Get together developers to talk about starting an “indie”?  Priceless.

Actually produce the game? Expensive – but doable.

Let Derek Smart talk about changes after you make him president?

Not very smart…

Those who are regular listeners, those who follow us on Virgin Worlds, and read us here, know that we are normally the champions of independent developers. In fact it was not that long ago that we had the community manager and lead designer for Quest Online Studios as guests on the show, where they described us as their “soldiers” making their game and efforts well known.  As a result, the No Prisoners, No Mercy team has been following the shakeup at Quest Online studios.   This morning’s news feed included some of the following Derek Smart quotes that came to us via Broken Toys in a post Scott Jennings calls “I am not making any of this up.”

“Dave Allen didn’t “depart”. I fired him back in February for insubordination and for acting against the best interests of the company. Shortly after the investors of the LLC unanimously voted him off the LLC….”  – Derek Smart

“The average gamer is as finicky as a hummingbird on acid, with a very short attention span and a penchant for being largely unforgiving.” – Derek Smart

It was just yesterday that one of our long time regulars, who goes by the name Token, said he missed a feature we used to do call “Flame Proof Undies.”  Well Token, my friend, buckle up and put on your asbestos long johns because the ride is going to rough and it might get a tad hot.

First off, in a proactive move I will anticipate some of the email and comments we will get regarding Messer Godwin’s Reductio ad Hitlerum –  Attorney Godwin may indeed be a kind and wonderful soul but he doesn’t pay the bills around here so let me set the stage with one of my favorite lawyer jokes.

Question: What can a goose do, a duck can’t and a lawyer should?

Answer: Stick his bill up his ass.

Now that we have set the proper mood, let me begin to violate said inane “law” by pointing out that, based the announcements by Derek Smart regarding Quest Online Studios (QOL), allowing him to do public relations for QOL is like asking to have  Joseph Mengele as your family physician.  First off a few words of advice to Mr. Smart who I know will tell us to put our advice the same place the joke above said lawyers should put the bill…

Derek, there is an old expression that says “be nice to the people you meet on the way up because you will meet the same people on the way back down.”  The gaming industry is a much smaller community than many people expect and bragging that you fired David Allen isn’t like burning your bridges behind you, it’s more like dynamiting the town on the other side as well.  Second, based on your opinion of the “average” gamer you really do need to get out more.  That or at least find a way out of the time warp that has left you stuck back in the 1970’s.  Your concept of the average gamer is about as archaic as the dial telephone, and useful as a third anus (considering, of course that a second one would be extraneous).

And speaking of extraneous…if you are there to turn things around for Quest Online Studios, you MIGHT not want to self destruct the studio’s reputation before they get their next product out the door.  At the rate you are going you probably wouldn’t be able to sell water to a man dying of thirst in the desert. Why am I saying all this? Because I care about Quest Online Studios and hope I am wrong…and if I am right I hope they survive you.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted by The Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)

Alganon:  The Review by R.W. Harper
Game Title: Alganon
Developer: Quest Online, LLC
Publisher: Self Published
Website:  http://www.alganon.com
Retail Price:  $39.99 (including a 1-month subscription) — Limited time offer currently for 50% off and $19.95
Subscription Price: $14.99 per month — Limited time offer currently for 30% off and $9.95 per month

It’s not hard to wander around the online gaming world and find a new MMORPG set in a fantasy theme.  It seems like there is a new one every month and most on the Free2Play model.  However, in early December, a new MMORPG named Alganon launched and unlike the majority of the other recent fantasy MMORPGs to come online, this one does have a subscription model.

One of several Talrok mounts available at level 1.

I was a little surprised when I bumped into the online Beta for the game in late November and instantly signed up.  I spent several hours on their web site, reading about the features of the game, asking myself what would be interesting enough for me to pay for another monthly subscription, and give me something that World of Warcraft doesn’t already provide.  After playing the game for about an hour, the “warm and fuzzy” came about and I pre-ordered and subscribed.

Now, the game hasn’t had a perfect launch.  In fact, there are a lot of rough edges still.  However, I have witnessed something that I haven’t seen in a lot of other large MMORPG games; the development team working hard to communicate and take care of their players on a daily basis.   The game has already seen at least 2 major patches, as well as several server-side hot-fixes and the game play experience is already shaping up for the better.

