We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

I decided to copy Syp and Hudson and create a page which holds all of my MMORPG history. It’s quite a long list and pretty comprehensive although I can barely remember some of my characters from older games. I’m glad I did it now because I’m sure it will just get harder to remember (I seem to be turning into an old man rather quickly these days).

Looking at it and reflecting back upon all of the MMOs I’ve played is very interesting – boy, I played a lot of rubbish. Asheron’s Call 2 anyone? All I remember about that game was constantly getting disconnected every five minutes and it being a major disappointment. There are also a lot of fond memories hanging around too. I was quite thrilled to discover that Sony still had a record of all of my old Everquest characters and it gave me a chuckle to see that the first ever guild I created and led (the Outcast Legion) is still alive and kicking. Well, alive maybe, kicking maybe not.

Anyway, have fun checking it out. I’ll keep updating it over the years to come.

It was only a matter of time I suppose. Twitter has invaded everything it seems, including World of Warcraft. Now you can enjoy tweeting to your friends/internet buddies/random strangers about your activities in WoW or, better yet, spam everyone and drive them crazy by auto-tweeting every time you log-in, enter an instance or complete an achievement. Hurray! Now everyone on the Twitterverse will be able to acknowledge your existance too!

TweetCraft UI

Someone has released an add-on for WoW called TweetCraft. It looks quite comprehensive and offers more functionality than the Champions Online Twitter integration. Apparently you can receive tweets as as well as send them but it’s unclear whether or not this means seeing your full timeline like you do on the Twitter website. I’m guessing it doesn’t.

I haven’t installed it yet even though I’m tempted to but I read an article on Mashable about it and they seemed to suggest that the add-on was a pain in the arse to install and not properly supported or authenticated by Blizzard. I’m very paranoid about installing excess crap on my computer so this made me hesitate. I’m not quite sure what the complete score with it is so I decided to hold off for now until I find out more about it. I’d love to hear feedback from anyone who’s installed it but, if you’re at all in doubt, hold off like me.

I’m in two frames of mind about TweetCraft anyway. Twitter’s great, no doubt about it, but I’m getting a little sick of seeing it shoved down our throats everywhere. I’m a keen twitterer (although I have to say, I loathe all of the mindless spam that gets spewed out by some people every 30 seconds) but I’ve already got access to the website and an application for it installed on my iPhone. Do I really need to be attached to Twitter even when I’m playing my favourite MMORPGs? Plus I get the feeling I’d install this, use it twice, then never bother ever again.

Oh well, time to tweet about this article

I like single player games but I don’t play them anywhere near as much as I do MMORPGs. A great single player game, like Mass Effect or Dead Space, might keep me interested for two weeks but even a bad MMO could easily keep me entertained for a month. I used to think it that was just because I enjoyed the classic fantasy RPG style of game so much and it wasn’t until I played Oblivion, regarded as one of the best offline RPGs available, last year that I realised my infatuation with MMORPGs and virtual worlds went a little beyond just liking the style of gameplay.

Whenever I played a single player game, I’m aways consumed by two basic emotions and thoughts. Firstly, they seem lonely and empty and, secondly, they just seem so utterly pointless. The first feeling is obvious enough. After playing with friends in a virtual world inhabited by thousands of people, it’s very hard to load up a game like Oblivion and not feel alone. It’s kinda like having one of those weird dreams where you go to school and you’re the only person there (OK, maybe I’m the only person who dreams of stuff like that…).

The feeling of pointlessness is slightly harder to explain. Single player games are fun, absolutely, and I get a certain measure of enjoyment out of them but the feeling is bittersweet to me because I know that my achievement is only temporary and can only be acknowledged as long as the saved game exists. As soon as the saved game is deleted, my experience is gone along with it and I have no one to share it with. It feels almost hollow and sad in many respects.

There was a fascinating interview with a Korean psychologist (I can’t remember his name) in the documentary about virtual worlds I watched a couple of weeks ago. He hypothesised that one of the reasons MMORPGs have such a hold over their players is because, unlike any other type of game, they acknowledge the existence of the player.

“If I give an item a certain value, it doesn’t mean much. But when others recognize it too, it becomes truly valuable. It doesn’t work if you’re the only person believing in it.”

