MMO Gamers

Another lot of server mergers for Pirates of the Burning Sea, seeing the number of servers go from five to two. I’d pre-ordered PotBS and was in the game for the 15 day headstart, but I found the game tremendously boring. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of things about PotBS that I liked, in particular the crafting system and economy, but the avatar combat was so-so and the amount of loading screens I had to sit through left me scratching my head. So I wasn’t surprised to hear of further server merges. If anything, I’m surprised the game is still going. Sony is also offering free game time to allow former players and non-subscribers to transfer their characters.

Important Information Regarding Pirates of the Burning Sea™ Account

Ahoy, Pirates of the Burning Sea Captains!

Population density has been the topic of much debate in the community over the last few months. What we’re hearing is that Pirates is an awesome game that you really enjoy playing, but that it’s a lot more fun when there’s a critical mass of other players around to play alongside or against. Through feedback from the players and evaluation of server populations, it has become clear that key game features require higher density in order to function at optimum levels.

To push things in the right direction, we’ve decided to condense the current population onto two servers. On March 5, 2010 at approximately 12:01 AM PST, we will close the following servers: Blackbeard, Defiant, and Rackham. Beginning on February 5, 2010 at approximately 12:01 AM PST, you can transfer your characters from the affected servers onto one of the two remaining servers, Antigua or Roberts. At this time, character creation will be disabled on the Blackbeard, Defiant, and Rackham servers. We hope these changes will provide you with an even more enjoyable Pirates experience.

Important Dates

* 2/2/2010 05:00AM Patch 1.22 Goes live
* 2/5/2010 12:01AM Character transfers open.
* 3/5/2010 12:01AM Blackbeard, Defiant and Rackham servers are closed.

When can I start transferring my characters?

* You can transfer your characters beginning at approximately 12:01 AM PST on February 5, 2010 using our character transfer service at: http://www.burningsea.com/pages/transfer/.

What if my Pirates of the Burning Sea subscription isn’t currently active?

* Between February 5, 2010 at 12:01 AM PST and March 5, 2010 at 11:59 PM PST, accounts of former players that were closed between January 22, 2008 and January 15, 2010 will be reactivated for up to twenty-nine (29) days of free play*, which will allow you to transfer your characters to the Roberts or Antigua server and try out new features that we have implemented since you last set sail.

To learn more about the closure of the servers and character transfer, please click here.

*This offer, and the period of free game-play described in this offer, expires on March 5, 2010 at 11:59 PM PST. This offer is only available for Pirates of the Burning Sea accounts that have been closed and inactive between January 22, 2008 and January 15, 2010 and is not available for accounts closed after January 15, 2010, current Pirates of the Burning Sea or Station Access accounts or for accounts that were banned or were not in good standing when its Pirates of the Burning Sea or Station Access subscription previously expired.

Entering billing information before expiration of the free play period on March 5, 2010 will terminate the free service and you will lose the balance of any unused free play period game time. In addition, if you re-subscribe to Pirates of the Burning Sea , you will not be entitled to any game time that may be included with the purchase of certain versions of, or other offers related to , Pirates of the Burning Sea . Sony Online Entertainment and Flying Lab Software do not ensure continuous or error-free access, use or availability of any game content, feature, game-play or server and may change, modify, disable, suspend or remove any such content, feature, game-play or server at their sole discretion.

A quick check of my available character transfers shows that I already have three characters on Antigua and one on Roberts, which will be the remaining two servers as of March 5, so no need to transfer and characters. For a month of free play I think I’ll reinstall the game and see if it’s any better. Ahoy!

I tried City of Heroes back in 2006. I played it for a couple of months, thought it was pretty cool, but it didn’t really hold my attention. I was playing Everquest 2 at the time and I decided to devote my time to that game instead, so CoH got relegated to being another pretty box on the shelf. Fast forward to 2010 and I find myself staring at the screenshots and wanting to play at Superheroes. Sadly, that required an install and some patching, so there was no instant satisfaction, but the game takes up not even 3GB on the hard drive, so not as bad as say, patching Age of Conan for instance.

