As you may have noticed there is a slightly new look here. This is actually a cut and paste of the work of 3 different blogsters and I will be crediting them with links as soon as possible. Unfortunately I am sitting here freezing my ass off and I wont be doing it tonight.
Southern Armada has left Vanguard as you may have guessed. I still think its the best game no one ever played but, probably unsurprisingly, I feel deeply betrayed by both the game and its makers. I think the new guys have done really well to get VG to where it is and in 12-18 months its really going to be superb, but I wont be there.
Currently I'm in EVE, I'm playing a little bit of WoW. Oddly enough I'm really enjoying the current run through WoW. I have a regular group Sundays and Wednesdays and we are playing through the classic content and just taking our time with it. Its actually a lot of fun to not be blasting through content as fast as I can just to reach 'raid' level.
I have also been seriously looking at WAR the soon to be released Warhammer MMO from Mythic Entertainment. I have never been a big fan of PvP ever since the days of getting repeatedly ganked by 12 year olds in the early days of UO. Two reasons really, there has never been a game (apart from EVE and Lineage2) where PvP actually mattered. In most mainstream games, EQ, WoW are the two main ones I am thinking of, there is no real point to PvP. Its simply something that has been thrown in to keep a certain portion of the populace happy. WoW definitely has done PvP better than EQ ever did and EVE and L2 have proved that you can provide meaningful PvP in a mostly controlled fashion.
Now the chaps who are making WAR are the same people who really introduced structured PvP to MMO gaming. Mythic Entertainment built a little game called "Dark Age of Camelot" (still around by the way) which encouraged players to PvP in a structured way using an architecture which they called Realm vs Realm (RvR). The idea was that you would join a side and battle other sides for control of points throughout the world. Even in DAOC there was no early point to the RvR apart from the glory of owning a control point, little by little they added in reasons to fight with buffs and gear which could be gained from PvP in the world.
WAR uses the same RvR structure but has taken the lessons learned by Mythic as well as incorporating the Iron Grip(tm) that Games Workshop maintains over their IP and built a game where PvP and RvR matters, where every single thing that you do contributes in some fashion to the war effort and the 25 years of Warhammer history and backstory is honored. They have built a game where you are introduced to PvP right from the start instead of racing to the top levels and finding 'Oh now is when I start to PvP'. Its not out yet and the NDA hasn't lifted so all this is pure speculation, but from what I am seeing so far in the various public utterances of fans and Mythic is that the game is fun!.
WAR won IGN best game of E3 2008, Gamespy top ten game of E3 2008, Voodoo Extreme best game of E3 2008 so it seems like its not complete crap and what the devs are telling us is true.
The proof is of course, in the playing.
Showing posts with label World of Warcraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World of Warcraft. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Friday, November 19, 2004
A new beginning
This was intended as the blog of Ulaa the Necromancer, Prexus Server, Everquest. In the last few days there have been massive changes in that arena however which I will report here. After 6 years Southern Armada is moving from Everquest to the World of Warcraft.
Personally I have been getting tired of EQ. Its been getting harder and harder to log in either for raids, for XP or just for stuffing about. It has come out in the last few days it has come out that I haven't been the only one feeling like that. On Monday the guilds leader, Kezlar the Prophet (the Bear) announced he was leaving for WoW and asked if any of the remaining membership wanted to join him.
I didn't need to think about it for even a second. When I first started in EQ I joined a guild with little thought of the time zones involved and the problems they would bring. So I started on a server called Karana which turned out to be largely dominated by GMT Guilds and players (-12 hours from my time) I spent three and a half years on Karana, for most of it I was in a guild called The Silent Watch.
TSW was a great guild and was on its way up into the end game when it imploded for the third and last time. At that point I decided I needed to examine why I played this game and did I want to continue?. In the end I decided I did want to continue but I didn't want to stay where I was doing what I was doing. I wanted to go raiding and see the high end game. To do that I needed to find an Aussie/Kiwi raiding guild in my time zone that was still a bit 'casual'. I couldnt afford the time to join a 7 day a week 5 hour a night raiding guild.
After a little bit of searching I found The Southern Armada, transferred to Prexus and began my career as a raider into the high end game. I loved SA. I had people in my own time zone to talk with and group with, I had people who understood my cultural references (I got very sick of explaining to Americans that 'pissed' doesn't mean angry) and I got to raid twice a week.
SA traveled up into the end game via the content of Velious and Luclin. On the way up I got to kill all of the old 'name' targets of the Game. I was there for the death of Aten Ha Ra, The Emperor Ssraezha, the Avatar of War, Rallos Zek and Coirnav. I was part of the team that triumphed over The Rathe Council and Xegony. We dropped Quarm and progressed through Gates Of Discord to Qvic.
