Hot diggity dawg, now that was a good episode of Legend of the Seeker. I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet, but it was a Cara episode, and Cara episodes are always good, right? I’m taking a days break from gaming, so I just popped in House of Flying Daggers to pass the time. And no, I still haven’t earned enough sto energy credits to purchase a shiny new ship, but there’s always tomorrow right?

Would you believe that when we finally get some concrete info on Bethesda’s Fallout: New Vegas, it comes not from IGN or Kotaku, but from… USA Today… whuh? We’ve heard rumors, but now we know some solid details regarding who you play, what you’re up to, and the state of Vegas. Apparently you’re a delivery boy who happens to get shot, buried just outside town, and left for dead, which explains why a friendly robot is helping to dig you out in the trailer. Apparently what you were carrying was pretty valuable, and the game’s plot revolves around you trying to figure out exactly what it was. Says Bethesda’s Pete Hines:

(Vegas provides) a brand new, fresh experience that has a familiar feel of Fallout, but otherwise it’s an entirely new game and a new look, with Joshua trees and tumbleweeds and blue skies. Vegas is up and running. It’s not a ghost town. It still exists and thrives. There are casinos, and you can go down onto the Strip. It will have a very different feel from that standpoint.

You will eventually hear a little bit about the events of (Fallout 3), but New Vegas is a self contained story. You don’t have to have played the previous games to have any clue what’s going on here.

It’s a massive game world that will take you hundreds of hours to explore every nook and cranny.

That last sentence right there? SOLD! Granted I’m still fifty hours and five expansions away from finishing Fallout 3, but you can never have too much Fallout, It’s like complaining that there’s too much ice cream and cake on your plate you know? People just look at you like you must be crazy.

You’ve spent wow gold on mounts, you’ve spent real cash on pets, prepare to spend more real cash on cute fluffy Warcraft stuffed toys. That’s right uber-fans, Warcraft plushies are here. Brace yourself though, these cute little fellas will cost you a fair bit more than a pandaren monk, personally I think they’re $10 more expensive than they should be, but I guess Blizzard can charge whatever the heck they want cus they know we’ll still pony up the cashola. It’s pretty cool though that the plushies come with an in-game companion, I guess that makes the high price somewhat easier to swallow. I’m partial to the Gryphon myself.

By the way, if you attended Blizzcon last year and are itching to get into the StarCraft II beta, just be a little patient, Blizzard are working on getting you your pass. Turns out there were so many attendees that they simply couldn’t get everyone in on the first wave of the beta.

You know, as cool as it is that WoW developed this awesome art style that’ll even allow play on a Commodore 64, I’m glad the guys at Funcom are pushing the graphical boundaries of MMO eye candy. Just have a look at these new Rise of the Godslayer screenshots, absolutely incredible.

If you’re looking for more RoG info, Funcom have been talking the expansion up recently, letting us know it’s a great value as it’s a huuuuuge expansion, with director Craig Morrison exclaiming that it’s the biggest production he’s ever lead. Most folks really appreciate what Morrison’s been able to do with AoC since he took the directors chair, so it’ll be interesting to see what he’s able to do with the game when he’s in control of content right out the gate. You get the feeling that the future of AoC rely on the success or failure of Rise of the Godslayer.

If you’re interested in RoG, or are just a bit Conan lore fan, you’ll want to check out CVG’s interview with Morrison, it’s a great piece and probably the best piece of PR I’ve seen for the expansion since it was announced. I’ve been worried that the shift in location wouldn’t really feel like Conan, but it certainly sounds like they’re making the most of the brief mention Kithai gets in Howard’s books.

Before I go, I want to take a moment to talk about the recent announcement of Eve Online: Tyrannis. Since Dominion I’ve wondered where they were going with the introduction of planetary vistas,  now things are falling into place. You can read all about Tyrannis here, though irritatingly we don’t get any screenshots or video of what the expansion offers. I have to say the promise of being able to survey and set up production facilities and mining areas on planets is all very cool. I’ve tried to get into Eve numerous times but I think it’s just a wee bit too complex for me, that doesn’t mean however, that I don’t find the game utterly intriguing.

Welp, I’m off to rummage for some food, the big fight scene between Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau is coming up, can’t miss that!

Dessert:

- Cus I’m in the mood. Jackie Chan vs. Benny Urquidez in Meals on Wheels.

So I’m sitting here and Jurassic Park is on TV, it’s the first time I’ve seen it in… about ten years.

1 – I completely forgot Newman was in this.

2 – I completely forgot how awesome the first hour or so is, the sense of discovery, Jeff Goldblum bizarre line deliver, Sam Neil being Sam Neil… all great stuff, Spielberg at his wondrous best.

