SWTOR: Galactic Strongholds

Did reality match the long anticipated hype and hope?  First impression, not in the slightest did the hope and hype match reality this afternoon.

We all know I like my video games to have housing.  A place where my character can relax while I play someone else.  You know, home for the character.  Thus, I was very much looking forward to housing being implemented in SWTOR.  Star Wars holds a special place in my heart and I wanted my characters to have a place to kick back, relax, and express their personalities.

What I got was a hanger bay with prettier doors.  SWTOR, EA, and Bioware decided to go with the hook system of housing thereby destroying all player creativity.  No seriously, it is impossible to be creative when item can only go in certain places.  The decoration choices so far are cold and sterile, not remotely personal.  I’m disappointment to say the least.  Crew members and pets can be placed in the house, but they are static and unmoving.  Basically, the stand there like frozen actors or deer caught in the headlights.  It was soul crushing.

There was one highlight, the ability to park vehicles on the taxi pad.  But six vehicles parked next to a taxi is far from enough to make housing rewarding or enjoyable.

I will give housing another chance but I am not holding out much hope. I need housing that is warm, cozy, and creative.  I need housing like in Everquest 2 or Wildstar.  I need throw pillows, pets the move and make noise, pictures in odd places, well you get the idea.

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Everquest 2: Housing Delights & the frustration of Scale

The title for the above, A Gnome lives here but Why?  First off, I love the acorn housing but how I wish the housing would be scalable.  My shorter characters, which by the way is almost ALL of my characters, are dwarfed by the walls and ceilings of their respective houses.  If you scale the furniture up it is still too small and then far, far too large for your character to have any realistic hope of being believably used. 

This is Benedicta’s bedroom, again the bed is proportionally appropriate for a Halfling but scaled up it would still be much too small for the room’s dimensions.

Enough with the whining about a technical challenge I realize cannot be solved retroactively by the developers.  I’ve had trouble sleeping for the last week or so and as a result, I’ve been working on housing for my characters.  It meant a lot of crafting but that’s not a big deal. 

Housing for the Gals VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

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LOTRO: April’s Producer’s Letter

Lord of the Rings Online can be an incredibly beautiful game and it always seems to suck me in when my subscription runs out.  We resub (and bought two new expansions) and once again LOTRO goes and does something foolish and I regret the “investment” we made not to be nickel and dimed to death.  Look, $200 a year isn’t going to kill us but it is more a sign of faith in the future.  This year however, LOTRO has finally managed to kill my interest in the game completely.

They just released the Producer’s Letter for April and in it, they once again break yet another promise to the player base.  There will be no update to housing this year despite it’s repeated promises that the update was coming.  However, there will be a new class which I am sure will be heavily monetized and poorly implemented.

The competition is too good for a seven year old game to be fooling around with crap like a new class and broken promises to an already frustrated and fleeing population.  Realms are empty, trying to play on a new realm means losing real world money tied to the old realm, housing is a joke, the game play can be incredibly boring, and gorgeous screenshots aren’t enough to keep players logging in.  If you want to retain a player base, don’t nickel and dime them (ESPECIALLY players that subscribe to your game), don’t break promises, don’t have secret player councils, and don’t have you corporate heads buried so far in the sand you don’t even realize you have serious competition.

My twitter feed alone shows long time players leaving LOTRO for games like Landmark and Elder Scrolls Online.  The team at LOTRO seems oblivious to the fact that players are finding new games to play and sink real world money into, I’m being kind.  I actually believe that the LOTRO team is intentionally burying it’s head in the sand and break promises and ignoring the flight of customers so that they feel “justified” in closing the game down in the next six to eighteen months.  I know that we won’t be buying any more expansions and that we definitely will not be paying for two yearly subscriptions this year.

Rant over, opinion spoken and now I’m off to write for my ESO character blog and get in some ESO playtime before exploring the awesome changes to Wildstar in the upcoming beta weekend.

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BlizzCon 2013: Initial Impressions

There was much goodness revealed at BlizzCon yesterday.  An expansion for Warcraft, cinematics for Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone open beta announcement. Beta sign-ups are live for all expansions or new games, so sign into your battle.net account and join the fun.

Where to begin?  Diablo II first, The Reaper of Souls expansion.  Adventure mode: play where you want, when you want.  It is a separate mode from campaign mode, designed for players to freely move between modes and enjoy the game anyway they wish.  The game play looks amazing and I’m interested in the Crusader panel today discussing the upcoming class and changes in greater detail.  I admit I haven’t played Diablo III yet more than the trial but I am itching to, specially because the transmogrification system coming in the expansion is something that has peaked my interest greatly.