(Thanks to Sharon for pulling out the quote )

This suddenly makes things so obvious. It’s not just about the cool settings, the classes, the exploration or even the gameplay. It’s about taking part in a parpetual world in which others can acknowledge our existence, our achievements, and give them meaning and value. If I take down a dragon in Final Fantasy, no one cares other than myself (and my wife who I will undoubtedly bug until she pretends to care) but if I take part in a raid in Everquest 2, slay a dragon and win some loot, quite a few – if not a lot of – people care and suddenly my achievement has merit and substance.

To me, that’s the true attraction of MMORPGs.

As pretty much everyone on the planet knows, the 3rd Aion Beta event is underway this weekend but maybe what they don’t know is that I happen to also be partaking in it. I don’t really want to go into huge detail about it all because almost every other blog out there has already either summarised or reviewed it in some form so I’d just be repeating stuff they’ve already said. Plus I haven’t played it nearly enough to pass any concrete judgement on it other than my initial impressions. However, if you want to find out more information about the game than I can supply, I can recommend Keen and Graev’s Aion vs WAR and Aion vs WoW comparisons, they are quite informative.

Initial Impressions

Mantooth - Fat, Beared, Sexy Warrior

Aion is impressive. From the moment you download the game to the moment you log out of your first play session, it’s slick and steady with a style and form that walks up to you, slaps you in the face and yells, “you’re gonna like me, sucka”. It’s absolutely nothing you haven’t seen before but I don’t consider that to be a bad thing. People deride it by saying that it’s just a WoW clone but then I say WoW was just a clone of Everquest. Almost every MMORPG that comes out is similar to the last set except they have a couple of new features or do something a little differently. It doesn’t hamper my enjoyment of the genre – although I’d love to see some more innovation and drastic changes, it’s what I’ve come to expect. However, being a good game doesn’t necessarily mean doing something new, sometimes it can just mean doing something the best.

The combat in Aion is fast, fun and funky and the music and environment really come together to form a cohessive experience. The controls are a little odd to me, just like Lineage 2, and I constantly find myself trying to move the camera around my character but accidentally using the wrong mouse button. It also has the Korean movement technique of clicking somewhere on the ground to make your character run to that spot. Although quite useful it’s very alien to me and slightly off putting. I’m sure they will let you disable the feature at some point though.

The Beta

The beta is running smoothly, very smoothly. In fact, I haven’t participated in a beta this well run in, well, ever. The game feels completely finished and polished so it gives me high hopes for it’s release in September. Yes, September. Three months away. If I’ve got any problem with the beta is that it’s so far away from the final release of the game and I find myself resisting the urge to log in and play it simply because I don’t want to spoil myself so soon. I know, I could’ve waited – should’ve waited – but curiosity got the better of me.

Conclusion

Hard to really conclude anything and I don’t want to give the impression that I’m reviewing the game. I really haven’t played it enough and, if games like Age of Conan and Warhammer Online taught me anything, it’s that longevity is the real stamp of success on a MMORPG. Aion may well turn out to be hugely fun for four weeks and then become utterly boring with absolutely no end game. Still, it’s first impressions are very good and it definitely feels like a grade-A, heavy weight competitor in the MMO market.

So am I going to buy it? Yeah. But I gotta because I ordered it from NCSoft so I could play the beta. So I guess a more telling question would be, “do I regret buying it?”. The answer to that, is no.

Since I posted  an article about the documentary Another Perfect World a couple of weeks ago, I’ve wanted to post a BBC documentary called The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out. It was made in 1981 and is an interview with Richard P. Feynman, an amazing Nobel Prize winning physicist and hugely intelligent and inspirational individual.

After watching the documentary I bought his first book, a collection of anecdotes that sort of adds up to an autobiography, called Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! (Adventures Of A Curious Character). At the risk of sounding melodramatic, this book changed my life. Not only is it filled with highly emotional stories, like how Feynman dealt with being one of the participants in the Manhattan Project (developing the atomic bomb which was used against Japan in World War II), but it’s also filled with some incredibly funny and bizzare anecdotes, like how Feynman used to play pranks on his fellow physicists and break into their filling cabinets, filled with top-secret research documents, and leave little notes for them.

Perhaps the most appealing thing about Feynman though is he views on learning and teaching. He believes strongly in learning by understanding, not by rote and his practical, logical and uncompromising views are eye opening and inspiring. After reading the book, I truly felt different and looked upon life in a different way. I’d highly recommend it.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s part one of the documentary. You can find the rest of the parts on YouTube. Enjoy!

