. (Those number might not be accurate, they just exist to illustrate my point.)

After the happy little Dragon Owner went to bed I logged into his account and played some of the Minigames to get him some more gold, and I discovered an interesting thing about one the minigames that I normally wouldn't have played. I could play it using the chaos theory, and I could make more gold in less time than by playing one of the mini games that I'm actually good at it. Just rapidly & randomly clicking and moving my mouse cursor around was more successful than actually playing the game properly. But also very boring. And tiring if kept up for extended periods.

I'd made JE about 460g when I gave up on the Minigames and decided to do some quests. But I decided to be sneaky about it. I was already logged in on JE's account, so I Alt-Tabbed out to Windows, fired up a second copy of W101, and logged in on my account. This is known in the MMO world as dual-boxing and with graphically intensive games like WoW, Everquest, Warhammer, etc, it takes a decent gaming rig to be able to do this without suffering severe slowdown.

With a game like W101, dual-boxing is a piece of cake. I looked at our quests. We needed to talk to a Witch a couple of streets over. I ran my Wizard over there and...remember I mentioned that Friends in W101 can Teleport to each other? Well, I ran my Wizard over to the Witch, Alt-Tabbed to JE's Wizard and Poof! Teleported him straight to my Wizard and the Witch, who wanted us to talk to her apprentice on the next street over.

I ran JE's Wizard around the block to the next street, found the Apprentice, Alt-Tabbed to my Wizard and Poof! Joined JE's Wizard next to the Apprentice. The Apprentice wanted us to collect some items from barrels in the nearby Cave. I ran my Wizard into the cave, found the barrels, collected all my items and Poof! Teleported straight back out to JE's Wizard and turned in the Quest. Alt-Tabbed to JE's Wizard, rinse & repeat. We...I mean I :D I did this all the way up to the end of the Quest, for which the final step was defeating a Boss Mob.

And that's when the slower-paced, card-based, turn-by-turn combat of W101 works brilliantly with dual-boxing. I'd select my Spell, then Alt-Tab to JE's Wizard and select his Spell. You get up to 30 seconds to choose a Spell so even if my PC was a slow & clunky machine (which it's not) I'd have still had plenty of time to Alt-Tab between our two Wizards and choose their Spells. With another MMO, the few seconds a slow machine would take to Alt-Tab between two open programs could be enough to cause the death of one or both Toons. With W101's turn-based combat, a few seconds is irrelevant.

The Boss went down faster than Divine Brown, and the Gold we earned from completing all the Quests in the series meant JE's Wizard now had the 560 Gold he needed to buy the bigger Spelldeck.

Actually, that also highlights one aspect of W101 which exists as a double-edged Sword. My Wizard has over 2,000 gold. JE needed 560 to buy a new Spelldeck. In almost any other MMO I could have just given him the Gold, but W101 does not allow any Trades between Players except for Treasure Cards, which cannot be sold to Vendors anyway, so there is literally no way to move Gold between players.

/sad Panda :(

This means W101 will never see Gold Sellers (which is a good thing), but we may see some companies farming high quality Treasure Cards and selling them. But even if Treasure Card Farmers/Sellers do immigrate to W101 they'll have a lot of trouble hawking their wares because of the limited chat features. W101 will never suffer the plague of Gold Farmers/Sellers seen in other MMOs, but it also means there's no way to loan a friend some Gold, thus it came to me dual-boxing in order to make some Gold for my son.

Wizard101: One week later

With the placement of our home PCs (mine being in the family room while JE's is at his desk in his bedroom), and with W101's limited in-game chat option (coupled with an 8/yold being a slow typist), solving the communication problem between JE and I while we played W101 together was paramount, but easily solvable, nonetheless.

One desktop microphone, one download & install, and JE and I were talking as if we were right next to each other, instead of in separate rooms.

"OK, mate. What quests do you have?"