Looking at the premise of the game, at first glance it would seem fairly ordinary and typical fare of the fantasy MMORPG genre.  In some cases, this is true.  However, there are several unique things about this game that has gathered my interests; as well as the interest of many other players who are starting to call Alganon their new online home.

Let’s take a look under the hood…

The Setting

The lore of a game is something that is close to my heart as a gamer and as a game developer.  This game has a rich lore that seems perfect for expansion and evolution, as the game matures and expands.  There’s a rich world history complete with backstory on the races, the Deities of Alganon and discussions on the history prior to the game’s setting all available on the Alganon web site. 

The world that the game takes place in is known as Alganon and the two races that you can choose to play as are the Humans (from the Asharr faction) and the Talrok (from the Kujix faction).  From these two factions, players are able to create characters within 4 classes:  Healer, Magus, Ranger, and Soldier.  A deeper overview of these two factional races and classes can be found on the Alganon web site.

Talrok Magus looking for action in the Kujix starter zone.

One thing that has to be understood from the start, when beginning your adventure in Alganon, is that this is an evolving world.  Every good persistent world game evolves and grows over time and it seems that the designers of Alganon have that in mind starting out a solid content set. There is already a world event already underway that will open new areas and quests through player contribution and game-play.  This event is known as The Dawning and there is a great overview on the Alganon web site that discusses the event and its purpose.  I can say that as a player, participating in the event in-game, its associated story line and event specific quest lines have a drawing power that pulls me along in anticipation of seeing where the story leads.  It’s quite immersive.

The Visuals

The environments in the game are very nice to look at.  While any MMORPG game will have to skimp a little on texture quality in the environments for performance reasons, the developers did a great job by providing visually pleasing color palettes and crisp materials and textures to add to the immersion and in-game experience.  There are plenty of other small environmental details like animated grass and trees, ambient animations of wildlife as well as idle and spice animations of creatures.  It all adds to the visual immersion that I would expect in a RPG.

However, the player characters and NPCs are a little plain.  I would have hoped for a little more detail in creating my avatar and the selection and color palettes associated with this part of the game are sparse and somewhat a disappointment.  Here’s hoping that there will be enough itemization in the armor and weapons to aid in making this part of the game more pleasing to the eye.

Animations in general are quite good.  The animation blending seems smooth and there is only the occasional place that you see hitches in the transitions while in combat.  Overall, the blending is quite smooth and the animations add to the immersiveness of the situation.

The creatures are very well done.  The art style, models and animations are unique and convincing; the AI states are pretty solid, as are all of the associated behaviors, and this adds to enjoyment of the whole combat experience.

The Audio

Overall, the audio in the game is good.  The music soundtrack is very good.

There are many places in the game where the environmental audio needs some tweaking.  Ambient background sounds seem to be overused and they could probably use a normalization pass to adjust the volumes.

While I am a fan of the level up notification and the quest complete notification – they can get just downright annoying at times.  I would hope to see an option to disable this in the future.

The music is enjoyable, immersive and I keep it turned on which is something I can’t say for all of the other MMORPG’s that I play.

The Features

There’s a ton of interesting features in this game.  Some are already familiar, from other similar games, but re-tooled or implemented differently.  This very fact has caused a lot of discussions in the community, mostly on the negative side, but I will say that there’s nothing wrong with the ways that they have integrated these systems into Alganon.  In fact, I think the developers pay tribute to solid game design philosophy from other similar games and show that they can integrate and expand the core concepts into something better and scalable as their game world grows.

In-game, there’s your typical leveling mechanic where you reach a threshold of XP (Experience Points) and achieve a new level.  At each new level, you can visit your class’s trainer and pay to learn new “Actions”.  In addition to class specific action training, you can also choose “Abilities” to specialize in, within 3 distinct class specific paths to enhance your core abilities.  You achieve 1-point to spend each level in an ability tree.

Human Male Magus. Yes, that's a pink robe.

As your character carries out combat there is also another character statistic working in the background.  This is the “Skill” mechanic.  Various weapons and combat states (such as Defense) increase in a skill value as you use them.  Increasing this stats makes use of in-game actions and items that use this skill more effective.

