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mellowtiggerBeing ill and having a short attention span led me to spend some of the weekend trying out different online games. None of them is exactly what I'm looking for, but several of them have interesting possibilities.
Copernicus: Throw some of the biggest names in the creative industries at a new game title, and this is what you get. Imagine R.A. Salvatore (writer of D&D fantasy books and 22 New York Times best sellers), Todd McFarlane (creator of the Spawn comic book), and Ken Rolston (game designer for Elder Scrolls 3 and 4) getting together. They have a brand new fantasy world called "Kingdoms of Amalur" in which to create their virtual worlds. They plan to release a single-player game followed by an MMO. This is a title to watch for, but it's apparently still several years away for the MMO version.
EverQuest 2: I paid $5 for a weekend pass and got back online after more than 2 years. It's much too complicated. My backpacks were full of hundreds of items and my skill bars were full of dozens of icons that I had no idea how to use any more. They revamped travel throughout the world, and I found myself stuck in certain zones. I was unable to travel freely to certain areas. I'm not sure why the new travel method was invisible to me. In short, it was very unwelcoming for returning players.
Rift: I've been playing their beta recently and kind of enjoy it. It's a virtual world with potential, anyway. The crafting is much too plain, but at least they've simplified the skill list from what's available in EverQuest 2. The "rift" mechanic essentially brings unplanned dungeon adventures straight to you, instead of you having to travel to them. It's a nice diversion. They're trying out a new way of building "character classes" that allows slightly more variability than most other games.
Xyson: I dislike full-loot PvP worlds. (Translation: these games allow player characters to kill other player characters at any time and steal all of the belongings on their virtual corpse.) BUT... it has probably the best harvesting system that I've seen in any virtual world so far. The craft system still needs some work, but every item in the world can be crafted. That's the kind of interactivity and world immersion that I have been wanting to see in a game. The full-loot PvP is more or less a barrier that will keep me out of the game, I think, but I like the potential of this game. Oh, and the graphics are awful. Check out my character that I created tonight. Yeah, that's bad. Graphics don't make a game, though, so this deficiency can be overlooked for its wonderful world-interaction mechanisms.
Well, the ibuprofen is wearing off. Time for another pill. It's a shame that the weekend was wasted indoors, because it was actually above freezing today!
Copernicus: Throw some of the biggest names in the creative industries at a new game title, and this is what you get. Imagine R.A. Salvatore (writer of D&D fantasy books and 22 New York Times best sellers), Todd McFarlane (creator of the Spawn comic book), and Ken Rolston (game designer for Elder Scrolls 3 and 4) getting together. They have a brand new fantasy world called "Kingdoms of Amalur" in which to create their virtual worlds. They plan to release a single-player game followed by an MMO. This is a title to watch for, but it's apparently still several years away for the MMO version.
EverQuest 2: I paid $5 for a weekend pass and got back online after more than 2 years. It's much too complicated. My backpacks were full of hundreds of items and my skill bars were full of dozens of icons that I had no idea how to use any more. They revamped travel throughout the world, and I found myself stuck in certain zones. I was unable to travel freely to certain areas. I'm not sure why the new travel method was invisible to me. In short, it was very unwelcoming for returning players.
Rift: I've been playing their beta recently and kind of enjoy it. It's a virtual world with potential, anyway. The crafting is much too plain, but at least they've simplified the skill list from what's available in EverQuest 2. The "rift" mechanic essentially brings unplanned dungeon adventures straight to you, instead of you having to travel to them. It's a nice diversion. They're trying out a new way of building "character classes" that allows slightly more variability than most other games.
Xyson: I dislike full-loot PvP worlds. (Translation: these games allow player characters to kill other player characters at any time and steal all of the belongings on their virtual corpse.) BUT... it has probably the best harvesting system that I've seen in any virtual world so far. The craft system still needs some work, but every item in the world can be crafted. That's the kind of interactivity and world immersion that I have been wanting to see in a game. The full-loot PvP is more or less a barrier that will keep me out of the game, I think, but I like the potential of this game. Oh, and the graphics are awful. Check out my character that I created tonight. Yeah, that's bad. Graphics don't make a game, though, so this deficiency can be overlooked for its wonderful world-interaction mechanisms.
Well, the ibuprofen is wearing off. Time for another pill. It's a shame that the weekend was wasted indoors, because it was actually above freezing today!
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Date: 2011-Feb-14, Monday 07:59 am (UTC)Not at alll like any of those but for a nice casual game check out http://echobazaar.failbetter.com