3 –  Also, wow… Sam Jackson was in Jurassic Park… weird.

4 – That theme music, so good.

I am of course taking a break from Star Trek Online, my march to earn enough sto energy credits to upgrade The USS Pax Magellanic continues endlessly on. It’s a funny thing, but during the open beta I hated, hated, hated ground combat, it was a chore. Now however, I actually prefer ground combat to ship combat. I’m really not sure what it is, maybe it’s been the gradual refinements to the ground based UI that make it easier to control your team-mates, but it seems a lot more tactical than the somewhat jumbled mess it was in open beta, which generally involved standing in one place and shooting till the other guy fell down.

I still haven’t worked up the steel to play a PvP match, I’m never big on PvP in MMO’s, I hear it’s a great way to earn energy credits, but… I just don’t like getting my butt kicked

Oi! PC Gamers! Yeah, you! 2K Games have announced Civilization V! I can’t pretend to be a long time fan of the series, the only Civ game I’ve ever played has been Civilisation Revolution on PlayStation 3, but good Lord that game stole hours of my life at a time. As I understand it Civ Rev was sort of a gateway drug to the Civ series, a simpler, more streamlined entry in the console space aimed at getting console players interested in the Civilisation franchise. If that’s true, it worked on me like a charm, because I have to admit I’m eager to see what Sid Meier has planned, I’m especially happy to hear that there are increased avenues for diplomatic gameplay, call me a pansy, but I’d rather talk my way out of a gunfight. If you’re interested in some screenshots, look no further.

Which brings me briefly to Fallout 3…  crikey it’s such an awesome game. I’m 35 hours after losing my first 100+ hour playthrough, and I can honestly say my second experience has been vastly different from the first.

Holy impending laswsuit, Batman! How fast do you think it’s going to take Activision Blizzard’s men in suits to catch on to World of LordCraft? I doubt hiding behind the “homage” or “fan game defense is going to do its developers much good at all, especially with this plastered on their homepage:

World of Warcraft is a classical game, we all love it. It gives us too much memory about Azeroth. But most of people can’t spend much time in WoW. Job and life things always take too much time, so World of Lordcraft is coming now.

Oh Lawd, more like World of LOLcraft, amIrite?

And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Official StarCraft II beta system requirements, yes, the numbers leaked last month by Blizzard weren’t quite accurate, but they were close:

Minimum Requirements:

• Windows XP SP3/ Vista SP1/ Windows 7
• 2.2ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon Processor
• 1GB System Ram/ 1.5GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128MB Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT/ ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024×768 minimum display resolution
• 4GB free hard drive space (beta)
• Broadband connection

And there you have it? Do you match up? I certainly hope so! To be fair these requirements are extremely low (which is to be expected for a Blizzard game).

Before I jet off into the sunset, I’d like to let y’all know that Age of Conan’s Return to Toth Amon, Update 6 is now live (le patch notes). It’s been a while since I logged into AoC, STO’s been keeping me busy, but this sounds like an intriguing update, I might consider re-upping just to have a look.

And with that lads and lassies, I’m off to fix a cup ‘a joe and rummage around for some day old donuts to warm in me microwave. Remember wastelanders, don’t feed the Yao Guai!

Dessert:

- An oldie but a goodie – Sho Nuff!

- This gesture by Blizzard makes me feel a lot better about them charging folks so much for digital pets. Really nice.

Valentines Day has come and gone once again, and if you’re lucky you got some flowers and a box of chocolates. If you’re a gamer though, you probably asked for a copy of Star Trek Online, and really, who could blame you?

As for me, I’ve been on a self imposed break from STO over the weekend, I’m getting ever closer to Lt. Cmdr (I know, you can point and laugh at how slow I am).

I figured I was going to get my free month out of the way, then give Cryptic a month to get the game more stable, squash bugs are release a bit more content, but they’ve come flying out of the starting blocks, what with the recent news about the Borg content, and now we’re hearing they’ve apparently got concrete plans to open up more ship interiors.

Ship interiors would probably be a feature that most STO players would have wanted from the start, but the simple fact is that Cryptic hadn’t really expected to include them, and only included four mildly different Bridges in the final game (each costing about 1,000 energy credits). They’ve always maintained that if the community wanted them, we’d get them, and this interview with exec producer Craig Zinkievich, is pretty much the closest they’ve come to confirming ship interiors are coming:

“Anything we can do to make the game feel even more like Star Trek is something we want to do. So, definitely, we want to give people more of their ship. This is one of those things we want to get perfect before introducing it to players, though, it’s going to be an undertaking.”

