The folks over at MMO Anthropology had a chance to talk to a mutual friend of ours from Star Trek Online about what it’s like to be a captain in the game. Then I took a chance to write up an article about the interview over at SiliconANGLE. Be sure to watch the video and read the article to get a glimpse of some of what happens in STO and how it affects personal experience and expression In virtual worlds.
I noticed that a lot of people have been very interested in this new virtual items from Star Trek Online. These ships are a reward from participating in the 4th Anniversary Event in STO and bring a few new interesting mechanics into the game. As a result, the folks over at Vox Ex Machina sat down with a few players and looked at their Dyson science destroyers and wrote up a review.
Star Trek Online: Dyson Science Destroyer Review
Head over there and let them know what you think. There are two screenshots right now (from the Aves-class Romulan variant) but more screenshots are expected today.
I personally have an Aves-class and I’ve been slowing grinding up the Dyson reputation so that I can grab the Experimental Proton Weapon for its front arc. I know that there’s a dearth of consoles that buff proton damage, but I’m intrigued by a weapon that can act as both a cannon and a beam.
I’m not a very good Romulan player at this point--I’ve noticed I’m a cruiser captain who doesn’t deal well with warbirds—but the hit-and-run tactics needed by a battle-cloaking science vessel with some escort-upbringing do make for exciting space battles.
With Star Trek Online providing a surprising venue to talk about the nature of virtual items—and the fact that I have a job that lets me report on the goings-on in free-to-play MMO games—I decided to try an experiment by having a player in STO who flies one of these ships give me notes to review it by.
The result, this badass virtual item spotlight on GameOgre about the Hirogen Hunter Heavy Escort lockbox ship.
The game mechanics have generated a layered culture of thought about equipment, strategy, and button-press abilities. This means that reviews of these virtual items (the starships) includes a lot of jargon that to an outsider sounds and looks a lot like gibberish—but with a little bit of context quickly makes a lot of sense.
I am especially intrigued by the proliferation of the understanding of the Aux2Bat (referring to an ability called “Auxiliary to Battery”) starship build. A methodology that takes advantage of synergies between STO game mechanics that allow a single ship-equippable ability (on a bridge officer) to significantly lower skill cooldowns. Since the concept of A2B is so popular in starship building it was important not to leave it out of the review of the Hirogen Hunter.
Keeping in mind how STO players relate to ships, builds, and other players when referring to game mechanics will make for better, in-depth, audience-centric reviews. In the past I’ve covered the Catian Atrox Carrier, the Tholian Recluse Carrier, and the Romulan Dreadnought Warbird.
Many-a-City-of-Heroes-fan has been mourning the loss of our favorite game and it’s been quite a ride since NCSoft shut it down. Now, City of Titans promises to resurrect a spiritual successor worthy of that community.
Do not miss the Kickstarter (10 days left!) it has a lot of nice rewards for early participants and you’ll be part of something awesome-to-come.
And if you’re interested in a write-up of what was learned from the interview check out SiliconANGLE and GameOgre.
I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 for a while now and talking to several guilds about their gaming experience. Aside from the stunningly visual nature of the game and the interesting stories that can be sussed out of NPCs, ambient conversation, or just from general exploration there’s also a great deal of gamification. I mention the stories because many of my guildmates come from Guild Wars and they sometimes to back because of the story.
I would love to delve further into that to see how people from GW tend to view and interact with GW2, especially those who took their guilds out of GW into GW2 and now interact and run the game with members who only know GW2.
One of the things that GW2 does to keep people playing and focus on not just story but also the gamification is the construction of legendary weapons—a truly hardcore experience.
As a result, I’m going to try to get one (or two.)
Part 1: The Gift of Battle
Guild Wars 2 has two particularly annoying elements to it that I strongly dislike: open PvP and jumping puzzle. These two elements are tired directly together with an important component of crafting a legendary called “The Gift of Battle.” This gift requires 500 Badges of Honor—earned only from a jumping puzzle in the open PvP area (aka World vs. World vs. World, or WvWvW, or WvW) or from killing people there. Of course, the drop rate of badges from kills is absurdly low, and it’s possible to receive no badges from a kill.
It will require 500 badges for me to make a Gift of Battle for one legendary weapon.
Now, since WvW fighting can be extremely slow for earning badges and I have no time to do this, I find myself needing to bow my head and do the jumping puzzles through which I can earn 3-6 badges for each run. A run can last between 10-30 minutes each.
