STO in the Long Run?

So far, I've still very impressed with STO. Although it has a few social failings at the moment, in that the game is relatively simple to solo, as almost every encounter scales with the party-size. But overall I think it's still a good game, well worth playing, and with some interesting mechanics too.

The one concern I have is 'end-game'.

In WoW, you take a level 1 character, play through 19 levels of content, and only then does the door really open up to a lot more content. Which you will strive to complete in order to 'improve' your character, and potentially reach even more content.

In STO, you take a level 1 character (Ensign), and level him / her up to become an Admiral. Each rank has several levels too. So far so similar. But while in WoW you only have 1 set of gear to aquire (not counting dual-spec's), in STO you have many sets. There's yours, at least 5 Crew Members, and your ships (and you may have multiple ships too).
Since STO isn't quite as expansive as WoW, I'm concerned that once I reach the maximum rank, I'll simply be on a grind to aquire massive amounts of gear, to enable me to... do nothing much with.

Cryptic are releasing fairly regular updates, adding new content, and mini-patches to add events. And I like that design. Trickle-feeding updates rather than making everyone wait many months between them keeps people much more interested.
In fact there's a whopping 2GB patch coming soon, that the downloader is already begging me to pre-download.
2GB in the STO universe must be a hell of a lot of content, since 'space' doesn't take much designing, so they must be inserting a lot of extra content. Maybe they're bringing in cities or something? Who Knows.

In fact, the more I write about this, the more I'm beggining to think that Cryptic have got the balance just right. And maybe I'm worrying for nothing. I'm enjoying levelling at my own pace, I'm not rushing for end-game content yet, and by the time I reach it, it'll probably be all that I hoped. There's just that little nagging doubt, but maybe that's a WoW-Syndrome.

WoW endgame got repetitive and felt un-rewarding to me. So I'm just painting STO with the same brush.

But... Elves, and Vulcans. Goblins and Ferengi. Monsters and Aliens. Is it really all so different?

For now.. yes.

Later... Who knows.

Needy-ness is not Attractive (except in certain circumstances)

Playing STO again over the weekend, and experiencing a bit more of the social aspect of the game. Joining the STO equivalent of PUGs.

The problem was, although the PUG was very succesful, there was very little social interaction. In fact, in the 35 minutes I spent in that team, the only chat was the spamming of "Help!" from a muppet who had wandered off in to the middle of an army of mobs on his own, and not realised he could click the 'respawn' button to just get out of there.
And one line from myself along the lines of "I'm guessing many of you don't know the difference between 'Need' and 'Greed'"... Literally, that was it... And that's not artistic license, to emphasize a point. It's exactly how it was.

Firstly, let's consider the problem of 'Ninjas'. It was rampant in the PUG. There was no particular leader, just people thrown together becasue they all wanted to be in the same instance at the same time.
Of course I started out by 'Greed'ing everything, as nothing serious was dropping anyway. But soon noticed that almost the entire group was 'Need'ing on every single item. From the STO equivalent of Bandages (Hypos) to the Ground-Weapons, and even stuff that they physically couldn't use. I.e. Engineers 'Need'ing on Tactical kits and vice-versa.

So, before long, I started to click 'Need' every now and again, just for kicks. Not the most mature or sensible thing to do I admit... but hey.
Considering almost everyone I've met in the game so far is an Ex-Wow (or other MMO) player, surely the 'Need' vs 'Greed' situation shouldn't have to be so bad?

Secondly, the lack of conversation didn't really hamper the progress of the PUG, we wiped the floor with all the mobs. But I believe that if we hadn't had the healer in the group then we'd have suffered much more. She single handedly kept many of the idiots alive. People to whom the idea of flanking, and pincer movements probably sounded like menu options in a restaurant.

The raid situation was a lot of fun, and doing it as a fleet would have been a blast. As it was, it left a little sour taste in my mouth about the lack of socialism, and made me wonder if the game balancing was right if a team who didn't know each other, never spoke, and many of whom appeared to have suicidal tendancies, could succeed so easily.

Spam, Glorious Spam.

War!.. Huh... What is it good for?

Selling in game currencies for real money apparently. Almost all big MMO's suffer from gold spam (or Credit Spam in this case).

Whenever I'm logged on I tend to get about 2/3 spam whispers per hour offering these services. And my in-game mail usually has a few each day too.
I report all of them to the devs, so eventually they will, presumably, get the account blocked. But it's more confusing how they are managing to make a profit from it at all.

Here's the gist of it:

There's only one way to get a trial account in this game, and that's for someone who's paid for the retail version to send you one.
Each copy of the full version has the chance to send 1 5-day buddy key to a freind. That's 1 per account. Not just 1 at a time. Once that key is used, no more can be sent out.
Bronze sent me his, I sent mine to Jeanie, if she buys the full game she will have one to send on too. But if not, the line ends there.

The cheapest you can buy the game for is just under £30. And they're selling the credits for about $2 per 1,000 (roughly £1.50). For that they get a main account for 1 month, and a 5 day account, which they presumably just use for spamming.
So, just to break even, they'd need to sell 20,000 credits. Farming on the main account, and spamming on the trial one. But the spam will end after no longer than 5 days, or before if the account gets blocked. So how do they continue to sell?

You can probably farm 20,000 credits quite easily in a day. But unless you have a way of selling it, it's just pixels.
So then you need to buy another main account, but that's another £30, and the minute that one (and the free trial that comes with it) gets blocked, you're back at square one.

Assume you have 1 main account that does the farming, and then need lots of other full and trial accounts who might also farm, and send their money to the main account, but are also spamming. And that each spamme ris blocked within 5 days (or expires if it's a trial account).

Here's what you'd need just to continue trading for one month (30 days):

1x Main Farming account (£30) (Does not spam)
1x 5-Day Trial (£0) (Lasts 5 days)
1x Main Account (£30) (Farms and Spams, blocked after 5 days)
1x 5 Day Trial (£0) (Lasts 5 Days)
1x Main Account (£30) (Farms and Spams, blocked after 5 days)
1x 5 Day Trial (£0) (Lasts 5 Days)
1x Main Account (£30) (Farms and Spams, blocked after 5 days)

So for the first month it's going to cost at least £120, and at least £100 for the following months (No need ot buy another main account, but £10 per month to keep it activated).
On top of that you also have the wages to pay for the farmers, and the cost of the IT and ISP you need to play, rent costs, etc.. etc..
 
I don't think a rough figure of £200 - £250 per month would be too far off the mark, as a minimum.
 
So, in this scenario, that means that each month they'd need to sell 166,000 credits before even begining to make a profit.
More farming accounts could easily make credits to sell, but it's the spamming accounts that are going to be getting blocked more steadily. And for each one you'll also need more IT and more farmers.
If an account get's blocked in less than 5 days, you're another £30 out of pocket, if it lasts a bit longer, then you might make a bit more.
 
Either I'm missing something, or that's just not a viable business.

UPDATE: The spam continues, although I am seeing a little less of it. But the prices have now incrased to about $12 per 1k Credits. Ridiculously high prices, considering that you can easily find a few thousand in an hour of play, without even trying to.

Allods Schmallods

I regularly read several other MMO and gaming blogs, and some of them have criticised the masses for walking away from Allods online because of it's problems since launch.