It was enough. After 6 years, the last 2 years of which have involved getting to sleep at 2am (when raids finish) twice a week, it was enough. The Gates of Discord expansion is essentially what broke EQ for me. I feel like the Developers and management of EQ at that point broke faith with the players and put out a product purely for the money with no regard for the players.
Now the argument can be made that they are a company and they are there to make money and that is perfectly legitimate. However, we the players are the driving force behind the game. Without us there is no game and no money. SOE essentially ignored us and produced a steaming pile of unfinished, cheaply produced, poorly put together crap and asked us to pay 69.95 for it.
So after 6 years of unfinished, buggy content, lack of communication with the players, indeed outright abuse of the player base, broken promises and appalling customer service I decided to hang up my Scythe with the rest of the Guild and go to WoW.
So the internet Blog of the Adventures of Ulaa the Necromancer will stay where it is as a testimonial. This newly created Blog will continue as the adventures of Ushnak the Ork and The Southern Armada in the World of Warcraft. This blog will be updated weekly, or as close to weekly as I can manage in between play, work and maintaining real world relationships. I know I had a decent readership for the EQ blog. Hopefully I can manage to entertain a few people in this blog as well.
Well first entry. The World of Warcraft is released 23/11/04. I cant wait.
The reason I went to this format is that you the reader can post comments. Its always nice to get some feedback, in fact its hugely encouraging.
Personally I have been getting tired of EQ. Its been getting harder and harder to log in either for raids, for XP or just for stuffing about. It has come out in the last few days it has come out that I haven't been the only one feeling like that. On Monday the guilds leader, Kezlar the Prophet (the Bear) announced he was leaving for WoW and asked if any of the remaining membership wanted to join him.
I didn't need to think about it for even a second. When I first started in EQ I joined a guild with little thought of the time zones involved and the problems they would bring. So I started on a server called Karana which turned out to be largely dominated by GMT Guilds and players (-12 hours from my time) I spent three and a half years on Karana, for most of it I was in a guild called The Silent Watch.
TSW was a great guild and was on its way up into the end game when it imploded for the third and last time. At that point I decided I needed to examine why I played this game and did I want to continue?. In the end I decided I did want to continue but I didn't want to stay where I was doing what I was doing. I wanted to go raiding and see the high end game. To do that I needed to find an Aussie/Kiwi raiding guild in my time zone that was still a bit 'casual'. I couldnt afford the time to join a 7 day a week 5 hour a night raiding guild.
After a little bit of searching I found The Southern Armada, transferred to Prexus and began my career as a raider into the high end game. I loved SA. I had people in my own time zone to talk with and group with, I had people who understood my cultural references (I got very sick of explaining to Americans that 'pissed' doesn't mean angry) and I got to raid twice a week.
SA traveled up into the end game via the content of Velious and Luclin. On the way up I got to kill all of the old 'name' targets of the Game. I was there for the death of Aten Ha Ra, The Emperor Ssraezha, the Avatar of War, Rallos Zek and Coirnav. I was part of the team that triumphed over The Rathe Council and Xegony. We dropped Quarm and progressed through Gates Of Discord to Qvic.
It was enough. After 6 years, the last 2 years of which have involved getting to sleep at 2am (when raids finish) twice a week, it was enough. The Gates of Discord expansion is essentially what broke EQ for me. I feel like the Developers and management of EQ at that point broke faith with the players and put out a product purely for the money with no regard for the players.
Now the argument can be made that they are a company and they are there to make money and that is perfectly legitimate. However, we the players are the driving force behind the game. Without us there is no game and no money. SOE essentially ignored us and produced a steaming pile of unfinished, cheaply produced, poorly put together crap and asked us to pay 69.95 for it.
So after 6 years of unfinished, buggy content, lack of communication with the players, indeed outright abuse of the player base, broken promises and appalling customer service I decided to hang up my Scythe with the rest of the Guild and go to WoW.
So the internet Blog of the Adventures of Ulaa the Necromancer will stay where it is as a testimonial. This newly created Blog will continue as the adventures of Ushnak the Ork and The Southern Armada in the World of Warcraft. This blog will be updated weekly, or as close to weekly as I can manage in between play, work and maintaining real world relationships. I know I had a decent readership for the EQ blog. Hopefully I can manage to entertain a few people in this blog as well.
Well first entry. The World of Warcraft is released 23/11/04. I cant wait.
The reason I went to this format is that you the reader can post comments. Its always nice to get some feedback, in fact its hugely encouraging.
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