I finally got into the game and decided to pick up where I left off on my Defender. He was at level 13, which was my highest character and my healer class. CoH is very much a same old, same old when it comes to MMO design, but it’s different enough that I had to relearn everything. Groups are called Teams and Guilds are Supergroups. The interface is similar to other MMO’s but also different. Once I figured out how it all worked again I went out to do some missions (quests). While some missions are outdoors in the public space, many are in indoor instances, and many require a team to complete. Think of each mission a bit like doing a dungeon run with a group, which really suits my play-style, but they do get repetitive because many of the mission instances look identical to others you have already completed. I’m not sure how instances are generated in CoH, whether a zone all has the same looking instance or whether it’s randomized, but I’ve seen perhaps 7 or 8 different instance designs while having done dozens of solo and group missions.

RG-6. Defender of Paragon City

Combat is much the same in CoH as in other MMO’s. I play a Defender, which is the healer class in CoH. The classes are Tanker (tank), Blaster (ranged DPS), Scrapper (melee DPS), Controller (Mezzes, Roots etc) and the Defender. There are also two other classes, the Warshade and another whose title escapes me, but there are restrictions to creating one of these, such as having a level 50 character already. Teams can have up to 8 players and since many of the missions require a group it’s quite easy to get one. It wasn’t long before I received a whisper asking if I wanted to join a team and run some missions. CoH has a sidekick system, so you can join a team of higher level players and get bumped up in level to one below. I took my (now) level 14 Defender into a team of level 23 players and ran a few missions. I was getting a level with each mission I completed, and the next day I ran some more mission with players around the same level and found myself hitting level 20. Needless to say, it was fun. In fact, playing a Superhero is fun, and I can see why this game has such appeal and is still going strong.

Villain Pwnage. I haz it

Spells are done a little differently in CoH. You choose two spell lines (for wont of a better description) a main and a secondary. At each second level you get to learn a spell from either one or the other of your lines, and at each level in-between you get to add a slot to your spells which you can then make more powerful using enhancements. CoH has all the things you’d expect from a MMO, such as crafting, which I tinkered with and made myself an enhancement. The player crafted enhancement was far superior to the ones you can buy from the merchants. Crafting is also a little different. Recipes are gained from mob drops, as are the required materials. Once you use a recipe it’s lost to you, so they only have a one-time use. However, basic recipes can be memorized after they are done enough times. There’s also an Auction House if you can’t be bothered crafting and just want to buy enhancements.

Graphically CoH is dated. While your avatar looks quite detailed the surrounding world is not overly impressive, nor are the NPC’s or indoor environments. Still, the world does suit the game style and lack of pixels and bloom effects didn’t really bother me. On a positive note, I can run this game on max settings and not suffer any lag. While it may be lacking in graphics it’s not lacking in emotes, and CoH has some really cool, fun emotes. You can pull out a huge beatbox and start rapping to the tunes, make a cup of tea, and dozens of others; some cool and others just funny. One of my favourites is just reading the paper.

Hmm, return of the Page 3 girl

I don’t know how long I’ll stick with CoH, there’s still a lot for me to discover and I certainly intend to play it some more. However, I have three subscriptions going at the moment, and it’s not so much the cost that concerns me, it’s finding the time to play them all.

Age of Conan has some good deals on subscription prices at the moment. I took advantage of the discounts and subscribed for three months for $36. That’s practically a “buy 2 months get 1 free” deal. There’s even better deals for longer subscriptions, and you can get a years worth for the price of six months. I’ve been missing AoC and was a little disappointed that I didn’t quite make it to 80 on my Priest of Mitra; managing to get to 76 before deciding to move on. The discounted subscription prices pretty much sold me and now I need to get my PoM to the level cap. I also have a 61 Tempest of Set, 50 Ranger, and 45 Guardian (one of my favourite classes) to work on. If I can get my PoM to the cap I’ll start working on the Guardian next; AoC combat mechanics are more rewarding for the melee class in my opinion, and fatalities rock.

There will also be some server merges, reducing the number of US servers from 8 to 4. There’s no denying that AoC has taken a big hit in population, and I noticed it even when I was still playing back in July of last year. Even when we started with three or four members in a group we often found it difficult filling the last two spots for a dungeon run. But I applaud the actions Funcom is taking. The merges will give the illusion of a larger population and the subscription deals should keep the population steady for a while; not to mention we have the soon to be released Rise of the Godslayer expansion to look forward to.