Personally, I was very excited by the game while playing it in Closed Beta. But that excitement soon vanished once the Open Beta arrived.
The inability to log-on and the lag once in there was a major factor. A little lag was to be expected, but to not even be able to get in to the game was a major put-off.
I've got a few hours spare, I think "I know, I'll log in to Allods and do some levelling". Only to find that I can't get in to the bloody thing. So I switch back to WoW out of boredom. I bet I'm not the only one who did this.

The other major issue is the cash shop. I'm not as naieve as some people out there. 'Massively' overpricing something so that when you slash prices to the level where you're simply 'Majorly' overpricing them it looks like you're taking positive action, will not work on me.

I usually consider things before doing them, and see right through tactics like this. Where is my incentive to play if the cost of the end-game is going to be so high?

The only time I see myself returning to Allods is to play with my son. He wants to get in to MMO's, and with Allods being free2play I wouldn't mind spending some time in there with him teaching him the basics of this type of game. It'll do him well if he wants to transfer to a more mainstream one later.

As I said, some of the bloggers out there have criticised people for walking away from the game in it's early stages. Seeing it as some sort of betrayal.
But at the end of the day, it's a game. I'm supposed to play it for fun. Not because I feel that I'm being loyal to it in some way. If the I don't want to put up with it's problems anymore, there's plenty of other games out there willing to take it's place.

If my mobile phone provider had absolutely terrible reception in my town, I'd switch to another provider, even if I'd been with that same company for years. I don't have to be loyal to them if they're not providing what I need. So why the hell would I do it with a game?
The problem is, millions of people wouldn't switch providers, either through laziness, scared of change, apathy, or simply because they like to feel that they're not 'quitters'... Idiots.

(Allods might be free2play at the basic level, but it only stays that way if you get your character to the level-cap and then celebrate by rollign another one and doign the same thing again).

Moving on Down (And Recruiting)

I'm trying to take a bit more of a back-seat in the MMO's at the moment, while still trying to stay active in the Munquis.

For this reason, I've handed over the GM'ship of the WoW guild to Knickerface, and last night Bronze took over the Leadership of the STO Fleet. (Although because of a feature of the STO fleet system, we're actually both still the leaders of the fleet. I promoted him to the top spot, but it left me there too. And I can't demote myself).

The Munquis are obviously going through a bit of a transitional phase at the moment. The next few months will be a turning point. And will probably define whether the Tribe survives and becomes bigger and better than ever. Or simply dwindles away in to history because there just aren't enough people interested in joining, or in staying as members.

I think we were quite unique in WoW. You used to be able to log on at any time of day and find at least several players online. Log on at peak times, and it would be in the 20+ range. Log on in the middle of the night, and there would probably still be at least 1 or 2 around.
Those days appear to be gone. I've logged in to find myself the only person online, the raiders have struggled to reach the numbers needed, and for the first time in a few years we're having to actively recruit to try and sort the situation out... It was bound to happen at some point but it's always a shame when things, that were once great, begin to fade away.

In STO we're at th eopposite end of the scale. We're a new fleet, but it's a new game. So we're going to have to actively recruit no matter how we look at it. We currently have a fleet of 2, and that's not going to help much.
I've posted a recruitment thread on the official forums, and we'll have to start advertising in-game. But some of the the other fleets have got much more of a head-start on us. Particularly the ones that played in the Beta. As they probably kept everyone they already had, and many people prefer to join established teams liek that, rather than come in at ground level and work hard to build things up.

Personally, I prefer the challenge.

The Pitfall of Being an EU STO Player

I've been singing the praises of STO so far, so I thought I'd better take a minute out to point out some of it's flaws. Just to even things up a bit.

The first real nag that I had came only after I'd actually bought the retail version of the game. Buying it was no problem, activating it was simple, and when it came to the subscription method Paypal was a nice option to see too. But the one thing that did bug me was the monthly subscription price... £10.34

Now, I can only see one reason for that price, and that's exchange rates. I believe the EU and US players all share the same server. I certainly haven't been presented with any options of switching to another server.
The upside to this is that there's usually plenty of people around, and we all like to be freindly with our continental cousins, as long as they're not 11 years old and playing Call of Duty, and shouting abuse over XBox Live. The downside is that to make it fair, everyone should pay the same rate of subscription.

The problem is that $14.99 might be £10.34 today, but tomrrow it will be £10.36, the day after it will be £10.32 and in a few months time it could easily be £8.27 or £11.45.
So while the subcription price is staying the same for the US players, over here it's fluctuating.
When this is in the range of a few pence, I don't mind. But I do prefer to know how much I'm paying for something.

I was slightly dissapointed that it was so high. With Blizz only charging me £8.99 for my WoW subscription, I'm now paying more to play a game with less content. The difference might be relatively small, but it doesn't take long to add up to a lot, especially when you multiply it by the number of EU subscribers the game will have.

I don't know for a fact that the prices will constantly fluctuate, but at that strange pricing level it seems to be the case.
To avoid the 'not knowing' issue, I'll be paying in 3 monthly blocks. The downside to that is, if the rate changes by a lot, I could end up paying more for that block than if I'd just paid for a month at a time.
Watch this space for more info on this. I'll do a bit of research.

The other nag I have is that the difficulty of things scales with the number of players in your party. This seems a stupid thing to say, but I've often found that it's easier to solo many missions than it is to end up in a team with a moron, or someone who just refuses to join in with the rest of you.

As an example: (Figures have been made up to demonstrate)
In Solo Mode an enemy fighter has 2000HP
In 2 Player it has 4000HP
In 3 Player it has 6000HP
In 4 Player it has 8000HP
In 5 Player it has 10000HP

In solo mode I can easily handle groups of enemy fighters. And with a bit of tactical play, murder them all effortlessly.
But if I'm grouped with 1 other who refuses to join in, or co-ordinate attacks, it's becomes twice as hard for me.

If you find yourself in a group with 5 players, and just 1 of them is a muppet, the rest of you have a much more difficult task, as all the enemy mobs will hit harder, and take more to kill.
Sure the muppet might constantly get his ass handed to him while he tries to solo everything, but that doesn't help the rest of us.

Also, in some missions re-inforcements are called in by the enemy as a sort of final-boss stage, and these are often summoned as 1 per player.
Again, solo they're not too bad. In a good group they have little chance against a co-ordinated assault. But the 1 moron who won't join-in properly makes life very difficult for all the others.

"So don't team up with them" I hear you cry. Well, if only it was that simple. When you enter a mission area, if someone else is on that same mission, at the same stage as you, you are automatically grouped with them.
The only way to get out of the situation is to abandon what you've done on that mission so far, come out of the instance, and back in again. Otherwise, if your mission is to 'Kill 10 Tribbles' every one that the other guy kills will not count to your tally, and there will only be 10 of them around.

This isn't a major problem, I've only experienced it once so far. And in that case I managed to survive against the overwhelming odds, and got a good feeling of achievement for having done so.
But it is an annoying situation to be put in.

Star Trek On Track

After 5 days playing I’ve just reached level 11 (Lt. Commander). At this point I get access to new ships, and my skill choices start to make more of a difference to my gameplay.


Up until this point everyone starts with the same basic ship. You can customize it’s looks by quite a large degree, but the stats remain the same.

On promotion I was provided with a choice of 3 ships. I chose Escort (Tactical / DPS) since that’s the direction my character is focusing on.

