Posts Tagged ‘Wizard 101’

Among the many jobs I have worked at, one of them was in a factory. There is an old expression that stuck with me from those days – no matter how tired you are, come quitting time on Friday, everyone has energy.  It’s Friday, welcome to the road to the weekend edition.

The Road to the Stars…

If you haven’t read the running conversation under this week’s “Game You Wish You Could Love” article, it’s all about Eve Online. But there is one game that we here at No Prisoners, No Mercy love even before it hits the shelves: Star Trek Online. Now mind you, these days we take anything that comes out of Eurogamer with about a truckload of salt. They are reporting, however, that Cryptic Studios has announced the official release date for Star Trek Online, which they are saying is February 5, 2010. Now mind you we are well aware that if there is anywhere that Murphy’s Law rears its ugly head it is producing games; and so that date may not be set in stone. However, at the risk of jumping the gun (for even in the world of interviews things change) we have the perfect source to ask…

Mr. Bill Roper who has kindly agreed to an interview about one of our favorite games  – Champions Online. The accompanying article prepared by our own Fran has been completed but we are going to make you wait until the audio portion is recorded.  While Fran and I are busy winging (or in my case teleporting) our way across the skies of Millennium City it occurred to us that while CCP is still talking about “walking in stations” everything we have seen from Star Trek Online so far (and that is only what we read) tells us that players in Star Trek are already footloose and fancy free instead of floating around in a pod full of primordial goo.  We only have one question left…

Who do we have to bribe to get a beta code (we missed out on the lifetime offer for Champions Online)

Dragons Age…

Dragon Age Origins has finally arrived and with it, an article over at arstechnica.com entitled “Dragon Age Launch Fails” (available here). If the article is to be believed, there are problems – here is a quote:

 “The problem? EA and Bioware require you to sign into their own websites, with their own accounts and login information, to allow you to access the bonus content from your purchase. That process, it seems, is broken for many users.” – Ben Kuchera, Arstechnica.com

I am not sure why the good folks at Arstechnica are having problems but no one at the modding group I belong to called “The Engineering Guild” (available here)  seems to be troubled at all. In fact everyone at The Engineering Guild has been planning their mods for Dragon Age Origins since long before the game came out.  And one thing is for sure, no one can say the devs at Bioware are not on the ball where the modding community is concerned – the tool set was released with the game and is available here.

Getting Hammered…

It was not that long ago that my goblin shaman finally retired from Warhammer Online for good…but maybe someone might follow in his place. Why? Here’s why..

Werit had an article this week  (and if you don’t read Werits blog why not? It’s good.) reporting that the new 10 day trial for Warhammer Online has been extended – indefinitely. In other words, while players are still limited to Tier one they can now play longer than 10 days. In fact they can play as long as they want.  Here is the article. Let’s hope that this is not only true, but that those who participate will max out at the top of the Tier One levels. After all, Tier One is where I had the most fun; especially in the Empire RvR lake. Either way, another one of our favorite sites, The Ancient Gaming Noob, has an interesting post this week about the possible consequences of the new trial (available here) entitled “a mass of Tier One Twinks”

Meanwhile back at the (post apocalyptic) corral:

Meanwhile the Wandering Goblin is reporting that Interplay and Bethesda (makers of Fallout 3, one of my favorite stand alone games) are still fighting it out in court for the rights to produce a Fallout MMO (which I read is set to expire this month for Interplay). The article is available here.  So while Interplay and Bethesda have been busy playing dueling lawyers I have been busy in the post apocalyptic world of FALLEN EARTH.  And if you want to know a bit more about how things have been going for the dev team over at Icarus there is nothing like hearing it straight from the “horses mouth” as it were – or in this case the project managers mouth.  Yes, Mr. Colin Dwan, project manager for Fallen Earth was kind enough to share some time with us earlier this week. The interview has been through the editing process and will be the top half of show number 48.

The folks over at Wizard 101 have been asking the No Prisoners No Mercy team to come back and play in their world again. As for me, I will be spending time buzzing through the skies of Millennium City faster than a speeding pullet and learning my way around the post apocalyptic Fallen Earth. However, I will not be playing any more Aion Online. For me I believe it is finally time to hang up my wings. I will be in good company, however as Werit appears to being hanging up a similar pair of wings and talks about it in an article here called Farewell Aion.

The last straw…

Werit’s article touched on a couple of points that, for me, were the last straw. Here are the quotes:

“Abyss.  The Abyss sounded interesting on paper, but in reality it was one big gank fest.  Allowing ranks 25 through 50 to fight in the same space, without a bolster, just was not fun.” – Werit

 ”Leveling.  It’s a long way to the top if you want to PvP.  I am a big fan of PvP leveling and Aion just does support that style of gameplay.” – Werit

“Guild.  There are quite a few CoW’s [presumably his guild] who play Aion and I will miss grouping with them.” – Werit

Pvp is  one place that place that Warhammer did it right and NCSoft  still hasn’t learned. If you are going to make a game where the focus is primarily on pvp make sure you can easily level with pvp. The interesting thing about pvp is that everyone talks about balance but what most people really mean is they want the scales tipped in their favor.  As far as balance is concerned I still like the approach Warhammer took (every class is strong against some and weak against others) as opposed to World of Warcraft’s approach (Micromanage all the classes until you manage to tick off just about everyone but rogues). And while Werit said he will miss some of his guild mates, the best thing about organizations that cross multiple games like The Older Gamers is that you will still see the same people in other games.

Stinking out loud…

There is little doubt that anyone who surfs the waves of the blogsphere has not heard about the ‘Blizzard Cash Shop” by now. Earlier this week Fran wrote about this at the end of her “Homey doesn’t like pugs” article.  John Woods echoes our (that’s the royal we) opinion in his article over at www.mmorpg.com.

“By raising a gigantic stink about this particular move on Blizzard’spart, the only thing that is going to happen is that next time, when a company actually does do something offensive like charge a subscription and offer game-enhancing items within a store, is that no one is going to listen to the horde of people that are crying foul.

By reacting and over-reacting negatively every time even the slightest thing is done that might possibly be controversial, the voices of the fans get easier and easier for game companies to ignore. This, my friends, is not good for our genre and opens the door to truly unscrupulous actions by others.” – John Wood, MMORPG.com ( available here )

Now on to the next section…

Lets start with a bit of fiction about Fallen Earth Lore.  Enjoy the story. See you on the other side of Friday.

- The No Prisoners No Mercy team

Most people have memories of their past: playing with childhood friends (or a lack thereof), parents, perhaps a sister or two. People often look back on times spent with families (and not necessarily fondly).  Her memories didn’t extend past the last half hour. In fact the only thing she could remember was her name, and that was only because it was tattooed across her upper left arm, that and a mass of Celtic scroll work. A similar tattoo adorned her right forearm, with two matching tattoos on each of her right and left leg, that went all the way up to her thigh.

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