 

World of Warcraft, the Warlords of Draenor expansion looks to have the potential to revitalize and aging MMO in a competitive marketplace.  UI improvements are coming (true Bind on Account Heirlooms!), popular add-ons being integrated into the UI (random mount, battleground timers), and NEW and stunning character models.  Oh yeah let’s not forget Blizzard’s take on player housing is coming too!

Initial reaction here was meh, but digging deeper I’m deeply interested because let’s face it, I’m a lore junkie.  I think they took the easy way out and reworked old, familiar favorite characters from past Warcraft games but at the same time, they are bringing the past to bear on the present.  I didn’t play the RTS games but I know that the MMO I play today is based on what happened in those previous games and thus I’m looking forward to meeting the current day iterations of those beloved characters from RTS games.  Do I think they need to clear up some of the time travel that isn’t time travel confusion, oh yeah.  I think the potential is there, especially on the lore front.  Orc history, Draenei history, Ogres, and the incredibly juxtaposition of Thrall and Garrosh going back in time to meet their parents with affecting the timeline that we all know.

Heroes of the Storm is the Blizzard entry into the rapidly expanding and incredible popular arena style of multiplayer game.

Heroes is all about your favorite Blizzard multiverse characters into the same game.  Models for characters are familiar but different and game play looks fun, like a fast paced RTS with friends. 

Hearthstone, Heroes of Warcraft is the online card game that is set in the Warcraft Universe.  It has been in closed beta since August and open beta hits next month.

I’m in closed beta for Hearthstone, although I haven’t yet fired up the game.  It looks fun but at the same time I can’t seem to find any excitement on interest for an online card game.  Maybe I’m too old?  Also announced was the game will be coming to apple and android phones in beta form sometime next spring. 

Overall, the first day left an overwhelming impression that Blizzard has spent more time listening to the player base and is more focused on creating games that their players want to play.  Hopefully, the trend continues and they follow through with that potential. 

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What keeps me long term interested in playing & coming back to ANY game?

I’ve thought about this a lot recently and we will completely discount story for this posting because if any game doesn’t have a great story then there is no chance of keeping me interested for any length of time.

Games must have housing and wardrobe appearance slots.  These two items alone make all the difference in my long term interest in any game.

I played Oblivion eons and ages ago on the XBox 360, heck it was my introduction to the Elder Scrolls IP.  It may not have had the detailed customization options that Morrowind had, which my husband still laments to this day, but I knew I could log-in and my character had a house where she could catch a nap, brew some potions, or just spend the rest of eternity safely. 

Everquest II has done housing and housing customization the flat out best I’ve ever seen in any game.  The options for housing are seemingly endless and the developers, and now the community, continually add to the housing diversity.  All of my EQ2 characters share one house, which I must admit I love.  They’ve all got their alters to their particular gods and their trophies from questing.  I love the pillows strewn about the floor and the critters that roam the home. 

Lord of the Rings Online has a good wardrobe system as does Everquest II (appearance clothing).  However, neither game does it perfectly.  Both have stunningly beautiful armor and clothing models that my characters drool over but they both suffer from the same flaw.  No game offers enough wardrobe space to make it expansive enough to switch outfits as often as I’d like.  The Secret World has a pretty good wardrobe system which is perfect for a game set in the modern world with modern clothing, but a lot of their clothing is geared to a much younger player and none of my characters particularly want to walk around in what I consider slutty clothing.  Rift now offers a decent amount of wardrobe slots for in-game currency or real life cash.  Problem is none of my characters are that rich in-game and I’m not spending real life money on wardrobe slots.

I love the look of this NPC in Everquest II.

My Guardian Hobbit in LOTRO never wears shoes but she does love a jaunty hat and on this fine day in Rivendell she was sporting her favorite hauberk.

The one thing Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 do better than any of their competitors, and the only thing in my opinion, is the dye system.  Collecting dyes and not having them be consumed on use is brilliant and perfect system.  Other games need to adopt this model.  Yes they might lose out on some revenue but they would undoubtedly make up that revenue from players like me that won’t purchase a single use dye.

No game, to date, gets housing or wardrobe perfect.  Rift has a goodly number of wardrobe slots but dyes are consumed on use and they don’t have pink dyes.  Rift does have housing but it has yet to make an emotional connection with me.  The Secret World has a decent wardrobe closet but the clothes are too revealing and cannot be dyed.  Guild Wars 2 only has the dye system in it’s favor.  Everquest II has phenomenal and extensive housing but no dyes and limited wardrobe to one outfit.  My characters NEED many, many more wardrobe slots in Everquest Next!  The clothing and armor in the Everquest franchise is so well done and so varied texturally that limiting appearance clothing to one slot is simply criminal.  Lord of the Rings Online has beautiful clothing but dyes are consumed on use and wardrobe storage and slots are too limited.  LOTRO housing is also lacking in comparison with Everquest franchise.

 

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