But one of the things that’s impressed me about STO is that it’s not as restrictive as games like WoW on what you can do.

Because you’re ship also has a crew, composed of Science, Engineering, and Tactical officers just because you’re DPS doesn’t mean that you can’t self-heal, or heal others, or even act as a tank.

You might never be 100% as effective as someone who’s specialised in that area, but you will still be able to hold your own in most fights.

To give you an example, Engineers are the main sort of ‘Tanking’ role. They have the best regenerative abilities, and the most skills aimed at soaking up the damage thrown at them. Obviously they still have offensive capabilities, they’re just not as directly strong as a Tactical officers.

So, put an Engineer in the engineer class of ship (can’t recall the name right now) and you get a good tank.

But my Tactical Officer can use an Engineering ships too. As a WoW comparison, it’s the equivalent of a Rogue with Uber-DPS putting on some plate armour, and becoming a Ret Pally. You’d probably sacrifice some pure DPS, but you’d gain much more survivability.

And since you can own multiple ships, you’re given the freedom of choice about how to play.

This was a very clever move on behalf of the Devs. Essentially they only had to design 3 classes, But with all 3 classes of player, having the option of using 3 classes of ship, they get 9 combinations for the price of 6.

You also spend your skill-points to specialise in particular areas. So while my Photon Torpedos may be the bees-knees, they’re quite ineffective against a ship with it’s shields up. Once I’ve got those shields down though, whoever I’m aiming at is soon going to find themselves in trouble.

Another DPS player may specialise in Phaser Weapons, which do good damage to the shields directly, and moderate damage to a ship with it’s shields down.

Both of us will be effective, but in different ways. But put us together, and you get a much better tactical force. This is the way things should be.

A lot of the ship combat is simply about tactics. All ships are shielded on 4 sides, and those 4 shields operate semi-independantly. So taking down the rear shield opens the ship up to more devastating attacks. But if that ship simply turns to face you you’ll be confronted by a fully operational shield again, while the rear one begins to regenerate. It’s more than likely that you’ll also be getting shot at while you’re doing the attacking, so you have to keep an eye on your own shield status, and compensate accordingly. A full-Frontal assault may give you the best DPS, but if you’re front shield is penetrated, then you won’t last long. So you’re going to have to reposition yourself and sacrifice some of your advantage.

It’s actually much simpler than it first seems. But it’s effective, and in battles with multiple enemies, or allies, it can bring a lot of strategy to things.

The other piece of the puzzle is the ground-combat. You will also have to beam-down to planets, star-bases, other ships, etc.. and take on enemies in a more familiar perspective.

This section of the game is controlled by the same skill points, but they need to be spent in different areas of the talent tree. And here is where your main class choice is most important.

When you’ve beamed down to somewhere, you’re either on your own, in a team with other players, or with your bridge crew (as AI controlled Bots). You’re going to need the usual range of Tanks, DPS, and Healers to survive for very long.

When it’s just you and your bridge crew, you’ll probably have specialised them in to each of those types of area. Yes, that’s right, you not only have your own skill-points to consider, but your bridge crews too.

The AI functions reasonably well in these situations, your team will basically follow you around attacking when you attack, and performing their respective actions such as healing, and using special abilities. But much like most squad-based games, you can control their aggressiveness, and order them to take up a position while you flank enemies. Anyone who’s familiar with the Ghost Recon, or Rainbow Six games will recognise the type of thing I mean. It’s a simplified version of those games.

In fact, if you imagined a Rainbow Six RPG with special abilities on cooldowns, and lasers instead of machine guns, and aliens instead of terrorists, you’d be quite close.

Overall, I’m still quite impressed with the game. So much so that I splashed out my £30 and bought the full version yesterday.

With the ‘Munquis’ now formed as a fleet (guild) in the game, it’s going to be time to recruit.

To explore strange new worlds

Bronze was good enough to send me a 5-day free trial key for StarTrek Online. I've faniced the game since reading the reviews. But the idea of ship combat, and some of the bad ratings the ground combat recieved put me off buying it blindly.

Having now played it for a few days. (After finally managing to download the 8GB install file, and the 500MB of patches). I really like it.

It's already quite nicely polished, but it also has a lot of potential. The ship combat is difficult enough to keep it interesting, but simple enough not too make it too complicated.
The ground combat is basic, but only in the same way as WoW's is. You have an action bar with abilities that you can use, and they're on cooldown timers. You actually get to control your whole team, but it's mostly a case of positioning them tactically during fights. (i.e. "You lot go and stand over there, while I stand over here"). You get big bonuses for flanking your enemies, so once you've mastered the tactics it's pretty easy to handle even largish groups.

They've also added a few nice touches which WoW really should have too.
Firstly, you can see which of your freinds are online without logging in to the game, just by looking at the website. Secondly, on that same website, you can send and recieve your in-game mail.
So if you see someone online that you want to speak to, but don't want to log in, you can drop them a line... Nice touch.

The best thing about the StarTrek universe though, is that it's potentially limitless.
In WoW, you're pretty restricted by the lore-of-the-land. Look at the problems they had trying to tie Outland in to the main game,
In STO that doesn't apply. Firstly, there are any number of planets / zones out there in space, and StarTrek has always been about how things are different everywhere, while still being slightly familiar (can you tell that I was a fan of the shows?).
If Cryptic (the Devs) wanted to introduce a planet of gigantic pink-and-fluffy killer caterpillars, they don't need to explain much. 'Let's just beam down to this unchartered planet and have a look around... Oh Shit... It's full of gigantic pink-and-fluffy killer caterpillars!'. Last week I was fighting Klingons, yesterday it was the killer caterpillars, and today God himself has issues I'm going to have to deal with.

You can't argue with that sort of freedom.

If the devs actually considered something too over the top, they could always just make it a holodeck simulation, and that way they could get away with anything from a  1940's gangster shoot-out to a 2010 Gulf War scenario.

I'm guessing the devs aren't thinking along those lines right now, but they are doing something else that I've wanted to see in WoW for a while... More events.

And I don't mean 'brewfests' or 'Lunar festivals' I never really got in to the spirit of those anyway. But they have a calendar showing that every few weeks they'll be releasing a sort of mission-pack. Just to add that bit of randomness to the game.
What is currently a safe zone, could simply become the epicentre of a borg invasion, because the devs thought that would be the best place to put it.
Once the attack is repelled the enemies retreat and in a few weeks time, there's another incursion somewhere else, maybe by the same enemy, or maybe something completely different... Excellent idea.
Sort of like the pre-expansion events that Blizz do in WoW, but much more frequent.

Overall, STO has proven much better than I first expected. It's always going to be hard getting to grips with a new MMO, learning the combat systems, and pressing keys that used to do something, and now don't. But Cryptic are obviously well aware that most of their players will be familiar with WoW, and have kept things fairly familiar feeling, while also making them completely different at the same time.

No wonder it's currently the No1 PC hame in the UK charts. Hats off to Cryptic and Atari.

Unfortunately the UK apparently has an ISP issue at the moment, which is why I can't log in right now. But it's nothing to do with the Devs apparently, according to the headline they added not long after the problems started... For now, they've earned my faith, so I'm willing to believe them.