I haven’t been playing EVE Online for long. I only signed up to the 14 day trial last week and I’m still getting to grips with the game and it’s hugely complex OS like interface. I’m currently still spending a third of my time deciding on what do to and two thirds figuring out how to do it. I don’t mind the learning curve though because it was to be expected and I’m actually enjoying knowing that there’s so much to explore. One of things that definitely appeals to me about EVE is the full-on sandbox virtual world that it offers and knowing how vast and limitless it is.

Although it may be old news to long term EVE players, a colleague of mine found a fascinating article on the BBC news site posted today. Apparently, a few weeks ago, billions of ISK were stolen from a player run bank called EBANK and sold on for £3,115/$5,086. My first reaction was “damn, that’s so cool!” and my second reaction was “I didn’t know there were player run banks in EVE”. Guess we learn something new every day.

Unfortunately it wasn’t some exciting armed break-in into a heavily fortified vault (cue blazing gunfight) or anything like that. Turns out it the chief executive, Ricdic, just withdrew it on the sly and the then traded it for real money which he used to pay off some medical bills and put down a deposit on a house. His account was then banned by CCP. Still, he’s several thousand dollars better off and, presumably, people with savings in the bank have been screwed over.

This is a prime example of the lack of consequences in virtual worlds and how it enables people to go beyond their moral code. I highly doubt that Ricdic would’ve ripped someone off for $5k in real life and, even if he had, gotten away with it scott free. The bottom line here is that he essentially made money at the expense of others – stole from them – yet there was absolutely nothing that could be done to him in return.

It makes me wonder a lot about where the line between real and virtual worlds is drawn and to what length developers should go to enforce rules and regulations. I find it very curious (and almost a little hypocritical) that CCP have a policy of non-interference with their game world yet still banned Ricdic, not for stealing the ISK, but for selling it on. I wonder why they decided that particular act warranted banning and not any other.

Anyway, I better log back into EVE and finish figuring out how to play it. I’ve got to embark to on my master plan to impersonate a 16 year old female cheerleader called ‘Sparkle’, cozy up to the leader of some mega-corporation, eventually earn his trust and then stab him in the back and steal all of his cash. I’ve got a upcoming holiday to pay off, don’t cha know.

On another related noted, I’ve updated my post with the movie for the documentary Another Perfect World with an official 30min preview.

My holiday is booked or, as they might say online, incoming. July 31st, only four weeks away, is the start day and I’ll then be enjoying a two week break in Tokyo, Japan. I haven’t been to Japan for a couple of years so I’m excited about returning with my wife. It’s going to very hot (35C/95F) and humid but I’m sure I’ll survive – air con FTW. And don’t fret! I’ll still be blogging although maybe a little less frequently than usual and no doubt you’ll see some random posts about Japanese curiosities.

Anyway, I’m going to have a 14 hour plane journey to pass along with a few odd spare times in the hotel so I’m starting to think about books to read and some games for my laptop. Fortunately this year we’re flying first class (Virgin Atlantic Upper Class – I’m a lucky devil, I know) so not only am I actually going to be able to fit in the seats (and bed) this time, but I’ll have a power supply for my laptop. Luxury gamage! If only they had Wi-Fi…

What Games?

My laptop is pretty decent but the Windows Vista install makes it run at about 70% of it’s potential I’d wager. Still, it can run World of Warcraft OK and less demanding games like Sins of a Solar Empire. I’m planning on picking up the Sins of the Solar Empire expansion, Entrenchment, as I loved the original and it’s only $9.99 and possibly Galactic Civilizations II and/or Demigod. Are they any good?

I was also thinking about installing EVE Online or DDO but I’m not sure they would run. Anyone got an experience with them on laptops?

What Books?

I bought the first Dresden Files book, Storm Front, last week but I haven’t started it yet so I’m considering holding off and keeping it for my holiday. I’ve also got Peace and War by Joe Haldeman gathering dust on my shelf and also the Dark Tower saga to finish. I can buy Western books in Tokyo but the selection isn’t great so I’d rather take a couple with me just to be sure. Last time I was there I wizzed through the second Dark Tower book and spent the better part of a day hunting for somewhere that sold the third novel.

Anyone recommend me some books to read? I’m in the mood for messed up, dark fantasy or sci-fi like the Dark Tower, however I’m open to anything. For instance, probably the best book I’ve read this year has been Generation Kill and that’s nothing like what I normally read.

Please give me your recommendations!