DDO

Well over the past week I took advantage of the DDO 10 day free trial. I still have 2 day left on the trial and I am still deciding if I want to buy the game or not. Now the game is only $15 but the question is “is there enough there for the $15 a month fee”. I guess I will keep thinking it over tomorrow and then decide Wednesday.

Tomorrow I plan on put my lfg tag and see what the group action looks like. The dungeons are really nice and the traps are great. I don’t know how many times I jumped when I would suddenly see fire shooting out of the wall.  I guess the deciding factor for me will be how looking for a group goes.

SWG the Great Things

 Kill Ten Rats was the only blogger to post the other day recognizing SWG’s 5^th birthday.  It suppresses me a little that no one else bothered to mention it. It seems to me that SWG is the only game out that at release was truly a 3^rd generation MMO. SWG was a game that was really ahead of its time. I can not think of a single game that has even tried to implement some of the original components of SWG. I wanted to take a moment to look back and think of some of the things that where in SWG that I would like to see implemented in MMO’s to come.

                 Can you say NO levels. Now SWG was the first MMO I ever played and EQ2 was the second. So after 2 years of playing SWG (I left before the infamies NGE patch) and going in to EQ2 at launch. Image my surprise when I had levels and needed to run back to town every level just to get my spells upgraded. So why after 5 years do we still see games following in the same old path?  I for one loved the skill tree system. Was it perfect NO but there sure is a lot of potential in a system without levels. The community interaction of just people training other people was great.

                Everything in the game was player made. There was no camping mobs’ waiting for a drop. There where was no questing for an item.  You ran missions those missions paid you credits and you took those credits and bought your gear. So imagine my surprise when in EQ2 I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t high enough level for a mace. Not that I couldn’t use maces I just wasn’t high enough to use that mace yet.

                Personal Vendors it is the only game that took the idea behind selling goods and made it into a class. You had your own personal NPC that would stand around and sell your wears. Later they added tents that you could set up around Player Cities to have your NPC merchants sell your goods. Now the vendors do not just stand there heck no if you where high enough up the merchant tree you could make them talk to passerbies. With everything in the game player made vendors where extremely important and if you where a good crafter and kept your vender stocked up people would travel a long way to buy from you. I made many runs across Rori just to get stem pack A’s.

                 Can you say dancers anyone. How about that a class based just on people standing around talking to people. One of my fondest memories is when BKB decided to have a party and Stryker paid a group of master entertainers 250k just to come at and play. What a great experience I just wish I still had that screenshot.

                To sum it all up lets not forget the creature handler. How many pet Rancors did you have? There where also player cities, player housing, dynamic based pvp, and PA halls aka guild halls. So while the SWG we have to day is far from the game it was at release we have to ask why things like this have not been tried in other games.  SWG didn’t fail because of its launch it failed because SOE didn’t want to listen to there player base.

                And it did teach the industry a on big lesson.  You have to listen to your player base.

I guess like your high school sweet hart, your first car and your first job you never forget your first MMO.

Guild Jumping

Last night while I was typing up my post Tobold had posted about guild hopping. I am really glad he did I missed this topic last time around.

Gratuities links to follow

Journeys with Jaye

Massively

PotShot

Ok so here is the way I see it. It all depends on they way you look at your guild. Is your guild a tool or a group of friends? If it is a tool then you bet you are going to see lots of guild jumping. People are always going to want the right tool for the job. That is not to say that it is all on the players there are guilds that look at there members as tools also. If you are a high end raiding guild you most likely are not going to take people that are at the low end of the scale. You are going to want people that help your guild advance to the next level.

I on the other hand look at my guild as more of a group of friends. I have been playing MMO’s for about 5 years now. I know it has been around 5 years because I started in the SWG beta. Now in that time besides when me and 5 buddies decided to make are own guild I have been in 3 guilds. Three that’s it three. I have never changed guilds in a game. Each guild was always a group of friends. It was about more than just raiding. It was about people helping people out. There where always guild groups going on. I have never really had to really on my lfg tag to find a group. Now I have had to use the social window to pick up people to fill out a group. That was more as a recruiting tool than anything else.

I just have this to add if you are in a guild with a lot of people that come and go ask your self is your guild just a tool and are you just a tool for your guild.

My guild is a guild of friends I started on the Guk server with Revelry and Honor and will die on the Guk server with RnH.

3rd Time

Ok it has been a long time. I figure if I can not keep up with it this time around I will most likely give up on my own blog. I have my google reader all set up with my favorite blogs so no more trying to keep up with everyone. I love google. There is also this nice little option in google reader that lets you download all your blogs so you can read them when you are offline. So know more getting hundreds of blog post behind. For example I see that as I am typing this up Tobold just made another new post at 3am my time. 

This may sound a little silly but I even started another blog The Newb Experience.   I have decided to go exploring so to speak.  I really haven’t played a lot of MMO’s I can count them all on one hand.  While I am still going to be playing EQ2 as my main game I am also going to check out a new game every few months. Instead of trying to compare it to other games that are out I am really going to try and look at it from a newbie’s point of view. If nothing else it should be a great experience checking out new games and filling my shelf with boxes.