The Moral Majority

This isn't really an MMO post. Although it could turn out to be one, since my mind often wanders while I'm writing, and one train of thought can eaily turn in to two.
This is more a continuation of a debate that I had the other day, with a freind of mine (my father-in-law actually).

He is always a very staunch supporter of Unions, and strike activity, and believes that you should never be a 'strike-breaker' or a 'scab' (as they're also called), because you should show your support for the majority. Because you never know when you'll need the support of others yourself.
Now, personally, I'm a cynical bastard, and fully believe that people, even the nicest ones, are fully capable of turning on you when it suits them. No matter how much support you've shown for them in the past.

That aside, I tried to make the point that, more often than not, it isn't the 'majority' that leads. It's the ones who make the most fuss, and the true majority just plods along.
He never understood my explanation of why (or he did but was just being stubborn). But I'm going to explain it again here anyway.

Picture the Small Scene:

A factory has 100 workers. In the real world, only a certain % of them would actually be union members, but that confuses things even more, and doesn't really matter to this point, so we'll assume that 100% of them are in the factory union.

So we have 100 Union members.

5 of those members get together and come up with (what they think is) a great idea:
"Let's start an hour earlier on Friday mornings, so that we can finish an hour earlier on Friday afternoons"
They go to the factory manager, and ask about it. And are told to "Stop pissing about, and get back to work."

They take the hump, and think that everyone will agree with them. But before they can call a strike about it, to try and force the manager to listen, they have to have a vote.

So every union member gets a chance to vote on whether to strike.

31 vote "Yes"
29 vote "No"
40 don't vote at all.

So what happens?... It get's counted as a "Yes". And the strike goes ahead.
All 100 members are then expected to strike regardless of their feelings towards the issue.

So 31 members of the union, are then imposing their will on the 69 others. In what sense is that a majority?

The true majority are the 40 members who didn't bother to vote at all. Presumably because they didn't feel the issue was important enough to warrant a strike action, or couldn't really care about the issue one way or the other.

Add to those the 29 members who voted "No", presumably because they seriously opposed the change. (i.e. Their child-care or family arrangements wouldn't suit the new hours). And you get 69 people who were not in favour of the strike.

This is how unions are run. This is how decisions are made in the workplace. And this is why I can't stand most unions.
In theory Unions are powerful, and representative. in practice they're usually run by a couple of Nob-Heads who think they know what's best for everyone else.

How is that a fair system? And why should I lose a few days / weeks wages for the sake of some prat who's ideas I either don't care about, or totally disagree with?

The Bigger Picture:

The bigger the company, the bigger the union, and the bigger the imbalance.

Personally, I'm a civil servant, and our Union represents hundreds of thousands of civil servants, all across the UK.
So how many of our people vote to determine strike issues?

Well for a start, only about 60% of the staff are in the union. So only 60% actually get to vote. Even though the union has the final say on pay negotiations, and that sort of thing. If I want to negotiate my own wage, I can't. Because, once they're formed, the union are the only ones allowed to do that.

And on any single issue, how many people bother to vote? About 20%.
Remember, that's not 20% of the entire workforce, that's 20% of the union members. About 12% of the total number of workers.
And the "Yes" vote for industrial action is usually about 70%. Again,  that's 70% of the voters, not 70% of the total staff. In reality that means only 8.4% of the entire workforce voted "Yes".

But that's it. Decision is made. The union claim that the "People have spoken!". And strike action is approved.
And at that point. The other 91.6% of the staff, who disagreed, couldn't care less, didn't know there was a vote, or didn't even have the right to vote, are then expected to follow the 'Majority'.

100% - 40% (Who don't get a vote) = 60%

60% - 80% (Who don't bother to vote) = 12%

12% - 30% (who vote "No")

= 8.4% who Vote "Yes"

Thanks, but No-Thanks.

The Even Bigger Picture:

Still don't believe that Unions can work this way? Surely people can't be so stupid? No way would hundreds of thousands of people accept that?

For those of you non-UK readers, we have a political party in the UK known as the B.N.P. (British Nationalist Party). They are our political equivalent of the KluKluxKlan.
They don't directly preach about racism, and that sort of thing. But they're generally along the same lines. "Britain should be for 'White' British people".
I don't think anyone's ever pointed out the several thousand years of invasions of Britain, where we were occupied for centuries by the Romans, the Vikings, The French, and every man and his dog. The only reason the Greeks didn't have a go at us was because we had nothing worth travelling all that way for, and besides, half the Romans were Greek by the time they arrived anyway.
I think you get the picture though: The BNP are Prats.

So such a party would never get in to power... right?

Wrong.

The BNP currently hold full political seats in my Hometown of Burnley. Now Burnley isn't generally a racist place. There's a lot of racial tensions, there are enourmous areas of the town that are almost exclusively white, and others that are almost exclusively Asian. And then there's the Chinese, Polish, and other genreic populations in there own little corners of the place.

The average turn out for a local election in this region is about 40%. So only 40% of the voting-age population, bother to vote. The population of Burnley is about 75,000. (Let's just ignore that many of those are kids for now).

So that equates to about 30,000 people who voted. Out of those only about 6.9% voted for the BNP candidates. But it was enough for them to take 4 council seats. (Because there are multiple seats on each council, the top guys can get a huge 'majority' of the vote, meaning that only small percentages are required to take the other seats).
Do the math... This means that only about 2100 people actually voted for the BNP, out of 75,000 living in the town. But now Burnley has 4 BNP councillors.

75,000 - 60% (Who don't bother to vote) = 30,000

30,000 x 6.9% (Who voted BNP) = 2070 People

2070 / 75,000 * 100 (To get the %)

= 2.76% of the population voted BNP

It then got worse, when the BNP also went on to take regional council seats, and they now even have a member in the European parliament, because he got 8% of a vote. Dumbasses.

People are sheep. Every now and again a wolf will come along and eat a few, and that's just nature. But bring along a man who thinks he knows best, and scares the wolves off sometimes, and the sheep will follow him just because all the other sheep are.

Trials and Tribble-ations

Something I've come to realise over the past few weeks is how poor the average trial account system is for MMO's.

In WoW, you can get a free 10 day trial, just by clicking a few buttons, and providing your email address. It's simple, it makes sense. Blizzard want people to play and if, by letting 100 people try it out for a week and a bit, it results in 1 more subscriber. Who plays for a year. They'll still make a profit.
I remember buying the original game, and being suprised that there was actually a little flyer inside saying something like "Lend the discs to a freind" and give them one of these voucher codes so they can try it out.

It makes a massive amount of sense in the MMO market, where it isn't how many people 'own' the game, it's about how many 'subscribe' to play it.

For some reason though, it seems that many other MMO developers don't feel the same way. I've looked around at other MMO's recently, and out of the ones that have interested me, only a very few offer trial accounts.

Why?

I'm a working guy, and have the spare cash each month to be able to afford the luxuries like computer games. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid and want to piss that money up the wall by paying for something that I'll never be able to use again.

If I buy a game for my Xbox 360, and think it totally sucked, I could at least take it to the shop and trade it in for something else. I might not make back every penny I spent, but that doesn't bother me. I'm willing to spend money trying things I think I might like.

But if that Xbox game costs £70 (as some have done) and from the minute I play it, it's bound to my console. Then I wouldn't buy it. No matter how much marketing hype there is, or how awesome it looks on the box, I don't like spending my money on something that could be worthless to me within hours.
In the console world, that's where demo's come in. They're obviously the Console version of free-trials.