Eagle eyed readers will notice the caveat in that last sentence, it’s basically Zinc saying, “don’t expect this next week”. I expect the challenge, apart from the creation of all the new assets, would be figuring out what to do with all this new game space. What sort of functionality will these interiors have? Right now the in-game bridges are… well they’re useless, I doubt folks will want to cough up thousands more in energy credits for purely cosmetic engine rooms, captain’s quarters, ten forwards etc. The bridge is officially listed by Cryptic as being a social place, but I’ve never really felt the need to invite someone onto my bridge, I mean that’s what ten forward is for, right?

If you’re still on the fence about Star Trek Online, you might want to check out this review-ish article that Gamepro has put up. I’ve been impressed with what John Davison’s done with Gamepro since taking over late last year, and this is probably one of the fairest, and most accurate reviews of STO I’ve come across.

Remember Richard Garriot? Remember Tabula Rasa? Stop laughing at the back! Well, if you remember them both, you might recall that back when Tabula Rasa was still um, operational, Richard Garriot embarked on a PR stunt that sent him into space, well, apparently there was a film crew of sorts that documented his trip, and we’ll be seeing the full video at South by Southwest, in the mean time, here’s a trailer. Wow. I guess nothing good came of Tabula Rasa after all.

*Random thought* I love Chrome, but it’s got so many weird quirks. Ctrl+B controls bookmarks but Ctrl+I still handles italics… really?

Oh! Oh! Oh! So I found this pretty cool episode of Gametrailer’s Bonus Round this weekend. It’s always a great show, but I’m linking to it specifically now because the panel involved, which includes Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, Naughty Dog Co-Founder Jason Rubin, and Gametrailers EIC Shane Satterfield, are talking about how paying for games has got to change. It isn’t long before they’re talking about the free-to-play model, and then Rubin, the only developer of the bunch, comes across as a strong proponent of RMT. It’s just refreshing to see that some game developers get it. Rubin’s ideas are pretty progressive, and his idea of letting the gamer have the initial game for free, and then deciding how he wants to pay to play it… well, that’s revolutionary. Satterfield presents things from the average gamers perspective, and you can see he’s a little rattled by the idea that someone can come in and purchase for $1 what he’s worked 10 hours for, but like Rubin says, how does this unbalance the game in any way? It’s a great episode, and definitely one to be checked out.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Age of Conan, but considering STO’s shiny newness, can you blame me for being distracted? Anyway, the ever reliable MMORPG.com have conducted a Rise of the Godslayer-centric interview with Erling Elingsen (love that name). If you’re so inclined, you might want to check it out. I’m looking forward to RoG, but until we start to see more screenshots and more trailers, it still seems a long way away.

P.S. I’m not even going to talk about the new tile revealed on the WoW Battlecry mosaic. It’s TAKING TOO LONG!

Dessert:

- A Night At The Emirates – The best Arsenal FC video on Youtube!

- The greatest action scene of all time (featuring the power sliding horse)

In one of those supremely rare acts of beautiful universal confluence, today, February 2nd, the launch date for Star Trek Online, is also my birthday. This means of course, that I have had no qualms in getting myself a Collectors Edition box from Amazon (with the liberated Borg Bridge Officer) and a Digital Deluxe Edition from Steam, the latter of which caused endless problems, but I’ll get into that later. What really sucks though, was waking up this morning with the mother of all head colds. *sniff*

If, like me, you pre-ordered Star Trek Online and took part in the open beta, you might have been somewhat horrified at the start of the um, headstart, when Steam decided to delete the 10GB client and then begin re-downloading the entire thing. Needless to say the STO player base was not amused. We don’t know whose fault this was, but folks flooded the Steam and Cryptic forums and rained abuse down on the technical support staff (which is, oh so helpful). Thankfully, a dude (or dudette!) on the official forums found this workaround, if you’re running Vista or Windows 7, and you have Windows set to create periodic restore points, which it does by default, this could help you avoid having to re-download everything.

I wish we could get some sold sales figures for STO, I’m really curious about how the game is performing, as Cryptic have let the community know, at least twice, once at the start of open beta, and then at the end of headstart, that they really had no idea so many people were going to be logging on to play. I’m not suggesting the game will do WoW numbers (or anything close to it) but it would be nice to have another surprise MMO success on the level of say, Eve Online. While STO hasn’t had the smoothest of starts, you can’t fault Cryptic for trying to make the game the best it can be, and what they’ve got planned in the immediate future sounds great.

