This just in from the SOE Convention in Las Vegas, the official launch date for Planetside 2 is November 20, 2012. The buzz around the game is growing. Particularly since it appears you don’t have to be a twitch first-person shooter player to be successful and have fun in Planetside 2.
I reached Level 90, in World of Warcraft, today on my Shadow Priest this afternoon, although the above picture was taken several days ago. I didn’t run a single instance, didn’t finish all the zones, and reached level cap with a gear score high enough to run heroic instance should I desire. I’ve had a blast. The quest lines are fabulous, the faction are relevant and the artwork is phenomenal. My favorite thing so far, although it’s hard to pick just one, is that the armor isn’t drab and has color and vibrant details.
There are a couple of quests I’ve run into that are a little buggy, but there are well documented solutions available when that happens luckily. I’ve only looked up two quests so far and only after being stuck for a while. I thought I would despise farming but I don’t. My faction with the Tillers is negligible at the moment but I enjoy farming. It’s different than farming in Lord of the Rings Online, which is also supremely enjoyable and much more productive than five witchberries a harvest. It will be a pleasant diversion when I log-in.
One truly unique thing about Mists that is beginning to be talked about, is quite simply that people live and work in Pandaria. NPC’s don’t just stand around, hand out quests and rewards, die when attacked but rather you see their homes, relationships, their intense affection for beer, and their devastation when loved ones die. Who can forget the quest line in Kun-Lai Summit which asked you to gather materials to lay the dead to rest or the quest line which refused to allow the bodies of the enemy to be decimated by the wildlife? Little touches like that, make the environment come alive and make the stories more touching and emotional. I’ll admit it, more than once I’ve needed a box of tissues.
Best thing so far unrelated to storyline and artwork? I hit maximum level on Enchanting by level 88. It wasn’t a grind, I didn’t have to spend money on components, and rare components are achievable without a raid this expansion. Can’t tell you how pleased I am about that. Motes of Harmony and Spirit of Harmony may take time to acquire but the aren’t so unusual as to make you want to pull your hair out. Although I would love it if they made Motes and Spirit bind on account instead of bind on pick-up but I can live with that since I have no choice.
Biggest annoyance … quite simply I’m out of bag space! No seriously, I am out of bag space. I vendor every time I see a merchant and still my bags are packed. Between cloth, bolts, food ingredients, raw materials, cooked food, and stuff I can’t live without (like hearthstone, enchanting rod, and Jeweled Fishing Pole). Of course, doesn’t help that I stop and fish every pool I come across. Does anyone think there are insufficient Jade Lungfish pools in Pandaria? Besides much larger inventory bags, please Blizzard make fish stack in quantities of 100 and not 20!
The question now becomes who do I level next? It might be my Monk but I’m suspecting it will be my rogue. I can’t believe I just wrote that since I never thought I’d want to play a rogue. However, she has herbing and mining and thus has the potential to keep everyone but my leatherworker supplied with necessary raw components. However, I’m going to play who I want so I keep the game fun and not a grind.
On Tuesday, 26 June and 4 July 2012, the latest DLC for Bioware’s epic conclusion to the trilogy will be released for the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3, respectively. The DLC will be free. The DLC is the long awaited ending clarification. The DLC doesn’t change the ending but rather seeks to flush-out and better explain the three possible endings.
It’s official, we have both deleted all game files for The Secret World from our computers. It wasn’t a difficult decision truth be told. Between the attitude of the developers, the poor optimization, the disconnected combat, jerky animations, and the incredibly poor character creation choices deletion was an actual relief. $500 lesson learned, words from Funcom are insufficient. It is abundantly apparent that Funcom has learned nothing from two previously horrible launches: Anarchy Online and Age of Conan. Who knows, maybe in six months they will have worked out some of the issues and the game may actually be playable but I doubt it will happen that quickly.
I sincerely hope that those players who stick it out with the game help make it better. I just don’t have the time or energy to help a gaming company put out a polished product post-launch. It is just sad that a company has failed to learn from past mistakes so completely.
Last weekend was the third open beta weekend for The Secret World and unfortunately, convinced me that the game is unplayable. We pre-ordered the game based on the strength and uniqueness of the IP and the belief that Funcom had learned from past mistakes. We both have Grandmaster packs to the game, and I at least, feel like an idiot for having faith in Funcom. For years the pictures, above and below,
and the catch-phrase, “play how you want, look how you want” has been out there by Funcom. However, it was confirmed this weekend by Ragnar Tornquist, Creative Director and Senior Producer, that there would be no sliders (post no 157 which is on page 8) in the game for character creation. Basically it all boils down to their team is too lazy to design (post 56, page 3) for any variation between characters.
I’m sorry, he can claim it isn’t laziness all he wants but it is a flat out lie. The first open beta weekend, hell even the second, I made excuses for Funcom and still had faith that character creator would be fixed by launch. I am supposed to be able to look the way I want, so why wouldn’t it be fixed? Apparently, Funcom believe that men and women are equally tall, equally, slender, and equally ugly. There are only so many head choices and your head choice determines your skin color choices. The facial features themselves (eyes, nose, jawline) are equally limited. There is no height or weight slider. Hell, there are no sliders at all for any feature. You can’t be old, wrinkles or scars are non-existent. There is absolutely ZERO excuse for what passes for hair options. They are all god-ugly awful and basically variations on the same, short choppy haircut – with the exception of the mohawk styles. Hubby tells me that the male choices are equally limiting, although it has been confirmed that Funcom will at least be giving the male characters the option of being bald.
I played the beta last weekend, for twenty minutes. I may like everything else about the game, but I can’t stand the created characters. They are ugly. They are all the same height and weight. There is nothing distinctive about them. They are so seriously flawed that looking at any character I create in a cut scene means I immediately stop playing. Those are not long term selling points for any MMO, let alone and MMO that is supposedly AAA and is launching with a subscription fee and a cash shop at launch. Funcom stockholders should ditch the stock as rapidly as possible prior to the start of early access on 29 June 2012. Once the closed beta NDA is removed, there will be a lot more people saying similar things I imagine. I can’t believe that closed beta testers haven’t been making a stink about character creation for a very, very long time now.
Ok, this, The Elder Scrolls Online, is going to be truly amazing or truly awful an Elder Scrolls MMO. I LOVED Oblivion and HATED Skyrim with a passion. I’m very pleased to learn that the MMO is set a millennium before Skyrim. That means the world created in Elder Scrolls will make sense and won’t be full of the dark, racist crap that was Skyrim. I started gaming long after Morrowind was released and I tried to play it several times. I can’t get past the graphics unfortunately, but I love the story. Hubby played and loved Morrowind however.
We both hated Skyrim after more than 30 hours of game play. The Dark Brotherhood lost it’s focus, the Thieves Guild was pathetic, and the Nords turned into a community of xenophobes. Heck even the Imperial were pathetic in Skyrim. Hubby finished the game but I haven’t yet. Killing the never ending stream of dragons was old and boring after a while, and no challenge. And another pet peeve of mine … the OVER simplification and leveling in Skyrim was out of control. Seriously, crafting gains you experience levels?
So yes, I hate Skyrim and I love the Elder Scrolls franchise. I’m hopeful that the developers, who thankfully are NOT associated with Skyrim, do not follow the mistakes made in the game. At this point, despite it’s proposed release date of 2013, I’m taking a wait and see attitude.