But in the MMO world, once you've bought that game, it's tied to you. You'll never be able to sell it on (not properly anyway) and, if it sucks, all you're money has been wasted.

With a free trial, you get at least a taste of the game before you lay out your £40+.

So why don't more companies offer a free-trial of their games?

Sure it costs them money, but I'm also sure that if there were more free-trials, they'd also lure more longer-term subscribers.

Or, to cover their costs, why not offer a £5 version of the game?
That way they can cover their costs, and the players can get a slightly longer free-trial. I know there's a lot of MMO's out there that I'd try, if I new it would only cost me a fiver a time.

If it turns out to be trash... *meh*... It's cost me 5 quid, and hasn't cost the Devs anything.
If it turns out to be great, I simply upgrade my account to the full version, and everyones a winner.

StarTrek Online... Atari... StarWars: ToR... BioWare... Take Notes!

Better the Devil I Know

Last night I made my return to the World of Warcraft.

Yet again, I couldn't log on to Allods. They've lost my business now.
I wouldn't have spent any money in the cash-shop at the current pricing model, but apparently they're already looking at fixing that.

In my opinion gPotato / AstrumNival have screwed up their priorities big-time. After an initially great reception from the closed beta, they've managed to destroy almost all of that within the first week of release. I'm not one for trying to find blame, but I garauntee that someones head will be rolling for this mess, and if it's not then the Devs really are living on Planet Zod.
At the end of the day, it might be a game to us, but to the Devs, it's a business. And it needs to make a profit, if it doesn't, it won't survive. No matter how good the game itself is.

So I patched up my client, and logged back in to WoW. As usual, after a break like this, I find it difficult to get straight back in to my main character(s), so I've picked up my level 19 mage 'SmythNuke' and he'll be my centre of attention for now.
I didn't really do much last night, just sorted out the UI layout for him, took him over to Stormwind. And spent some of my level 80 Badges and Stone Keeper Shards on some BoA gear for him.
So he's now got the uber Chest, Shoulders, and Staff which should make his levelling nice and quick.

At the moment, everything he throws a fireball at just rolls over and dies. But I'm guessing that's pretty much the mages 'Glass-Cannon' style anyway.

Unfortunately, my internet connection then went down, and didn't come back up until almost midnight. And by that time everyone else was offline.

I doubt I'll be online as much as I used to be (but who knows). And it looks like it's time for the officer list (and maybe the GM'ship) to be reconsidered. The only question now is, Does anyone suitable want the job?

And it was all going so well

Allods Online seems to have attracted a lot of attention all of a sudden.

Since going Open-Beta, what was expected of the game hasn't changed, but what the game expects of us seems to have changed quite a lot.

Some classes have been nerfed / tweaked, but that's only to be expected. And shouldn't really come as a suprise to anyone. Even if you did consider yourself a hard-core Closed-Beta player, there's no point QQ'ing about it if your favourite class suddenly isn't as over-powered as they were before. I'm sure the balancing will change again.

There are bigger problems though, which are either only just coming to light, or have always been there but there was a feeling they would be rectified soon. It turns out that's not really the case.

The Cash Shop:

The game is going to be funded by Micro-Transactions, the cash shop was inevitable, but it turns out there's nothing very 'Micro' about it.
I've no idea if it's available in the EU shard (server) yet, for the reasons explained later, but in the US it is. And there's a lot of very unhappy bunnies.
A 24 slot bag, currently costs about $20... Ouch.
They've apprently just added a zero to the end of all the original Russian prices. But at those sort of levels I don't think they're going to get many takers.

Server Issues:

I haven't been able to log on for the majority of the weekend. I get a nice little message telling me that I'm at position 1500 in the queue, before eventually timing-out.
Not good.
When I have been able to get online, the lag has been terrible but still playable. I can accept this sort of thing at the beggining of a games life. Everyone being in the same area, at the same time, is bound to have an impact. And it's only on the scale of a busy Dalaran.
They have promised to open more servers soon, but for an opening week. Not being able to log in is very frustrating, and is surely harming their business model.

Fear of Death:

One of the biggest causes of controversy in the game. And the potential straw-that-breaks-the-camels-back.
When you die in World of Warcraft, you either corpse-run, or get rezzed by a healer. Unless you choose to release, rather than run back to your body, the penalty is simply a repair-bill.
When you die in Allods, there's no repair bills, but you get a debuff known as 'Fear of Death'. This reduces your stats by 25%, and can stack up to 4 times, obviously adding up to a 100% debuff

Picture a raid-situation, you die on a boss, and even if you're rezzed by your team-mates, you're now 25% less effective than you were before dying, meaning your much more liekly to die again.
To get around this, you can give some in-game gold to an NPC, but as the price increases with each death, this would soon become very expensive.
Alternatively, you can use the Cash Shop, to purchase 'Perfume'. While under it's effect, you do not recieve the death penalty.

Now a few people have done the maths on this one, and with the current $US cost of that perfume. And the average number of wipes expected in a raid. The cost per player would be $50 to $75 per month, at end-game. Who the hell is going to pay that?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Fear of Death also applies if you are PvP killed... It put's things in a great deal of perspective.

Guild Management:

I've yet to be able to try this, since I haven't been able to log on. But apparently the guild interface is extremely basic, and buggy.
For a game that's going to rely quite heavily on it's social aspect, this is a pretty major flaw, that's goign to have to be resolved fairly soon.


It's a shame about all of the above. There's more faults, but these are some of the more important ones.
But I'm not going to give up on the game just yet. It's still fun to play, and the problems could potentially patched-out.
The general feeling seems to be swinging wildly between "This is a potentially great game" and "WTF!"

If things don't change fairly soon, it's going to end up being just another dissapointing MMO that no one plays.

Munqui Refresh

Well, it's now official(ish).

The Munqui Tribe is now a social gaming network, rather than just a guild on the Darkspear EU realm of World of Warcraft.
It's probably the only way to see the Tribe survive the lull in WoW, and the big new MMO's that will be coming out soon.

So, with Brasts blessing, I've given the froums a bit of a spring cleaning, changed the news layouts, and categories, added more info to the 'Leaders' 'FAQs' and 'Ranks' pages... and tried to generally open up the site a bit more, to make it more Multiple-Game freindly.

I've tried not to change too much, I know some people hate change to the point where they'd prefer to keep the same car for 20 years even though the doors fallen off, and the ariel is attached with sticky-tape, just because they feel comfortable in it.

So the themes have been kept, and the general layout of the front page has only had a few button changes.
But it's now a little less WoW-Centric.

Offline Life

I'm Offline and I don't care... doo dah... doo dah

The Allods Online open beat began yesterday. Essentially, it's the full release of the game, but with the developers reserving the right to change things at random without explaining, or people getting too upset.

I was looking forward to launch night, but I didn't log on. A few real-life issues have cropped up recently, not leaving me much time for gaming, or leaving me time only to enjoy the pick-up-and-put-down console style.

But here's what I've realised today. I'm not really bothered that I didn't log on yesterday.
If that had been WoW, I'd have felt I was missing out on something, or maybe not doing something productive with my potential time.

But with Allods, I didn't feel that. I'm not paying anything for the game, and my characters aren't going to be suffering because I didn't log on to do my dailies.