My recent love/hate relationship with Star Trek Online has meant I’ve had little or no time for Mass Effect 2, but I’ve been able to rack up the aoc gold, which has surprised me a bit since I figured I’d be all MMO’d out. I have to admit now I’m severely tempted to hop onto WoW for a bit, but I shall stay strong and keep to playing just two MMO’s and Dragon Age at the same time.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, they keep doing really, really cool things with custom characters. First there was that deal where you could have your WoW characters made into statuettes, and now there’s this Warcraft Poster Character Contest. You have to wonder why other MMO’s don’t offer stuff like this more often (probably because they’re not as big as WoW) I mean I’d really love to have my STO Science Officer turned into a statuette. Also, I like typing statuette.

Can you believe Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is three years old!? I’m still kind of in a state of shock, I mean I remember logging on a week after launch (I was one of the poor saps who bought the game at launch) and thinking, “man, this is really rough, I can’t see this lasting a year”. And yet, look where we are now. I guess it just goes to show how much expertise SOE have when comes to operating an MMO with low overheads, and no, I’m not dissing them, it really was meant as a compliment, seriously, not many publishers have even been able to handle multiple concurrent MMO’s.

While we’re on the subject of oooooooooooold MMO’s, remember City of Heroes? The game that made Cryptic? Well if you’re still playing it, you’ll be pleased to know that the free character transfer program has been extended for another month. I wonder whether they’ve seen such demand they decided to increase the time period, or if they haven’t bee particularly impressed and want to give more time for folks to make the move. Either way, free is good, right?

Got a juicy “letter from the game director” for the month of January, this time Funcom’s Craig Morrison covers the coming 1.06 update for Age of Conan, letting us know its arrival is near, I believe it’s already on the test servers and should be going live relatively soon. There’s also some talk about the guild renown system and hinting about Rise of the Godslayer, have a look. Me? I’ve been too busy playing to care about what’s coming, I continue to marvel at just how brilliantly Funcom have turned things around, it’s a shame there aren’t more folks on the servers though. I guess it really just goes to show that a bad first impression can really kill an MMO.

Anyway, I’m off to go medicate myself with some Benadryl and possibly ibuprofen while I wait for the latest Star Trek Online patch to finish downloading.

Dessert:

- Staaaaaaaaaar Trek!

- Shaft Johnson, reporting for duty.

- Google Chrome now has extensions, go NUTS!

And now it’s time for something completely different.

I thought we’d take a break from the usual news heavy blog format for a change of pace, something that I hope is more of a discussion piece than the norm, which usually involves me ranting for twenty minutes. I still rant, just… not as much.

I’m a Quest Completist:

This specifically drives my erm… guild mates nuts. I MUST complete all the quests within a specific area before moving on. If I see a bunch of golden exclamation marks pop up in a city, I have to have them. I just don’t feel right not solving everyone problems. Even if one of those quests takes me half way around the world to the other side of the planet, on a different continent, where I find a whole new slew of quests, I must return to the original location to turn that quest in, and finish the quests there first.

I finished Mass Effect 1 today (just in time for part 2!), and this failing made finishing Bioware’s space opera incredibly difficult. As most can at attest to, Mass Effect, despite everything it does right (and it does a lot right) has some of the most banal, most tear-your-hair-out-cus-it’s-like-watching-paint-dry, boring side missions. But you know what? I did ‘em all.

I’m a Pack Rabbit:

Hmmm… that looks like an interesting item. It might be useful some time later in the game. I’ll just put it in my knap-sack here… and then forget about it till the end of the game. “You are over-encumbered and cannot run”. I’m far too familiar with this phrase, whether the game is Fallout 3, World of Warcraft, or Age of Conan, I’m always running out of inventory space. Why? Because I hoard items like no ones business. I’ve taken that old boyscout mantra to the absolute extreme, always be prepared, you never know what you might need, so stock up on a little of everything.

I’m a Spendthrift:

I prefer the term “economically prudent” myself, but whether it’s aoc gold, aion kinah, or Fallout 3‘s caps, I just can’t get enough of the shiny gold stuff. I love, love, LOOOOOVE seeing that number climb. Maybe I’ve got a Scrooge McDuck complex. Come to think of it, how cool would it be if Blizzard created an instanced player housing style money bin where you could invite all your friends over for a swim in some wow gold? Oh! Oh! And what if the pile got larger and larger the more wow gold you had? *sigh* we can dream I guess.

I can’t stand Japanese RPG’s:

This one hurts a bit, because I used to quite like them. All the way up to the PlayStation One era, I was playing games like Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy VII (and VIII) and Vagrant Story. However, somewhere along the line in the PlayStation 2 era, I figured out I was playing the same game over and over and over again. The androgynous main, emo/angst-ridden main character, nonsensical storyline, linear gameplay… where was the innovation? Where was the player choice? What happened o the Parasite Eve’s and Vagrant Story’s of the world?

