The MMO Notebook

What Shakespeare was to literature, the Netscape browser was to the internet. It was the first real web browser to bring graphical goodness to the internet. When it made its appearance, using things such as “Gopher” and “Archie” were the common way of finding things on the web. The internet was text driven in a crude and basic way. Netscape helped bring about the “web explosion” that brought the internet to the masses. When it came to browsing the web back in those days, Netscape was the only game in town. Now, these many years later, Netscape is going the way of the Dodo bird.

I first used Netscape after purchasing an internet software suite called “Internet In A Box.” It came with a Gopher and Archie client, FTP client, and the Netscape browser. Even with a web browser, the web was still mostly texted based. The fastest internet pipe I could get at that time was a 14.4 dial-up connection. 36.6 dial-up was considered super fast. Either way, Netscape changed the way the web was used. It made it much easier to use.

Internet Explorer and Firefox has obviously taken over as the browsers of choice for most people these days. Netscape failed to innovate fast enough and they payed the price in the end. Where once everyone used it, now I don’t know of a single person who has used it in the past few years. A sad end to a once great product.

–Wolfen

I have decided to start Vanguard: Saga of Heroes first. Everquest 2 will come a bit later. I suppose that I was one of the rare people who liked Vanguard during the beta test. I have read numerous reports that though the game still needs many improvements, it is still a much better game that what we saw during beta. That is something I want to see for myself and determine how worthwhile playing the game can be.

Vanguard has many races and classes, so the decision of what to play has been on my mind. I played a ranger almost exclusively during my main Everquest days. In fact, I have played a ranger/hunter style character in every MMO I have tried. The one exception is Lord of the Rings Online where I played a Champion, although I did dabble with the ranger a bit. So I naturally lean towards playing a ranger in Vanguard.

The thing is, I wouldn’t mind trying an MMO from a different perspective. The sorcerer and blood mage intrigue me. There’s something about a sorcerer simply sitting back and hitting the “BOOM” button every now and then that pulls at me. On the other hand, one of the roles of the blood mage is being a healer. As the byline of this blog states, I’m a hardened veteran noob and I’m not sure I can trust myself with healing duties. It is, however, a very interesting take on the typical mage class.

I suppose that I will have to try a few of them and see what sticks. I want some solo ability, which points to something like a sorcerer or druid. Necromancers are not my style. I do have a few days to ponder on this since my new computer won’t be here until sometime next week. Until then, I will keep posting my thoughts on various MMO things.

–Wolfen

I was reading an article over on MMOCrunch entitled Phantasy Star Goes Offline In Japan when one sentence caught my eye. The author asks the following question: “If the (MMO) world was to end tomorrow, what would you do?” I found that to be a very interesting topic. How would you react if the MMO that you love, that you have played for years, suddenly announced that it was closing up shop in the near future?

I think that for a great many people, their reaction would be summed up in two words: Complete Panic. If this were to happen to a large and very popular MMO, you can bet that the online forums and blogs would explode with a wide range of diatribe. Depending on the person, emotions would surely range from outrage, disbelief, sadness, and depression. In a way, a lifestyle would be coming to an end. What would you do to replace it?

I don’t have much of a frame of reference for such a happening. I have played many MMO’s, but none of them has gone offline for good. Several games have gone down the tubes, but I suppose my judgement in what games to play is better than I thought. Asheron’s Call is probably the biggest game that I know of that went under. Motor City Online would be another. I didn’t play either of those.

The only experience I can relate it with would be the end of a beta test. I have had some incredibly good times at the end of a couple of beta’s I was involved with. The end of the Everquest beta was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. It turned out to be very special. Multiple gods attacked all over the Everquest world and most people were too low a level to defeat them. Giant skeletons appeared in my home zone of Qeynos Hills and wreaked havoc. A large army of orcs attacked players at the Crushbone zone. Rumors ran wild with tales of amazing things happening in one zone and then another. Traveling wasn’t very fast back then, so it took some effort to try and see as much of the events as we could. It was an incredible experience.

What made the end of EQ beta so special was what my friends and I did at the very end. Several of us met up at the Freeport docks just before the servers went down. These are friends that I met playing the beta and I still play with or keep in touch with to this day. When the server shutdown timer started to count down, we decided to swim out to sea. We kept ourselves underwater and swam out as far as we could. As the last shutdown timer was announced, we all turned our characters and looked at one another. A couple seconds later the screen went black with a You Have Been Disconnected From The Server message. It was such a surreal moment. Little did I know that EQ would hold me for more than five years.