It feels a little like an alcoholic standing up in a room full of strangers and admitting his addiction.

"I haven't logged on yet, and that's OK!"

It's not that Allods is an inferior game to WoW (although in many ways it obviously is), but it's the fact that I don't feel punished, in any way, for not logging on.
By waiting a day I'll probably avoid a lot of the quest congestion that's bound to happen on launch day. I'll also benefit from other people having been-there and done-that before me, so the AH will have some stuff on there, and if I ask in chat for advice on quests, someones probably going to know the answer.

It feels... strangely... refreshing.

Tonight I'll probably log on. Make a few characters, level up at least a handful of levels (it'll be slower than in closed beta because all XP was doubled until now). And generally get a feel for how the game is going to pan out, and the society of people that are going to be playing it.

After all, the greatest game on earth would still be a horrible experience if everyone you met was a complete tosser.
Oh wait... that's what they mean by "Real Life", shame there's no alternative MMRLRPGS I can try for a while.

But hey-ho, away I'll go, and I'll be trying to set up the new Munqui Tribe guild within Allods as soon as I get the chance.

Closed Beta... Closed

Allods has now shut it's doors until Tuesday, when it re-opens as an 'Open-Beta'.

Quite a few of the Munquis seem to be intrested in giving it a try, and voted heavily for playing as Empire rather than League... so that's where we'll be going.

My son even loves the game. He really wants to play alongside me, but he's also fascinated by the Gibberling race, so he's a little torn.... ah, to be 10 again, and have such difficult choices to make.

My first few attempts at Empire have been pretty succesful. Unlike some games, where you get the feeling the 'evil' or 'opposing' faction was added-in after they'd finished all the 'good' sides stuff, and maybe gets a bit rushed. In Allods Online, I felt the Empire starting quests and area were actually more original and beter done than the League ones, and with slightly more comic effect.

The 'Evil' of the Empire is actually defined by their 'Capitalism' and led by a Dictator, compared to the 'Socialist' views of the League, and their Council led leadership.
It's a Russian game originally, so read in to that what you will.

The item shop was opened-up (and was temporarily free) to give people a chance to see what they could expect from it.
And it looks like the predictions were right... Temporary Boosts and Luxury Items (e.g. bigger bags) but nothing that would give any major advantage, unless someone wanted to invest a fortune in the random chests in the 'hope' that they would get something awesome. But anyone trying this lottery style of playing had better be working on Wall Street to make that way of playing worthwhile.

An interesting part of this is that gold trading will become 'sort-of'' legal too. You will be able to buy items from the shop, and then post those items on the in-game Auction House.

I've read in to the whole Astral ship thing a bit more. They look awesome, and will require a major guild effort to achieve them. Parts will need to be collected by doing major quests and raids, and the ships will require repairs.
For this, some parts will be available on the item-shop, but nothing that you could buy with in-game gold, or find in-game yourself.

And the Ships will require at least 6 players to pilot them, with players taking on roles as Captains, Engineering, Gunners, etc...
But each ship can actually accommodate up to 25 crew-members.

The theory is that you navigate your ship to a far-off place. Complete a major quest, slay some major monster, or enter a major raid, and then return to an Allod (Island) to divide-up the loot.
But Astral space is open PvP territory, so you'd better be prepared to defend your cargo, as other ships can attack you, or even board you, for fighting on-deck.
Getting your precious loot back home could prove harder than the fight to get it in the first place.

What this means though, is that small guilds need only 6 players to be involved in this. And larger guilds can have the full 25 crew, and will obviously be better defended in a fight.

To go the step further, guilds can have more than one ship, so in theory a major guild could have an entire armada at their disposal. Or smaller guilds could band-together for the safety in numbers aspect.
A cool addition to the game, and a good way to promote social activities, in my opinion. Although I've obviously not experienced this in practice yet.

Fingers Crossed, Tuesday comes, Open Beta begins, the Munquis begin their campaign in Allods, and something good comes from it all.
If not.... oh well, no harm done, no cash spent, and we all get to experience another game for a while... Which is never a bad thing.

Alodd'a Fun

Vind has now taken Allods Online for a spin.
I was speaking to him in the game last night, and he suggested that we try switching to playing as Empire (Horde), if we're going to give it a serious try.

I'd been toying with the idea myself.
In WoW, Horde have always been viewed as being the more serious of the 2 factions. The kiddies almost always choose Alliance, and the population on the Horde side is almost always lower than the Alliance.

The downside to this is that Allods has a faction restriction. You can only have toons on one side or the other, not both.
The word is that everything is going to get wiped soon, so I haven't really been getting attached to the characters, and have been spending most of my time trying out new classes, and professions.
So with that in mind, I deleted all of my League characters, and re-rolled Empire ones.

gPotato have done something sensible here:
In WoW, they found that one of the main reasons people didn't play as Horde, was that they didn't have 'handsome' character choices. When they introduced BloodElves as a playable race, the Horde gained a lot of popularity.
In Allods, there are humans on both sides of things. We're humans, we can be good or evil, without explanations. And it means that you can choose to play as a 'normalish' character but still mix with Orcs, and the cyber-punk-undead Arisen.
No extra character models, very little extra effort, and problem solved.

In little things like this, gPotato remind me of the Chinese cloning phenomenon.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about: The Chinese are currently going through a phase of copying everythign in the world, and making it quicker, faster and cheaper.
e.g. The IPhone - Apple is charging £500+ for their 3GS beauty, within a couple of weeks of it's release the Chinese had come up with the IClone, selling it for around £70, with almost all the same features (minus the AppStore) dual sim card slots, memory card expansion slot, and it's sold unlocked, for you to place any sim card you like in to it.
Also e.g. They also did this to an American car, and the copies were so close, but also so cheap, that you could take the door of your Chrysler in the US, buy a chinese door for a few quid, and it would simply slot in to place, with the seals lined up and everything. The American company went ballistic, launched lawsuits, and basically spat their dummy out.
But after a fortune in legal costs, and no sight of a victory, they realised there was nothing they could do to stop this and simply started buying the parts from China themselves to reduce their costs.

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best. And that seems to be the case with some of the Allods features.

I found the the Empire starting area to be a much better taster of things to come later in the game, than the typical paradise-island setting of the League starting zone.
You start in a ship under attack from the League... and other things. You get to shoot cannons at another ship, and see one of the collosal Astral-Monsters that you'll be up against later in the game.

Unusually for me I actually read the text of a few of the quests. And was initially suprised about some of the things I was being asked to do.
One of the first quests you get is to beat up rats and slugs, but also Prisoners of War, to see if your brainwaves change while carrying out your orders.
It's just a game, and they're just pixels, and you don't actually kill any PoW's, but I was a little suprised at the order. That's the only example of things like that I've found though.

Once you're past the starting zone, the city feel of the Empire is actually slightly better than the League side.
I got the impression that the league takes itself very seriously, whereas the Empire is much more laid-back and slightly funnier.
For example, in the League City of Novograd it's all guards and swords, and ancient elven mysteries.

In the Empire city it's Orc Policemen (think PIGs from DukeNukem, if you've played it), and the quests are generally more along the lines of "Do me a favour" rather than "Your Empire Commands".
It was quite refreshing actually.