The normal solution to this is that people run it with all of their alts, daily, gaining 3-6 badges per alt per day. I have about eight alts (could be nine if I felt like it) but I don’t know that I want to suffer through this nine times a day.
There’s also another, more treacherous, jumping puzzle in the middle of the WvW instances (called the Eternal Battlegrounds) that gives on average 15 badges a day per account.
This is going to be a very slow, frustrating process that will involve something that I don’t like about this game. So far, it has caused me to seriously hate jumping puzzles; and worse, trying to get badges has taken all the joy I had about WvW out of the process entirely.
I already have 100 badges from this week alone.
I’ll update everyone as this continues to unfold.
It was a rough weekend for many. Friday, November 30 of 2012, City of Heroes was finally shut down by NCSoft. Here, I’ll just leave a set of links to the news generated and some of the videos involved.
No doubt, I’ll be writing some formal articles on this matter for various outfits; but right now, the death of one of my favorite MMOs is just too close.
End of a Gaming Era – spyral of DestinyInk.com wrote a solemn blog post about the end of City of Heroes and her experience watching the servers shut down for the last time.
City of Heroes: The Final Hour on MMO Anthropology YouTube -Released the raw footage from the live stream of the end of the event. All footage takes place during the final 5 hours of City of Heroes on the Champion server.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Remembering my time in City of Heroes on Massively – “Even now, after having played the game consistently for several years, I'm still amazed at the number of different things players can do at any given juncture. There's just so much stuff, things to explore and stories to experience, something that comes only from years of development devoted to player choice and ease of play.”
Other videos have been made about the end of the era, and how it will affect so many in its wake: Sundown for City of Heroes and a Fan Petition to Keep it from Setting.
LOST CONNECTION TO MAPSERVER.
For the final time.
It’s been a rough few weeks with Muslims rioting in fury and anger over the release of the “Innocence of Muslims” video trailer from a would-be-unknown dumbass—of course, the protest in Libya was hijacked by violent militants who used it as an excuse to assault the embassy. Four US citizens were killed; amid them Sean Smith, aka Vile Rat.
In the coming weeks, he has been memorialized in text and video.
The death of this amazing individual was unnecessary, and even the Libyan people have shown an understanding of that with the production of “The Sorry Project.” As they’ve stood up against the villains who caused the death of these people. That’s how the culture of the country where this happened have reacted to the event.
Gamers have seen a different way to mourn the passing of their favorite in game diplomat.
They have done tributes in videos, even CCP Games and Something Awful have posted articles remembering Vile Rat’s contribution to their community.
Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.
Star Trek Online has come a long way from when it became free-to-play all the way to Season 6. There have been people with the game since it came into being as a pay-to-play game.
Here, MMO Anthropology interviews William McCormick who is with a reasonably sized fleet in the game who has been doing a video series about fleets and the new content. Fleets are the essential part of Star Trek Online social structure, they are essentially guilds, and recently STO added “fleet starbases” which act as a sort of player housing applied to the in game guilds.
Link, via YouTube and MMO Anthropology.
Magicman (Michael Byrne) editor-in-chief of MMOBomb.com came onto MMO Anthropology to speak about his experience with MMO gaming. The meeting took place in Aion Online and brought up topics such as having friends in game, the free-to-play model, and how people interact through MMO game worlds.
Friend-of-the-blog MMO Anthropology interviewed Nelson Williams, editor-in-chief of Vox Ex Machina recently and here's the resulting footage. I hope that you forgive the fact that apparently the normal transition zoom is missing from the beginning--but otherwise it seemed to come out rather well.
Link, via YouTube via MMO Anthropology.
Not a bad examination of how Minecraft can be used to build and create – a sort of organic approach to constructing a world.
via MMO Anthropology.
Funcom’s The Secret World is a wonderful MMORPG with powerful, deeply atavistic Lovecraftian stories – this screenshot it from the first town that is being besieged by zombies.
Many of the quests have cinematic and even fully-voiced animations that have your character mostly standing dumbly and listening to a story about the reason for the quest and why. This is the hallmark of plot quests and it’s good to watch them at least once.
This has been put to good use by Star Wars: The Old Republic but it takes on a different quality in horror-themed The Secret World.
Kingsmouth has a zombie problem – I have a solution.
Fire. Kill it with fire.
Okay…
So zombies aren’t the only problem Kingsmouth has. RUN! RUN!
