Comments on: Updates! LOTRO, CoH, Glitch, SWTOR, and stuff

By: spinks

spinks — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:57:41 +0000

I’m honestly not sure there are many games that reward hardcore players to that extent, maybe something like EVE but that’s not a raid endgame.

By: Nazaniel

Nazaniel — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:53:39 +0000

“WoW hasn’t really been that holy grail of hardcore raid games for awhile, probably not since TBC.”

Just out of curiosity, what would you say is?

By: Vett

Vett — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:48:53 +0000

As a person who is in the current SWTOR beta I will have to say you won’t be dissapointed. I will even go as far to say that a lot of Nil’s wishlist to Blizzard http://nilsmmoblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/quality-of-life.html is accomplished in SWTOR. As an older gamer without breaking the NDA I think the current blogosphere will enjoy it a lot once they get their hands on it.

By: Exaggerations… » How to Murder Time

Exaggerations… » How to Murder Time — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:24:02 +0000

[...] on anything Isengard has or hasn’t done; it’s probably great if you like that sort of thing. Spinks and Melmoth describe it as more of the same, a kind of Enedwrath Plus rather than anything [...]

By: flosch

flosch — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:39:29 +0000

Botched updates-wise, I had to think of WoW’s infamous “voice patch” 2.2. It felt like it was in development and testing for ages, and voice chat was the only big feature it rolled out with. A feature that to this day, I have seen in use maybe two times. People don’t want to talk to random strangers, and organized guilds still have ventrilo, because it’s not bound to certain activities in a certain game.

You think that would’ve been pretty obvious, but somehow it wasn’t to whoever was in charge.

By: Seca

Seca — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:20:40 +0000

I wonder if some of the SWTOR skepticism is related to Rift. My impression was that Rift got alot of positive talk, but once out didn’t have enough (for some) to differentiate it. The fear is that SWTOR will fall into the same trap.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:01:38 +0000

Argh, had a reply and then accidentally erased it ;/

I did enjoy the GW2 demo and am really keen to try the game. It reminded me more of Warhammer Online than anything else (which I still think is an under rated game that brought a lot of new and innovative tweaks to the basic MMO model), and I think that if people are really tired of the old DIKU MMO this may not be different enough to really satisfy them, even with the interesting new takes that Arena net is bringing to the table. I know I only saw a very basic low level version of the combat system but it wasn’t immediately feeling different to any other MMO.

I am particularly intrigued by their ideas about the multiple guilds and social interaction, and the underwater stuff. And of course the art looks absolutely stunning. I think it will become evident that the game is going to be more like WoW than GW1 in many ways.

For storylines, I think Bioware will do it better. Switching spec by switching weapon is an interesting mechanic but unless you are required to do it often in combat (in which case this will feel a lot like FF13) it’s very similar in concept to spec switching in WoW.

By: Drew

Drew — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:26:25 +0000

Amen, sister! He’s a terrible reviewer for that reason. It reminds me of a line from a Saturday Night Live skit years ago, “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!”, except in his case, replace “Scottish” with “F2P”.

I have zero desire to play Glitch based on what I’ve seen.

By: Azaael

Azaael — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:44:46 +0000

I’m personally not so sure that GW2 is going to be very similar to WoW. I mean, okay. I suppose you’ll have abilities you can put on a bar, but many, many MMOs have that, including ones that are nothing like WoW-I’ve been playing Rusty Hearts, for example, casually, and you can put abilities on a bar in that.

If anything, GW2 seems to be going for the ‘anti-WoW’. No fixed roles, scaling content, loot for everyone, non gear-reliant PvP, sidekicking, emphasis off generic quest grinding and so many other things seems like it’s trying to actually do things that people who are sick of the WoW model have been asking for.

The only thing I can potentially maybe see is that it falls into trying to be as much not WoW as possible that it ends up feeling like WoW, only not WoW. If that makes sense. :p But I honestly thing, while GW2 will feel like an MMO, I am not seeing too much WoW-Cloning yet in it. At the same time, I’ve been going on videos, reviews, and the like-I haven’t gotten to try any of the demos from the cons, but even then it seems that it’s a lot more active than a typical bar rotation/priority system kind of thing. Actually, I remember, Spinks, didn’t you get to try it at Gamescom? How exactly was it a WoW-clone from someone who got to try a demo firsthand? Was it a ‘hotbar’ based combat that felt like it or?

By: Zoso

Zoso — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:56:55 +0000

Samus sums up CoH nicely, pretty much the same game but with some welcome tweaks. I wouldn’t solo in there for extended periods, despite some new (to me) arcs with a bit of interesting story stuff the fundamental gameplay is a bit ho-hum on your own, but for eight-person AoE-heavy mayhem it’s still glorious. Van Hemlock has a group going on Mondays, if anyone fancies.