At the end of the day though, Quests are quests, and it's all just XP. And by level 21 Empire and League will be questing in the same zone anyway (Much like in TBC / WotlK). But at that point the open-ish PvP will come in to play.

You wont have to take part in it, you'll never have to PvP if you don't want to. But the flagging system will work differently to WoW's.
If you flag yourself for PvP, you actually recieve a buff that increases your XP gain, if you don't you get a buff that reduces it. You don't have to attack anyone, and you might not get attacked yourself, but it's the chance you'll take for the buff.

Again, a simple solution to something that WoW never really mastered. It's not forcing you to join in, but it's a good encouragement.

The only down-side from Empire so far is that I quite enjoyed the Mage I had on the League side. Unfortunately only the Arisen can be mages on the Empire side, and I'm not keen on their look.
But I'm sure some will much prefer them to playing as a boring Human or a standard Orc.

The Munqui Tribe Corporation?

In the guild forums, Lewt posted something interesting:

"I would be happy to try Allods as a kind of holiday but I would be really sad if we didn't all switch back to playing WoW again when the expansion comes out.

I guess the Munqui Tribe should really be viewed as a circle of online gaming friends rather than a WoW guild specifically (damn, we're getting dangerously close to corporate strategy here!)."

I think this pretty much describes how the Tribe has worked up until now anyway. The Munquis have survived a server change from Nordrassil to Darkspear, Key players have come and gone, the GM position has changed hands at least 4 times, the officer-team has rotated fairly regularly. But the Tribe survives, by evolving.

Even players who have left the guild, or left the game altogether, still keep in touch. We're a group of freinds, most of whom met through the playing of the same game, but who have gotten to know each other well enough to keep in touch, even when not playing that game.

There's a lot of members in our guild who left months, or even years ago. Or who don't even play anymore, but who keep in touch, or keep an alt in the guild, just so that they don't lose touch.

When I rejoined the guild I met a bunch of people who I knew in-game. I've now met some of them in real-life, have them as Facebook freinds, MSN buddies, Xbox Live Freinds.
Although they're very underused by the majority of the guildies, the core of the guild tends to use the Munqui Tribe forums as a sort of focused social-networking site.

I'll be trying Cataclysm when it comes out, I'd be a fool not too. Blizzard has the biggest and best MMO on the market right now, and just because it might have gone a little bit stale, doesn't mean that things can't be turned around with the release of a major expansion.

The fastest way to kill a guild is boredom. (Although stealing all the money from the bank and kicking everyone would probably do the trick too).
But if we can adapt, and change, and (like Lewt says) consider ourselves a group of online gaming freinds, rather than specifically just as a WoW guild, then we can probably survive anything.

If enough people are interested in a new MMO, then I think it's worth a try.
I was considering trying to start a new guild in Allods, and not naming it after the Munquis, simply so people knew it was something fresh and different... But having thought about this a bit more, maybe "Munqui Tribe Mk3" is the way to go.

(Mk1 - Nordrassil, Mk2 - Darkspear, Mk3 - Allods?, Mk4 - ???)

Allods Online: 3rd Time Lucky

3 days in a row, and 3 posts, that's almost regular... Almost... And the content has obviously been a little shy on World of Warcraft info.
That's just the way it is at the moment. I'm enjoying Allods, and not missing WoW anywhere near as much as I thought I would.

There's now a couple of Munquis that have come to give it a try, and their first impressions also appear to be positive.

The question is: Will Allods Online just be a flash-in-the-pan?

At the moment, I'm enjoying the game immensely. The differences make it fun, while still being familiar enough to remind me of WoW and make me feel immersed in something worth doing.

But if Allods becomes the new flavour of the month, will it last?

There's some big competition on it's way, that could steal a lot of Allods thunder.

Bronze is already playing StarTrek Online, and seems to think it's worth a shot. Although from what I've seen it seems more suited to someone who's also a fan of EVE, rather than WoW. But maybe I'm wrong on that one.
If they offer a free-trial maybe I'll give it a look.

StarWars is going to be the big test though. With WoW appearing to be in a decline, and with all the fan-base that SW:TOR will have even before it's released, it could finally be the WoW-killer.
Only time will tell though, if the game turns out to be a steaming pile of crap, then it might get a few tourists, but they'll all end up runnign back to WoW with the release of Cataclysm.
If it turns out to be everything they've said it will, I can see a lot of people sticking with it.

So where does that leave Allods?

Well it's FREE (Have I mentioned that before?), which gives it a bit of an advantage. And it's available right now, which is obviously another positive. And god knows when we'll see SW:TOR or Cataclysm, so as long as it has a good few months to get its feet under the table, it could turn out to be something worthwhile.

I can't speak for the whole world, but some of the guildies have already made their case on why they will not be playing SW:TOR, or StarTrek, so maybe Allods will be the appealing place for them instead.

If you're a social / casual gamer, for whom it's more about community, crafting, and having fun, than about being the biggest-baddest *Jedi / Sith / Federation / Klingon* (*insert game of choice*). Then Allods could be just what you're looking for.


As an update: I've rolled a second mage (Human this time), just because it doesn't take very long and I wasn't happy about how I'd spent my points, and the profession I'd chosen.
The starting areas are very well designed, with plentiful quests, but the freedom to pick and choose which of them you do. As long as you follow the main storyline to finally leave the island (or Allod, as they call them).

Allods Online: Second Impressions Count

Well I've now been joined in the game by another Munqui. 4 more of those, and we can officially form a guild. That's always a good start.

My Warden (Druid / Hunter / Rogue combo) is now level 13. But I thought I'd try and roll a couple of the other classes just to see how they play too.

So first stop, I rolled a mage... And loved it.

He's now level 7, and I love the mage mechanic they've included.

Mage Mechanics:

In this game, It's impossible to have the 'perfect' spell rotation. They've solved the problem of cookie cutter builds with a very simple solution.
Mages have 3 types of spell, Fire, Ice and Lightning.
Whenever you cast a spell you get a stack of that particular type of magic. These have a cooldown of about 10 seconds. If you cast another spell of the same type within that time, you get a second stack.

Alone, these stacks do nothing, but if you reach 5 stacks, and then cast another spell of the same type, you recieve a totally random buff / debuff.
That can range from silences or increased / reduced casting time to a specific class of spells to a total HP / Mana regen or a big HP / Mana reduction. There's no way of knowing what it will do, or which it will be.
It can make you a temporary killing machine, or a temporary pathetic weakling. Or force you to switch to an entirely different class of spells.

This means that you've got to be reactive, and can't just blindly mash the same buttons over and over again.
It's not complicated, you don't have to do anything with the stacks themselves, you just have to be aware of what's going on... I love it.

I've chosen to be a lightning mage, but I'll still have to be well aware of what all my other abilities and spells do for the times when my lightning is debuffed, or the other spells are temporarily over-powered.

I havent tried all classes yet, so maybe this type of thing applies to them too. Probably, since I do know that warriors have a Rage-type mechanic, that druids pets have a seperate energy bar, and that threat generation is done in the familiar way.

Faster Alts?:

I'm not sure how it happened, but second time around, and my character seemd to fly through the starting zone very quickly. He wasn't even presented with the same number of quests that my first toon did, but was still the same level by the time he reached the proper part of the game.
Maybe this is intentionally done to stop the low-level grind, or maybe it was just my perception, since I knew what I was doing that time.