"I need to defeat the Harvest Lord. Four Lumbering Trolls. Find the Fire Alley Smith..." he basically reeled off every quest he had. He can read alright, he's just not a proficient Typist.

I picked a quest that I knew was part of a Chain and off we went.

In WoW, Warlocks can summon party members if they have a couple of helping hands.

In W101, two players who are Friends can Teleport to each other's location as easy as clicking the Mouse a couple of times.

Unfortunately dedicated Grouping is not (yet) part of the game, and the combat mechanic meant that when I ran into JE's battle sigil to help him fight a Lumbering Troll, a Lumbering Troll of my own entered combat along with me, so we ended up fighting two Lumbering Trolls, which worked to our advantage because we needed Quest Drops from them. But that exact same game mechanic could lead to Griefing if Players Train Mobs into Combat with other Players then Flee, leaving the original Player facing two or more Mobs. Although some people did join our battles, we never experienced any griefing. The Quest Item Drop Rate is also pretty good, and when JE needed 6 items from a particular Mob for one quest I think we killed about 10 Mobs to get all 6 drops.

We took care of several quests in the Chain before we were up to the Boss Mob quest. Most Boss Mobs are in Mini-Instances of their own, usually nothing more than a one-room Tower. While Players cannot "group" in the traditional sense, outside the Tower are four Entry Sigils and players can "group" to fight the Boss by meeting at the entrance then pressing X at the same time (or within 10 seconds of one another) to move into an Entry Sigil. As soon as the first player presses X to move into an Entry Sigil a 10-second countdown timer appears in the doorway, and at zero all players who occupy an Entry Sigil (my term, by the way) teleport inside the Instance to face the Boss.

* * *

A couple of nights ago while helping JE, another player stopped next to us and asked for help defeating a Boss that was just down the road. I agreed, as I knew JE would think it cool to fight a Boss, and off we ran down the sidewalk. Yes, sidewalk (or footpath, if you will). Most zones in W101 have paths alongside the roads, and if you stick to the paths you can actually avoid most of the wandering Mobs, which is kind of neat. Even if they're a high level Mob they won't Aggro onto you if you're on the path. We got to the Boss's Tower, the other Player hit X, as did I, then I quickly ran next door (this was pre-Skype) and told JE to press X to join us.

"I am," he yelled, "but it's not blue!"

The 10-second timer meant I had no time to trouble shoot and I ran back to my PC as I zoned into the Instance. The other Player and I defeated the Boss & his Minion, then we zoned back outside again.

I ran next door to find a tearful JE almost getting ready to quit the game. The Entry Sigils outside the Tower were not glowing blue for his avatar, as his level was too low, so him pressing X to enter the Boss Instance with us was pointless. I told him we'd go back to fighting the Monsters we'd been working on earlier, then ran back to my PC.

The other player had just asked for help with another Quest.

Quickly I hit the Pulldown Chat icon and found...Ah ha!

"Sorry. I'm helping a friend."

"Okay. Goodbye." was his reply, and off he went, and JE and I resumed our questing.

* * *

Tonight the Boss we were about to fight was for JE's Quest, so I knew the Entry Sigils were lit up for him and he wouldn't be left out in the cold like the previous night. In we went, and with Skype it was very easy to coordinate our attacks. Most W101 Bosses (that I've encountered) have Minions, who may not be as strong as the Boss but are not push overs, either. JE and I focused on the Minion first to burn it down. JE also summoned a Golem Minion of his own which helped with our Damage Output, and in very short order both Boss and Minion were defeated.

With that Chain done we started on another Chain that I was already on.

One good thing about W101 is that in some MMOs, if you group up for collection quests it makes it harder to gather your Quest Items, but in W101 there's no such thing as a Loot Ninja. When a Mob drops an item, every Player who helped defeat that Mob gets the item (at least that holds true for Wandering Mobs outside Instances), so on collection quests every Player on a collection quest can get an Item from the same Mob. We ripped through the Quest Chain and in no short order were standing outside another Tower, ready to face our second Boss of the night. He went down to our coordinated attacks just as quickly as the first Boss we'd faced.