At least, that’s what I thought to myself until I recollected that I have an AK-47 that shoots lightning and that particular problem ended up deep-fried very quickly.
The other player helping out didn’t hurt either.
Star Trek Online has seen two developers mark their calendars with a figure resignation, both Geoff "Heretic" Tuffli and Dan "Gozer" Griffis have signaled their departure from Cryptic Studio's MMORPG game with future resignations and left behind their notes on the forums.
"Star Trek Online content designer Dan Griffis to depart Cryptic in 'a few weeks'"
Looks like Gozer is departing and above is the link to the .VG247 on the subject.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=278521
Also, "jumping ship," is Geoff "Heretic" Tuffli who left his mark on the STO Perfect World forums with an apology and a sad farewell to the players.
Developers have a lot of social context and currency with the virtual worlds that they develop for. They're, in a way, the architects of the aesthetic and the code that governs how the community interacts with that virtuosity and within themselves; as a result, they're often the target of adulation and scorn in turn depending on the cycle of development. Not often do they work directly with the community--but sometimes they do become part of the very worlds that they develop and design.
As a result, the departure of developers from an MMO game brings with it a different and distinct sensation than the sense of developers who worked on a static, published single box game. Certainly now we're seeing more episodic content; but MMO developers personally affect and cast great shadows over the online communities that their games support.
So when they leave, it's a bit of a big deal.
Link, via MMO Anthropology.
Oh, wait, this is a science fiction MMORPG; that’s a problem with fantasy MMORPGs.
Spotted this one in a recent Massively.com article on SOE’s PlanetSide 2.
The much-anticipated, upcoming sci-fi MMORPG PlanetSide 2 is showing off that they’re offering trooper armor for both boys and girls. In a sort of way seeing this brought up the old controversy about fantasy-settings where for some reason boys get gauntlets of iron-palisades across their entire bodies, and girls barely have their torsos protected while showing off cleavage and belly.
Who says PlanetSide 2 is going to be a dude fest? OK, it might be, but at least it'll have some nifty female avatar options. Sony Online Entertainment is also thumbing its nose at game industry tradition when it comes to clothing women in skimpy combat attire.
The company's latest press release features renders and screenshots of fem-troopers in full battle gear. There's not a bare belly nor a shapely thigh in sight, just functional equipment designed to keep avatars alive rather than stimulate opponents.
Science fiction armoring, however, rarely suffers this strange gender dimorphic double-standard; often the girls get just as much protection as the boys. Which would make more sense no matter the setting.
There may yet be hope.
Of course, I should point out that SWTOR is kind enough to give equal protection cross genders as well to Republic troopers.
Sony Online Entertainment discovered that players hated the previous Valentine’s Day event so much that they decided they needed to entirely remake it. And, because they couldn’t do that in time for this year, they decided it was necessary to ditch it entirely for the days surrounding February 14th in DC Universe Online.
Come along with MMO Anthropology as we talk about how it was celebrated last year – since there’s no way to get footage of the event from this year.
Link, via YouTube and MMO Anthropology
The “Love is in the Air Festival” in World of Warcraft has been going on for a few years now. Blizzard has seen fit not to tweak it every much except to allow people to revisit the favorite dungeon instance of Shadowfang Keep for the showdown with the Crown Chemical Co. apothecaries (the villains of this Valentine’s Day festival.) I love Shadowfang as much as the next gamer, but it’s about time they updated the content a little.
Yes, yes, the Valentine’s Day festivities bring us the “Love Rocket” and other odd items, but it’s just not cutting it anymore.
Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.
It’s time for a new MMO Anthropology about Star Trek Online, developed by Cryptic Studios and now published by Perfect World Entertainment—it is a game in transition from pay-to-play to free-to-play.
As an originally pay-to-play MMO, Star Trek Online contains a great deal of content and an amazing eye to detail. Although, it is still buggy as all hell and sometimes those bugs really interfere with gameplay.
In this article, a discussion is brought forward about how going free-to-play will effect change to the communities present especially as players who used to pay a subscription find themselves amid players who do not. With pay-to-play communities there is a sense of risk and sunk cost to playing whereas with free-to-play it’s all about who buys what.
Star Trek Online is trying to alleviate this by making it about level-of-service as well as having cash-only ships (although they can also be had by free-to-play players by using an exchange system that allows trading reward-currency for pay-currency.)
Just see the essay for more, or watch the video for the summary.
Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.
Burning rubber where angels fear to tread.