I never buy DLC or expansion packs:

Well maybe that isn’t entirely true. I do own Burning Crusade. At EpicToon HQ we have pretty much every expansion for every MMO we play at the offices, so maybe I get my fix there, but even though I wanted to buy Shivering Isles for Elder Scrolls IV, and Bring Down the Sky for Mass Effect 1… I never did. I’m looking at Return to Ostagar right now and thinking “Yeah baby! I’m gonna get that!” But the truth is that once I’m done with Dragon Age: Origins, I’ll be ready for Dragon Age 2, and Return to Ostagar will be but a distant memory. I looooooove Age of Conan, but when Rise of the Godslayer hits, will I get that?

MMO’s drive me nuts:

And yet I can’t stop playing them. I don’t get it. I know why they drive me nuts, it’s because I never really feel like I’m in charge of my own destiny. By design in an MMO, you can’t really alter the world around you or the NPC’s you interact with, because everyone else also lives in that world and needs to do the same quests. It’s why, when you leave Tortage in flames at the end of the first ten levels of Age of Conan, you’re shocked to come back ten minutes later only to find the place in pristine shape.

Admittedly though, time and technology seem intent on changing that. With the advent of phasing, games like World of Warcraft are able to make the same location appear different for different players at different points in the quest line. Also, games like Bioware are creating NPC’s and companions who are reactive, who can decide to leave your group in Star Wars: The Old Republic if they don’t like the way you run the show.

There’s a reason why playgrounds are memorable for us as kids. It’s where teams are picked for dodgeball/basketball, and where one side inevitably loses their lunch money or dignity. It’s that brutal dirt pit where we learn winning = COOL.

Please, noooooo! Arm bruises are the least painful part of losing.

A couple of decades later, us gamers bring the same mentality in the MMOs we play. Raise your hand if you’ve ever nerdraged at getting crappy race abilities or getting pwned in PVP because you have no back-up in a server with a 1:10 ally ratio?

Developers implement fixes to ‘balance’ the game in this regard, because they know that this source of frustration is also what keeps us involved. Really involved. “For the Alliance, RAWR!” *Equips insignia and tabard*

In the case of Age of Conan, which previewed 12 new factions for its Rise of the Godslayer expansion slated for release this year, it seems they are borrowing a page off WoW‘s profitable playbook by implementing factions as a vital gearing mechanic.

As I understand it, helping a faction kick ass will reap you great loot. And with armor rewards looking this good, then sign me up, sir!

The East is the Beast. Awesome Asian-inspired armor sets could require additional AoC Gold along with faction standing.

But these sweet samurai-esque outfits will come at the price of a rival faction hating your guts. But this isn’t anything new in our dog-eat-dog world. But should you forget, repeat this mantra with me: “Your friend’s enemy is your enemy. Your enemy’s enemy is your friend…”

Of the five revealed factions (five others to come and two hidden in-game), I’m personally drawn to the Scarlet Circle. Nothing screams uber-win than having ‘ultimate power’, as described in the preview:

“The Scarlet Circle has, effectively, achieved its goals. They are the ultimate power in Khitai, as well as the controlling the Entity, which is one of the most powerful artifacts ever discovered.

“The Scarlet Circle as a group of sorcerers is a relatively small circle. There are probably no more than ten or twelve members at any time. However, the Scarlet Circle often hire mercenaries to escort them on their various expeditions. By default the mercenaries then become known as Scarlet Circle Guardians. So while the Scarlet Circle itself is rather small, the organization has a name that extends very far.

I’d be interested to know what quests they’d still be needing outside of keeping everyone away from their mega-weapon. Maybe steal another mega artifact from a rival faction? Who knows, but it sounds fun being the lackey of mighty sorcerors.

We’ll keep you posted when the other factions show off what they have to offer to other adventurers willing to stick out their necks for virtual eye candy. Stay tuned–Conan’s playground is about to get messy!

Holy Jem’Hadar Batman! I’m totally playing the Star Trek Online beta! After a weekend of stocking up on wow gold and phat lewt (which I’ll be hogging in preparation for the upcoming scarcity of such during the Chinese New Year… starting February 14th) I went out on Monday to see Sherlock Holmes (awesome) and was delighted to get home and find that my STO beta download was complete. These are the voyages…

After a quick 200MB patch, I leapt into the character creator, which is stupendously detailed. Apart from Champions Online, I don’t think there’s an MMO character creator that comes anywhere close to touching this.