By the time we'd beaten the second Boss it was getting very late and we were drawing wife/mom aggro, so I called it a night and started getting the kids ready for bed.

After JE was in bed I took care of a few things for him. I logged into his account and sold all the useless armor he'd picked up, then ran around and took care of a few Messenger Quests and a couple of Kill Quests; I ended up getting him within a Quest or two of dinging level 10. Finally, knowing he's saving his gold for a Dragon Pet, I hit the Minigame Faire. At the Faire there are several, basic puzzle or arcade games, and if you score high enough you get rewarded with gold and armor. I say Armor, but as everyone plays a wizard you're looking at cloth hats, robes & boots, just some items have stats/buffs more beneficial to certain Schools of Magic than others. After playing several games and selling the prizes, I logged for the night leaving JE with a shade over 1,000 gold.

Mike, you were wondering just how much fun W101 is compared to WoW. The two games can't really be compared because they're both targeting different demographics, and other than both being MMOs they're not really that similar. But if you've got two (or better yet, three) PCs on a home LAN within close proximity to each other (in the same room would be excellent), I strongly suggest you download & install W101 on each PC, then jump in and start playing with your two boys. You'll be amazed at how much fun you all have, and what a kick you will get out of playing an MMO alongside your sons.

If you're playing by yourself W101 won't have the appeal & polish that WoW does to a solo player, especially as there's no Guilds, so no Guild Chatter in the background to keep you company as you single-handedly kill every last Kodo in Nagrand. Just like WoW, though, your W101 experience will be greatly enhanced if you're able to play with family or friends. After all, that's how MMOs are meant to be played ;)

Crunch time

I just checked my WoW account. It's set to expire/renew itself (with another 6-month block) on September 18th. Two days from now.

I normally buy a 6-month block of WoW for $78.

I could also do three months for $42. That would have me playing for a month or so after the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

I don't believe I'm seriously considering bailing on the World of Warcraft, for Wizard 101, but I am. I'd save $50 by not buying Wrath. That's practically a 12-month sub to W101 right there. And 6 months of WoW is more expensive than 12 months of W101.

Oh boy.

Wizard101 Launcher problem

Well, I'd consider taking out two Wizard101 subs, except for one problem. While I was able to play W101 last night for a couple of hours, tonight the Launcher crashes on me within seconds of booting up.

I have no idea why it's doing this, and while I am a wizard at finding stuff on the 'net, I'm unable to find any solutions to this particular problem.

So, has anyone else encountered this problem, and resolved it?

More importantly, did you resolve it in such a way that you were able to continue playing W101? Resolving the problem by uninstalling W101 and not playing it, is not the solution I'm looking for ;)

While $60 for a 12-month sub is a pretty good deal (IMO), it's not such a good deal if I can't play the damn game.

*EDIT - As a WoW player I'm a little paranoid about keyloggers, so I have NoScript, among other protection, on my PC. Wondering if this was a Java-issue caused by NoScript I went into my PC's Control Panel and double-clicked the Java icon to access the Java Control Panel.

Whether or not this did something I don't know (maybe force-loaded Java?), maybe it was just a coincidence, but the W101 Launcher booted up and ran w/o crashing, and I was able to get in and play W101, which promptly downloaded a bunch of patches. I kept it running in the background while I played Warcraft, for a good couple of hours. Other than getting DC'd from the W101 server for not remaining active (which is to be expected) W101 stayed up the entire time.

I also installed W101 on Liz's PC last night and it ran just fine, but then it also ran just fine on my PC the first night I installed it, too. We'll see what happens tonight. Still, if anyone has any suggestions for why the Launcher might be crashing (and a reinstall didn't help at all), or even experienced this problem and resolved it, please feel free to let me know what you did.

* EDIT - The game booted up fine again, tonight. Possibly whatever the problem was, it managed to resolve itself on its own.