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Two New MMOG Expansions Released
Yesterday saw the launch of two new expansions for a pair of well-established Massive games. The titles are Thrones of Oblivion, the newest expansion for Player vs. Player game Shadowbane, and Catacombs, the newest expansion for Dark Age of Camelot. Thrones of Oblivion adds some interesting high end content, graphical enhancements, and the ability to play a Vampire as a character. Catacombs is an impressive (and much anticipated) enhancement to the Dark Age of Camelot graphics engine, and adds massive underground areas beneath the three Realms.
In other news, there are still MMORPGs out there besides World of Warcraft.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
That article looks suspiciously like a plug for the Warcry site.. oh well.
Anyway, Lineage 2 also just launched a massive (500MB) content expansion, "Chronicle 2". A bunch of new areas, a bunch of new quests, overhaul of items and a new gambling system. Unlike some other MMO games, all new content (as with their previous expansions) is free to all subscribers.
And in other news, Final Fantasy XI announced an expansion in their service. Apparently, in the coming months, they intend to actually enforce their user agreement instead of just ignoring people selling items and in-game currency for money.
This comes as a surprise, considering the game is over a year old in the United States and is coming up on the third anniversary of its original Japanese launch in a few months.
Evidently, in Japan, only companies losing customers listen to complaints.
Vendetta Online was updated once more just minutes ago.
First update introduced Asteroid Mining on the 15th of November.
Second update introduced a Galactic News system and NPC traders, on the 22nd of November
Today's update adds a Bounty system for glorifying a bit those pesky pirates and letting players become bounty hunters, plus a number of tweaks on ships and weapons. And special goodies for the few players who managed to fufill all 120 prospecting missions.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Yet another MMORPG will have an update! As of a couple of days ago the juicy, new free with your monthly subscription fee content of City of Heroes Issue 3 has been preloaded on my hard drive!
Analysis suggests this 140MBish package will feature a new zone for levels 20-30, a crazy spooky ghost ship and a killer octopus!
New epic power pools allow your archetype to get powers not normally associated with its class!
Reached level 50? Then you can start all over again with your choice of whacky new space alien characters! That's right! Complete with strange new powers of transformation!
Also on the plate fabulous nerfs... err adjustments for the tanker and scrapper classes! When will this madness be unleashed on Paragon City? Stay tuned and hold on to your capes true believers!
oh crap i'm gonna get sued for that last line
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Unlike 99% of all other posts, I will not be posted a plug for my favourite failing MMOG.
Instead some mindless crap jokes so I can say i got them in first:
Shadowbane still has a playerbase???
All you playerbase are belong to us!
I for one, welcome our new MMOG masters!
etc...
You are out of date, the old must make way for the new.
...for the thirty people still playing MMORPGs that aren't World of Warcraft.
Informatus Technologicus
I plaed sb around release, and I must say the game had a fantastic twist on what most mmorpg games give you by allowing free pvp playing. I have to say leveling up in the beginning made it easier since htere weren't as many people with high level characters who were bored and killing lowbies. But anyways, the reason I left was the game was crap. Not for the play mechanics, but for execution. If there were like 100 people on the screen, the game would crash to desktop. That, and a slew of other bugs, would lead to client crashes ALL the time.
If you did try to participate in a big pk action, the challenge would be getting your group to the site of the action without them all crashing along the way. Then when you got there, people would crash anyways.
Then the world had no content. You could run for 45 minutes and not run into anything. When you did find a monster zone, there were only like 5 zones in the game, they just copied them to other locations. Really lame on their part. Anyway, it still blows my mind they were creating expansions and actually charging people more money for their broke ass game, and not fixing the crashes.
Does anybody know if this game has been fixed? Sad as it is to say, I enjoyed my time playing it, and wouldn't mind giving it another shot if the crashing issues have been resolved.
Albion:
Heretic-Basically an evil Cleric. Except they don't get to wear chain mail, or even leather armor and they don't get any strong heals. They do get the ability to resurrect their allies as monsters for a brief time. Most of their damage spells require that they stand still for an extended period of time so some people are predicting that they will be ineffective in fighting against the other realms.
Hibernia:
Bainshee-Female only caster with spells that can damage all enemies in a cone shaped area in front of them. They also are the only class with a special appearance. They actually look like ghosts.
Vampiir-Leather wearing hybrid tank that uses a piercing weapon and makes their other hand into a magical claw. They can only gain power for casting their spells when in melee combat and they quickly lose power when combat ends. They can climb the walls of keeps, but they do not get stealth like other classes with this ability. They also cannot have "buff" spells cast on them by allies but as they level their stats increase very quickly and at level 50 their stats are only slightly lower than those of anyone with full buffs.
Midgard:
Valkyrie-Female only hybrid tank that also gets some cone area effect spells like the Bainshee. They can use a sword and shield or a spear and they get special styles not available to other classes with these weapons.
Warlock-Unusual caster with very long casting times that can "chamber" a certain number of spells in advance to cast them quickly later. They can also change the properties of their spells by mixing them with a secondary spell.
Albion only gets one expansion class since at the release of the game they had two more classes than Midgard and one more than Hibernia. The spelling is correct on the Hibernian classes.
Vampiir is expected to be the early "flavor of the month" class, which is fine by me since Hibernia has a lower population than the other realms on many servers. Warlock and Bainshee are expected to be overpowered once people figure out how to use them so in the long run they stand a good chance of being "nerfed" until they are underpowered.
This expansion also adds instanced dungeons (i.e. the server can generate a private dungeon for you and your group with monsters of a suitable level) and more detailed options for your characters appearance. When you first log in you can adjust the appearances of any of your existing characters.
You need to have the Shrouded Isles and Trials of Atlantis expansions to install this expansion. Shrouded Isles can now be downloaded for free or ordered for the cost of shipping (in fact, the original client with no expansions installed cannot be used any more). You should be able to find DAOC Platinum edition which includes an account and the first two expansions for $20-30. You can also get a free trial (well, if you can download the client anyway, otherwise it'll be the cost of shipping).
DAOC is a great game and the RvR combat is great though currently their are too many people playing casters and archers. That should get corrected once Mythic gives melee classes more to do than just run siege engines when taking or defending a keep. But for now, if you really want you can just be part of the problem and play a caster or archer. If you do start playing DAOC, play an underpopulated realm. You'll get bonuses that will help you get to level 50 much faster and the most heavily populated servers have their own problems. If you come to Hibernia on the Bedevere server, send a message to Eponnenain and I'll set you up with some gear to get you started.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I think it is cool Lineage is giving free expansions. I think it is funny that the 'claimed' amount of subscribers exist. I have lived in both US and Japan, and only knew 2, count them TWO people who played the game. This includes working in Tokyo at Canon, in Shinagawa, going to Animation school in Yoyogi, walking distance from Shinjuki, now living in Austin, talk on the internet EVERY DAY, am on tons of news groups, etc. etc. I have met in both countries countless more people that play, or have played, mostly UO, DAoC, AO, SWG and lately WoW. The others also fall by the way side. I don't know...maybe AC was mostly for high schoolers below my age. Anyways...those graphs mean nothing to me. What is important is if I KNOW people who play the game. What is important is if I can actually relate and talk to people who are playing the game. When I got to the Tokyo Game Show, they give out soooo many free Lineage game disks with X hours of play. I ended up giving to my friends, who in turn never played it. Do those numbers count those free game disks since they are indeed active accounts? The answer is YES!