Shortly thereafter I was in-game… and that’s where I ran into my first roadblock. If you’re unlucky (and there seem to be many of us) then you’re using an Nvidia board, and STO doesn’t seem to play nice with them. You’ll be subjected to extreme stuttering during ground missions (the game’s smooth as silk in space).  I suffered so you don’t have to, here are a couple of things you could try that helped me:

• Roll back your drivers to 190.62. Yes, it sucks majorly, but this seems to work for most.
• If you’re like me and you’re too lazy to roll back those drivers, then you might consider the solution mentioned in this post, it fixed my issues nicely.

Even if you get the stuttering issue fixed though, this being a beta there are tons of other problems, one of the most humorous being the bizarre appearance of your character model in space rather than your ship after a loading screen, or the converse, a teeny version of your ship floating about the hallways of a Starbase.

Despite these issues, Cryptic do seem to have the basics of a great game on their hands, and the in-game community, at least for now, appears to be extremely patient and helpful should you be unable to tell a photon torpedo from a deflector dish. It’s also worth noting that Cryptic have been scrambling like mad to accommodate the unexpected influx of players, and have outlined this week as one which will see lots of major and minor changes, many of them outlined in the game’s first ever “state of the game” address. You know the game’s real when you finally get one of those eh?

But let’s leave the cold vastness of space for a moment shall we, and focus on the goings on in Atreia shall we? First, the boring news, Aion’s got a new producer in Chris “Kinslon” Hager, which is all very fascinating but I doubt many could care less not that we aren’t happy for Kinslon, he brings with him experience from working on Guild Wars and Lineage II, but… eh, hard to get excited.

This next bit of news is marginally more exciting, but only if you’re one of the winners, you see, NCsoft have announced the winners of the recent Solorium Video Contest. I wager it would be even more exciting for the winners if they’d won some Aion Kinah, or maybe a lifetime supply of those little soft candy hamburgers…

Anyway, what I imagine will be of much more interest to wider spectrum of Aion players, is a double XP weekend. Double XP? That’s good stuff. Server details, times and dates at the link.

*YES! Speed just came on TV! Go Keanu! Go!!*

DC Universe Online is getting a comic book adaptation. It makes sense doesn’t it? The details are sparse at the moment, but IGN does have an interview with Executive editor Dan Dido with some basic information. You have to wonder though, how good can a weekly comic book really be? I mean… unless they’ve got some tremendous lead time for each publication, that doesn’t leave much time to spend on quality artwork and writing. Still, I would like to be proven wrong.

Hellgate London LIVES!

*crickets*

I said… “HELLGATE LONDON, LIIIIIIVES!!*

*sound of silence*

Fine, be that way. But it won’t change the fact that HanbitSoft (who?) have acquired the rights to the game internationally (I didn’t even know the servers were still running) and are apparently planning on relaunching the game worldwide. So um, yay?

Duder, patch notes. Dungeons and Dragons Online. Update 3. Go. Now. Schwing!

Despite a seven minute long walkthrough late last year, Age of Conan’s first expansion, Rise of the Godslayer is still kind of a mystery, which is why Funcom’s pulling back the curtain, albeit very slowly. Have a look at some of the grogeous concept art they’ve treated us to via Massively.

Is it a bad sign that less than a month in, I can’t even remember what my New Year’s resolution was, or even if I made on at all? Let’s hope videogame developers take things like that more seriously. Tentonhammer’s put up a really interesting feature in which they asked a bunch of MMO developers what their New Year’s resolutions (related to their games) were. It’s great reading.

And my time’s up. I end just as Keanu “shoots the hostage”.  I’ve got some home made donuts and a double dose of coffee to down before work. You folks have a good day, and if you manage to get into the STO beta, cut Cryptic some slack, they’re on the case! Annnnnnnd… I’m out.

Dessert:

- Nom! Nom! Nom!.

Scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, a croissant and a tall glass of fresh orange juice for breakfast. There are few better ways to start the day. Oh, and of course the requisite episode of Star Trek (The Original Series this time) running in the background. I figured since I plan on getting my STO on shortly, I should brush up on the early years of Federation exploration.

Yes ladies and gents, it seems like it’s taken forever, but if you plonked down some hard earned wow gold and pre-ordered yourself a copy of Star Trek Online, you should be able to get into the open beta starting today. After a sort period where I couldn’t even log into the Star Trek Online website earlier today, I managed to activate my Amazon pre-order key and am now waiting impatiently for the nearly 8GB client to get done downloading, I understand there’s a 2GB patch to be had after that as well, my ISP is definitely gonna have a cow. But… I’ll be a happy man.