The last of the 4-core character progression features to talk about is the “Studies” mechanic.  This is an ability that will allow you to choose specific areas of study (from a multitude of subjects) that you can queue and level even when you’re not logged in.  If you’ve ever played Eve-Online, you are already somewhat familiar with this time-based training mechanics.  However, this is the first fantasy MMO to use this system that I know of and it’s a great way to progress your character when you’re unable to login and play.  This particular implementation of the time-based mechanic does a little more than just enhance skills, it will also unlock content to they user.

Crafting in the game is pretty interesting as well.  While in most MMORPG games, crafting is either really handy or its usually not that useful at all.  In Alganon, it’s one of those designs that I consider unique to the title.  You have your typical crafting and gathering professions.  However, each gathering profession can refine the items they gather to make it marketable to crafters to use in their recipes.  You also have your general trade crafting professions of: Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking and Alchemy.  Tailors, Blacksmiths and Leatherworking make what you would normally expect them to but there’s a slight enhancement.  I will use the Leatherworker as an example.

In leatherworking you can make leather armor, arrows, staves, bows, reagents for leatherworking as well as enhancements for your character.  The difference is that you can also make light armor (for casters), medium armor (for Rangers) and heavy armor (for Soldiers).  Each of the armor crafting professions can do this, all with slight variations of the stats for that item being created.  Tailors tend to create the DPS (damage) armor sets, while Leatherworkers create balanced sets and Blacksmiths create defensive armor sets.  It’s a pretty neat system that’s explained in greater detail that I can do in this review on the Alganon web site.

The Community

Quest Online and the Alganon development team have gone another step above and beyond by creating a very rich web-based community, social networking features and an online/in-game research library.  The MyAlganon.com web site links directly to your in-game characters profiles, guilds and friends and carries forth an impressive step further by wrapping a full blown social networking experience around it, complete with Blogs, Groups, Picture Archive, Forums, and the Alganon Library.

A Talrok Ranger showing off some UI.

The Alganon Library is a repository for all of the information that the Alganon player will need. You can find information on the various factions, creatures, items, skills, quests, studies and abilities here — and a whole lot more.  This information is also accessible in-game through a built-in dialog that will allow you to call-up and research in the middle of the wilds if you wish.

One interesting thing that is also introduced in this game is the “Family”.  When you create your character, you’re given a choice of selecting a family to associate with.  There are 5 families you can select to be a member of and each family will have their own specific chat channel in-game and unique vendors in the capital city to purchase items from.

As in all MMORPGs, there are guilds.  Players can create their own in-game guild and will have access to their own in-game chat channels as well as guild specific content on the MyAlganon.com community.  They will have access to a guild bank in-game and will also be able to achieve in-game accomplishments that will be recorded in Great Library’s history books.

There is a whole lot more to be discussed about the community features of the game and I cannot even aspire to give it all of the justice it probably deserves here.

Summation

Overall, I am pleased with this game and feel that it’s worth my support.  I have had a great time playing with the community in-place now and find it refreshing to play in a relaxed atmosphere with other players that I can actually chat with, as well as the occasional GM that chats with me to see how I am liking things so far.

For all intent and purposes, Alganon is a PvE (Player vs. Environment) game at this time.  That is not to say that there may be aspirations to add PvP (Player vs. Player).  There is a clear delineation of the factions and this alludes to the availability of factional conflict in the future.

Sure, the game has some issues still but I have already seen the dedication and passion, of the development team, to get it fixed and keep their players happy.  This level of dedication by the staff of Quest Online and the Alganon team is most appreciated.  Visit their web site for more information about the game and sign up for a free trial while you’re there.

Now we are sure, whenever our readers see the “welcome to the (fill in the blank) edition” they say to themselves “oh boy, it must be a slow news day.” Well our contention is that there is simply a lot we wish to write about that day and only so much room in one article. At least that’s our story and we are sticking to it. That said, there are people in the news today who have “said things with style” –  it is merely a matter of WHAT sort of style that is a matter for discussion.