So what would I do if Sony announced that they would be shutting down Everquest? First, it would make me sad that such a wonderful game that brought me into the MMO world would be going away. I would travel all over the game world, taking screenshots of everything I could, so that I would have a record of my favorite places in the game.

In the end, I would find myself smiling as I recalled all the fun times I had playing the game with great friends. On the last day, when the last seconds are counting down, you can be sure to find me at the Freeport docks. I will jump into the water and swim. I will swim as far as I can. Until the screen fades to black.

–Wolfen

Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis are two of my most favorite television programs. I watch them any time they are on. In my geeky way, I feel that I know the Stargate universe rather well.

Needless to say, when Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment announced that they are working on an MMO based on the Stargate universe, I was giddy as a schoolgirl. They have named it Stargate Worlds, and I hope and pray that they make it good. It will be a welcome change from all of these fantasy-based elf games.

There’s not much information about the game yet. It isn’t going to be released until the fall of 2008 at the earliest, so I have plenty of time to learn about what they are going to do with it. I think the opportunities are endless when you’re working with an IP like this. They have 10 years worth of SG-1 shows to take ideas from. I am excited at the thought of going to a completely different type of world and environment each time I step through a stargate. The possibilities and gaming experiences are practically endless. If they build it right, we’ll have a huge variety of worlds to go to, each possibly requiring a different play style to get things accomplished.

We have a long time to go before we find out how this game plays. You can be certain that my eye is firmly placed on this upcoming MMO. I pray for goodness.

–Wolfen

As mentioned in my previous post, I have a new gaming computer on the way. Unfortunately, due to the holidays, shipping is rather slow. So, that leaves me with only being able to write about it instead of using it. Currently, I’m using an Apple Macbook Pro and running Bootcamp to game with. It’s a higher-end model running at 2.4ghz, with 4gigs of RAM, and a Nvidia 8600GTm 256mb video card. It runs Everquest and Lord of the Rings Online surprisingly well at the 17″’s native resolution of 1920×1200.

Since I’m going to start up Everquest 2 and Vanguard again, I wanted to get a beefier machine. I don’t like to play games on lower settings and I was worried that Vanguard would be a problem. That prompted me to order a desktop PC with a stronger video card. I have built my own computers for years, but this time around I went with a pre-built solution. Computers are so inexpensive these days that it wasn’t worth my time doing all the parts/pricing research that usually goes into my building a custom PC.

It didn’t take me long to find a decent PC at at great price. I ended up purchasing a HP Pavilion m8200n Multimedia PC from Amazon.com for $669. The specifications include an AMD X2 6000+ processor, 3gb RAM, 500gb hard drive, TV tuner, etc. The included video card is very weak, so I found an Nvidia 8800GT 512mb card on sale at Best Buy for $250. This system is certainly not the best, but it’s a fast computer at a cheap price. The bummer for me is the estimated arrival date isn’t until January 2nd, so here I am waiting for it. But, soon enough, we’ll find out how well it performs with these games.

–Wolfen

Hello and Merry Christmas to all!

I suppose it’s a strange day to start a blog, but it is as good a day as any for me. As a bit of introduction, my online gaming name is Wolfen. I am a 38 year-old casual gamer who likes to play MMO’s. This blog will chronicle the playing of certain MMO’s from a casual playing point of view.

For a bit of my history, I started playing online games with Everquest. I played it starting with beta and continued to play it for more than five years. After that, I quit the game, returning rarely to play from time to time. I am currently playing it now. I have played many more online games as well. Those include Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard, Planetside, and others.

Two games that I will be picking up again will be Everquest 2 and Vanguard. My plan is to report the current-day newbie experience in both games and see what has changed since these games first launched. This may not sound all that exciting to you, but I’m curious to find out how casual friendly these games can be. We all know that World of Warcraft is the god of casual games, but I want to see how these games compare. Should someone even consider starting up with one of these two games? We will see.

I was fartin’ around in Everquest last night and ran across some Frostfell NPC’s in Qeynos. Who knew that Santa was an ogre?

Ol’ Santug gives out a couple of quests. One of them sends you off to kill invisible grimps that drop pieces of his Naughty and Nice list that he lost. The reward given is a single use breastplate that turns your character into an ogre. Seeing my ranger as an ogre was a neat novelty, but having only a single use was disappointing.

So, my first post is done. I will be starting up EQ2 and Vanguard very shortly after the first of the year. I have a new computer on the way that will allow me to run them better than my current machine. This will be especially true for Vanguard, which is high on graphics and low on optimization.

–Wolfen