So, considering it’s all going down today, dear WoW, WAR, Aion and other fantasy buffs, you’ll forgive if this post is perhaps a little Trekk-riffic!

Before we get to trekkin’ though, let’s cover everything else. First is this lovely little rumor from Shacknews, which states that EA’s head honcho, lord of the manor, and king of the castle, John Riccitiello stated in a recent conference call, stated the following;

One key driver is going to be the launch date of our major MMO. As it stands today, the team is making great progress towards a Spring 2011 launch. But given the volatility of this particular sector and the fact that we haven’t yet provided a specific launch date, at least for now, we’re excluding the revenue, or will be excluding the revenue, from our FY11 plans yadda yadda…

Okay, so maybe he didn’t quite trail off like that, but you get the idea. Hmmm… what major MMO could Electronic Arts be talking about here? Hmm… could it be…. Warhammer Online 2: WAR: What is it Good For? No, no… that’s not it… ah yes, one Star Wars: The Old Republic!

On the face of it, this news might seem, at least on the face of it, to be a little disappointing, as most folks were probably hoping that The Old Republic would be ready by the end of the year so they could get their mitts on it. However, I’m thinking considering the ambitious nature of TOR, full voice acting, fully fleshed out companion characters a la Dragon Age: Origins, you have to think the extra development time will be worth it, especially if it means we get more content and a more polished game at launch.

In truth the 2011 date gives me confidence that EA really does see this as their answer to World of Warcraft, they do seem to have stepped up their assault on Activision’s dominance of late, what with the revamped Medal of Honor taking on the Call of Duty franchise directly.

Do you have a long dormant Age of Conan character under level 20? Does that sub-level 20 character have tons of aoc gold and phat-lewt on it? Well if you’re not careful, you could be on the end of a surprise character deletion by Funcom. What? Conan gotta eat!

While AoC is deleting players, Eve Online is celebrating a new record for concurrent users, CCP have announced a new concurrent users record  of 56,021, which occurred on January 10th. I wonder if everyone logged on to be part of… HULKAGEDDON II!

Everyone loves a good, juicy rumor, and this latest is particularly succulent. Blue News is carrying a story that French gaming site, NoFrag, is reporting that Blizzard’s follow up to World of Warcraft will be… a futuristic MMO first person shooter, with a cyber punk theme and social/lifestyle elements similar to The Sims Online. Frankly, I don’t even know what that means, I don’t even know if I like how that sounds. Well, I like the cyber punk part, I don’t think we have enough of those with good art direction, but I have no idea what to make of the social/lifestyle gameplay stuff. Blizzcon 2010 maybe?

AHEM! So, Star Trek Online beta stuff:

Getting the beta client: If you’ve got your beta key, you’re going to want to go here, enter it, and begin the download process. If you can avoid it, you don’t want to use the official Cryptic downloader as it’s painfully slow, if the store you pre-ordered with doesn’t offer a download of the client (Amazon doesn’t for instance) then your best bet is Fileplanet (yuck). If you do use FP, then be sure to get a hold of the Fileplanet download manager, so you can pause and resume.

Where to go for video: YouTube’s Hailing Frequency, and Jupiter Broadcasting Station are great places to go for frequent, unofficial videos. Jupiter Broadcasting also runs STOked, the best Star Trek Online podcast around.

Previews:

• TenTonHammer’s Beta Impressions
• Fore The Lore’s Beta Impressions

Required Reading: Path to 2409, be sure to start from the last page and work to the first.

… And I’m spent. I’m off to go see if I can get some Dragon Age: Origins playtime in before reporting to the HQ.

Dessert:

- Because I’m feeling particularly chipper, “party all the time.”

Welcome to the Epic Verdict where we report MMO trends fast, straight, and most importantly, with a bias. Here you’ll find snap judgments on game developments in the World of Warcraft, Aion, and dozens more. Sometimes we even pick on a baby murloc or two.

We begin in the land of forum flame wars where expletives and sarcasm are the weapons of choice.

January, in particular, sees a spike in online trash talking after MMO websites have handed out their “Best of” awards. Players get their knickers in a knot debating if Aion deserved its accolades, for example, or if Age of Conan winning ‘most improved’ is but a hollow victory.

While I personally think those games are great, I bet all my Aion Kinah and AoC Gold that detractors will drag out the argument for weeks. Sabotage/fixing claims will be slung like Molotov cocktails. Egos will butt heads until the forum mod shuts down the thread.

I believe people should just see MMO awards for what they really are: luck of the draw.  Luck that an editor likes a game better than the rest. Luck that a game had more fans that bothered to answer the poll.