Earlier this week we wrote about one Erik Estavillo, whom you may remember as the player who sued (unsuccessfully) Sony Computer Entertainment of America over his banning from the PlayStation Network.  The latest round of lawsuits are against Activision/Blizzard and Microsoft Corporation. To wit (doesn’t that sound legal? We thought we would throw a “to wit” in there) he has subpoenaed one of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates, as well as actress Winona Ryder and a member of the band Depeche Mode. Now Mr. Estavillo has added to his list of subpoenaed celebrities by summoning to the stand “a pair of rappers” (or so Gamepolitics.com reports here ).  Game Politics.com being one of our favorite sites, we will just have to take their word for it that rap artists come in pairs (we heard at one time they came in “murders” as in a “murder of crows” – we are happy to be proven wrong in this case). Added to the list of those subpoenaed are Lady Sovereign, as well as Krayzie Bone of “Bone, Thugs and Harmony”. It appears that the rappers are being subpoenaed to show “how rappers are not censored/banned/or punished for ‘cussing/trash talking’ on private property”. 

Now we aren’t sure what got Mr. Estavillo banned from the PlayStation Network in the first place, but based on the reason for the latest round of summons we have a sneaking suspicion.  And if (and that is a big if) that is the case we will be interested to find out if the words “first amendment” come under discussion.

In the end, no matter what the reason for the lawsuits against Microsoft and Activision/Blizzard we have got to hand it to Mr. Estavillo…having the hutzpa to bring a lawsuit and summon a laundry list of celebrities has style.

[Authors note: for those of you who have never heard of the word “hutzpa” before, the classic definition is a man who kills both his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan]

We’re not sure what kind of style this next section consists of, but we will call it the “we don’t like ten bunny rabbits dancing around with toilet paper” style (derived from a quote by the late Rod Serling). There is an interesting interview over at Werit (available here) that comes to us via Bio Break (simply because the letter “B” comes before “W” on our Google Reader). The interview is with Fallen Earth developer Wes Platt. Here is an excerpt from the interview we just loved:

 Werit:  You guys recently had the Days of the Dead event for Halloween which seemed to be a hit among the players.  Can we expect a Christmas Event?  If so, will it involve a mutated Santa Claus?

Wes Platt: Yes, we’ll have a winter holiday event. You might even get to kill some elves.

Elf hunting in Fallen Earth? Sign us up, we will be the first ones in line.  We have our motorcycle and our 357 magnum six shooter all ready.

And all this talk about Fallen Earth reminds us of a quote from script co-authored by Harlan Ellison, based on one of his stories:

“World War 4 lasted just five days  – just long enough for the final missiles to leave their silos on both sides. What’s left where once were homes and families and warm hearths – now only desolation, civilization lies smothered, decaying under an ocean of mud belonging to whoever can dick (we presume the author is referring to Richard Nixon) and fight and keep it for his own. God that’s dramatic. I like that. So spread about us the city of Phoenix, Arizona where in 2006, 18 odd years ago, you managed to come into the world and we became associates…now let’s hear that back” – from a script based on a story by Harlan Ellison

Now we will be the first to admit that the story has some scenes that set our teeth on edge, but it is interesting that the setting of the story is in post apocalyptic Arizona. It is interesting to note that at least Ellison himself said of the last line in the film: “moronic, hateful chauvinist last line, which I despise.”

And before we leave the subject of Fallen Earth entirely, we should point out that in some of the games we play the wait for a gm to respond is sometimes measured in days.  In the case of the latest Fallen Earth GM to help us out the response time was measured in seconds (less than five to be exact). It was a difficult problem (we won’t go in to it here). Suffice it to say that although the programming glitch wasn’t in the patch notes, it was fixed in the next patch less than 24 hours later. We don’t know if GM Daxus is responsible but we are claiming it for him anyway.

Say it with Style…

The latest game to make its way around the blogosphere (at least the end we inhabit) is, as we all know, Alganon. Now as of our readers and listeners know, we are big supporters of the restoration of keel hauling as punishment for the application of “WoW clone” to any game (other than WoW itself of course). That being said, our good friend R.W. Harper (a guest on our upcoming anniversary show) has a great review of the game over at www.lorewriter.com entitled “Something New and Totally Out of the Blue” Here is an excerpt:

 I have sensed a ripple in the force amongst you all and know that this usually is a prelude to the mass of trolls that are about to start screaming their unintelligible and uninformed spewage about the following:

Oh great, another WoW (Everquest, Everquest2, Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, Runes of Magic, Hello Kitty, Warhammer Online) clone.

You know what?  I see this argument being about as pertinent as a dissertation on the variable textures and viscosity of horse dung.

Now THAT my friends is style. We wish we had written that ourselves.

See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team