Micro-Transactions:

I've found out a little more about the item-shop (which is how they will eventually fund this game). It looks as though the enitre game will be playable without ever visiting it, but if you want 'luxuries' then that's where you'll find them. Respecs, Fast-Mounts, Bigger Bags, all that sort of thing.
In my opinion that's the perfect way to pitch things. If I'm enjoying the game, I'll happily hand over a few quid to buy a bigger bag, or sort out my talent-spec if I've made a complete mess of it.
Or if I want to level a new toon, and fancy an XP boost to avoid the grind... why not?

I think they've found the right sort of balance for the micro-transaction model. It's not actually up and running yet, so don't hold me to it. But from what I've seen and read, nothing will be impossible without spending money, but for those things that make life that little bit easier, it's there.
The only question is, can they make enough money from it?

Crafting:

I've yet to do any of this, since it requires gold which I don't have much of yet.
But the mechanics of crafting are also randomised. With a mini-game type of situation. You select your ingredients, and then play the game with them. The better you do, the better the quality of the item / elixir / weapon etc... that you create.
Again, this means that there's no perfect way to level your skills, if you're good at crafting, you're good. And if you're crap, then the stuff you produce won't be of the same quality as someone who's a master.


Summary:

I'm enjoying the game, looking forward to seeing things progress. Excited about the possibility of customisable guild-ships. That are manned and piloted by the guild - for the guild.
And I'm enjoying the mechanics of the game.

It isn't perfect, it has a few flaws. But that's OK.
If it had come out at the same time as TBC, I think that it might have given WoW a run for it's money.
As it is now, it's coming out at about the time that people are getting bored with WotLK, and maybe that's even better timing. The general feel of world-chat is that it's full of WoW players, and all pretty happy about it.

It's not better than WoW, but it's close.
And WoW is much much bigger. But...

You can hire a Stretch-Limo to take you and your freinds to town. And it will feel awesome.
Or you could just all jump in a taxi, and have just as much fun once you arrive.

Allods Online: First Thoughts

Hey, long, long, long time no post.

It's been a busy few months for me. So my MMO gaming has had to take a back-seat. That's not always a bad thing though. Sometimes it's good to stand-back and look at things from a distance.
And that's pretty much what I've done for the moment.
I do intend to return to WoW. But, if I did it now, I wouldn't be able to commit to raiding. And the only alternative is endless heroics, or rolling yet another toon.

So I went in search of alternatives to fill the gap.

After much deliberation, I decided to give Allods Online a try. So with a sceptical eye, here are my first impressions:

Graphics:
Quite similar to WoW really. Maybe a little more polished, but very comparable, and adequate for the job. A nice variety of effects and different monster models.
It runs nice and smooth, at max res, and draw distance, and effects, in windowed mode on my Laptop, which although a little overpowered compared to most laptops,  would be comparable to a reasonable desktop PC.
If WoW is playable for you, this probably will be too.

Sound:
Does it's job. The background music adds atmosphere nicely, without becoming too annoying. There's no speech in the game from any of the NPC's, but there isn't for most of the WoW ones, so again it's very comparable.

Gameplay:
It's basically a WoW clone. In case you hadn't picked up on that fact from reading the lines above. But it's a very very good one.
It describes itself as a 'Space Opera' but to be honest it's more "Burning Crusade" than "Battlestar Galactica".

It's still in 'Closed-Beta'. It has to be the most open closed-beta in the history of games, but still... that's what they want to call it.

I've experienced a couple of game crashes, but nothing that wasn't resolved by just closing the window and logging back in again. So no major problems in that respect.
The game feels very complete. And if it was released tomorrow, it would be worth buying.

But that's another of it's key features... It's free.
It's going down the micro-transaction route, and that part isn't operational yet, but from what I can gather it would seem to be nicely balanced so that it's fairly optional to use. E.g. a character re-spec might cost you real money, but playing the main game and progressing wouldn't.

One of the original things that put me off playing this sooner was that the end-game is supposedly ship-combat. Although I'm not against this in principle, it's new to me, so made me doubt if it was going to work.
But having seen videos and read reviews of how it operates, it seems to fit in well with the game.
You don't do it solo, you do it as a guild. The ships are expensive, and difficult to master. But with team-work you can really go places... .Literally.
I think this could be a great way to encourage guild-participation. And It's a change from the basic raid mechanics of Tank / Healer / DPS. Instead you'd have a Captain, Gunners, and Support Staff.
I'm no where near end-game yet, but I'm actually quite looking forward to seeing this part of the game now.

Which brings me to the negatives of the gameplay. And there aren't many.
The game comes with a built in quest-helper, which shows you quest locations on the world-map. And tutorial hints pop-up whenever something new is available. The interface should be pretty intuitive to anyone who's played MMO's before, but with the differences you'd expect when switching between games.
But for an experienced MMO'er like myself, there's a distinct lack of information sometimes.

For example; I wanted to create a guild in the game. I know it's possible, I've read about others, and you can see the guild interface simply by pressing 'G' in-game. But I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to create one. After an hour of googling, I finally found out that it costs 95g to form a guild and you have to buy a token to do it. But this information was found buried at the bottom of an unrelated forum post, that took ages to find.
Anyone who's not 100% internet savvy, would have struggled to find that.
Since my current bank balance is about 2g, I'll have some way to go before the guild is set up. But the idea is there.

There are dungeons, and elite mobs wandering around in the open. Some of them take a team of 5+ people to bring them down, even at low levels.

Some of the quests aren't very clear. The lore has been worked-out nicely. So you know why you're doing what you're doing if you can be bothered to read the text, or you can just skip to the slaughter-at-hand if you can't be arsed.
But occasionally it's not very clear what exactly you're supposed to be doing.

For Example: Take this chalk, and go and mark 6 of the biggest trees in that area, so we can chop them down for timber... Sounds simple. But there's actually only a couple of very specific trees that you can mark, and they despawn when others have marked them... which results in you wandering around a forest trying to mark the trees, that aren't there, until eventually you find one you can click on, that looks exactly like all the other bloody trees.... Bollocks.

But luckily, this problem is rare, and no MMO is perfect anyway. Other than a few minor annoyances like this the game has very few flaws.
If they just provided an instruction manual, or at least a wiki-site that explained things like guilds, or the basic mechanics of each class, my overall enjoyment would have not been hindered by having to google so much to try and figure out why I couldn't do something that seems so obvious.


Pros:
It's free. It runs very smoothly. The class balances seem to be correct. End-Game isn't as weird as it first appears (there are dungeons as well as ship-battles). It's not WoW.

Cons:
It will eventually switch to Micro-Transaction (but this might turn out to be a good thing). There's a lack of some basic information and support. The community is relatively small at the moment (but it is growing).

Summary:
I currently have a level 11 Kanian Warden (a sort of Druid / Hunter combo). And I'm looking forward to logging back on to him tonight to see where things go next.
I've been told, that the first dungeon is around level 13. So it'll be interesting to see how they work too.
On the munqui forums I rated it as a 4.5 star game (with WoW as a 5 star for comparison).
I'm going to drop that to a 4 star game, but only because of the lack of support. Which could put some people off, particularly the more casual, or the WoW tourist. If that was sorted-out, then it'd get it's half a star back.

If you decide to join in the fun /whisper me in game. I'm "Smyth", just to be original.