For the unconvinced, I just ask that you mind the three m’s. Make your case, mind the manners, and then move on.

Ninja PuG Groups in WoW: EPIC FAIL

Speaking of bad behavior, there has been an increase of ninja PuGs in the World of Warcraft that came together with the new Dungeon Finder feature.

A little bit of background first on the Dungeon Finder, for the WoW virgins.

Before the latest Patch 3.3, casual WoW players regarded 5-man dungeons like a root canal. There was danger of things going horribly wrong, but in the hands of expert professionals–or in this case, capable party members–the temporary pain was worth it in rare loot.

The problem for Blizzard was that many casual players couldn’t be bothered to take the risk. Too much hassle, they said, in finding cooperative strangers and wasting one hour or so of the little time they had to meet up in the dungeon entrance.

But with the release of the Dungeon Finder feature, players could simply click a few buttons in their menu; wait for their ragtag team to be assembled automatically across different realms, and voila! A pick-up group (aka PuG) is born.

“Wham, bam, thank you for the blues and purples ma’am!” most casual players thought.

But enter the ninja PuGs who are made up of three or four guild members/friends who enter the Dungeon Finder, team up with a random dude who helps them kill the final boss, but then kicks the random dude out of the group before the loot is distributed fairly.

Poor casual player just got dumped like wet toilet paper.

I believe there should be a running list of ninja PuGs. A public list of shame. But since it’s New Year and we’re in a constructive mood around here, we could settle for a loot safeguard system to prevent abusive vote-kicks.

If that doesn’t work, we’ll just have to pay WoW Gold to shame these thieves into obscurity. Watch out ninjas!

TOON IN:

- Nothing warms my heart more than seeing developers work hard to make their games better. Champions Online wants your feedback (the only one who I’ve seen ask for it specifically) on their “Attack of the Misfit Toys” winter event, here.

Sad to say, but the absurd headache and general ill-feeling in my noggin is not the result of excessive New Year’s revelry, but rather the after effects of a particularly painful dental surgical operation. Wisdom tooth pulled, an an impacted molar removed (after grinding the jaw bone away to get to it) means that this post is brought to you by painkillers and finds me in somewhat dazed, painkiller induced stupor. Yes, poor me, now on to the news!

What news? Most developers only went back to yet like… yesterday! Still, let’s scrape the bottom of that ol’ barrel once again, see what we can dredge up for ya.

The first thing I’d like to bring your attention to is a very special episode of STOked, the unofficial Star Trek Online podcast. With the STO launch beginning to loom large on the horizon (February 2nd, Trekkies!) it’s not surprising that Cryptic Studios have begun to lift their NDA’s regarding coverage, and the STOked crew have gone above and beyond, proving a full hour’s worth of information and beta coverage, also answering phone in and IRC questions from their readers and listeners. Worth a look.

As a complete aside, I had a rather boring day yesterday (recovering from the aforementioned dental surgery) and decided to just power through the Star Trek Online Path to 2409 lore (never been one for MMO lore really) and if you’re into Trek, it’s pretty fascinating reading and at the very least shows Cryptic seem to be taking the franchise seriously.

If you’re a more visual type of fellow, then you’ll be pleased to know MMORPG.com have a set new brand new screenies to ogle. “Ogle” is a funny word.

Last bit of STO news for today, I promise, but Massively have put up a short, but well written piece that outlines their thoughts on the first few levels of gameplay in Star Trek Online… they don’t sound particularly impressed. It’s fair to say then that we’re getting mixed signals regarding STO, but so far it sounds like if you’re just a regular gamer, you might not exactly be bowled over, but if you’re a Trekkie, the lure is hard to resist.

Not to be outdone, that other sci fi MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic is also in the headlines this week thanks to the release of a spankin’ new dev blog (that’s developer blog for you old fogey’s) that goes into detail about the capabilities of the game’s Imperial Agent class. Star Wars: The Old Republic looks to be shaping up to be a real class act, but am I the only one who thinks the game’s website is clunky, unresponsive and uninviting?

I hate to say it, but I TOLD YOU SO! MMORPG.com have voted Age of Conan as their “Most Improved Game of 2009“. Regular readers will know I often harp on about just how much better the game has become since its initial launch, and I think the constant plaudits and recognition over the past few months vindicates me. It’s hard to believe AoC is going into its second year of release, seems like only yesterday I was submitting bug report after bug report to Funcom *wipes tear from eye*. Oh yeah, Dungeons and Dragons Online came in second, it’s free, give it a go, what have you got to lose?

Now if you ladies and gents will excuse me, I’m off to play a quick game of Civilisation Revolution before topping up on painkillers and passing out on the couch…