There’s still life in the old barbarian yet.

Well, I’m back from an extended break and decided to do the rounds of MMO’s I have on my PC. One of these games, of course, is Wizard 101. I was pleasantly surprised on entering the game, after such a long time away, to see players riding around on mounts. A quick search on the interwebz and I found out who I had to go see to buy one. You can purchase your mount from Prospector Zeke in The Commons at a cost of 2,000 Gold. Sadly, this mount only seems to last a day, and I couldn’t find a permanent mount. This makes it get quite expensive after a while and a total waste of money, as it’s not really all that difficult to get around anyway. Still, I must say I am continually impressed by what Wizard 101 provides to gamers; absolutely free or at very little cost.

Anyway, I still had some gold left, even after my previous house purchase, so I forked out some cash and got myself a nice pony. Giddy Up.

Like every other MMO I’ve played, Aion has its own celebrations for the Christmas period, known as the Solorius Festival. Decorations can be found throughout Atreia, though mostly in the cities of Sanctum and one would assume, Pandemonia. One very nice touch I found today on entering Sanctum was the playing of Christmas carols. There is also some new outfits to buy if you like to dress up; Santa costumes along with some other nice outfits for “hitting the town”. It’s always a good thing when the developers go to the trouble of adding all this extra stuff in, be it quests, outfits, competitions, or whatever. EQ2 was really good at it, and I loved their Haunted Mansion questline that I remember doing for Halloween. Anyway, here’s me looking dapper in a tux.

Dressed for dinner

Warhammer – Age of Reckoning will be losing two more of its North American Servers, going from six to only four. A very different state than that of launch with its 60 odd servers and 800,000+ subscribers. WAR is epic fail and no amount of arguments to the contrary will convince me otherwise. This from the Warhammer Herald….

Here at Mythic Entertainment we have always placed a high value on our communities and the players that make them up. This is especially true when it comes to our special rule-set servers like Role-Playing and Open RvR. There are many different things that have to be taken into consideration in order to nurture these communities. At the same time, WAR is a game that thrives on player interaction; whether it’s Public Quests, fast paced Scenario action or the thrill of large-scale Open-field Realm vs. Realm battles. Both of these factors must be taken under consideration when deciding the future of our unique rule-set servers.

For the past 14 months the Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne servers have been the home of two vibrant and passionate communities. We have watched these servers with great interest as they have journeyed through some amazing accomplishments since the launch of WAR, such as the first ever king kill on a North American server.

And so, it is after careful evaluation and much discussion that we are announcing free character transfers off of the Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne servers. At this time we plan to enable these free character transfers on Wednesday, December 2nd. Below are the prospective destination servers for both Phoenix Throne and Dark Crag:

Phoenix Throne will be able to transfer to either Iron Rock OR Badlands

Dark Crag will be able to transfer to either Gorfang OR Volkmar

In order to welcome all of our players to their new homes we will be enabling a 20% bonus to experience and renown during the weeks following the open character transfers.

Have a happy holiday and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

Thank you for your continued support.

One has to wonder if there is any future in WAR. Mythic certainly has a history of keeping their games up and running despite poor subs but with EA at the helm you can’t help but wonder.

I almost always play the main healer in MMO’s. With Aion it wasn’t going to be any different and I had every intention of rolling a Cleric at launch. I decided to try some of the other classes during the Closed and Open Betas, the Chanter being one of them. I liked this class so much I decided to stick with it for launch, and currently he is at level 34. So where does the Chanter fit in?

Solo PvE
The Chanter is a melee class. It only has one ranged attack, Smite, which doesn’t do a lot of damage and is only good for pulling, so combat is up close and personal. The chain armour provides some mitigation but the damage output is low, so combat is slow and accidentally attracting a second mob is dangerous. The advantage of coming from the priest archetype is there is little to no downtime due to the ability to restore all your health between fights.

Solo PvP
Not particularly good at PvP but that could also be a reflection of my own skills. With few heals and no big heals or instant heals it’s not possible to heal the damage output of other classes.

Group PvE
Now this is where this class shines. The Chanter is a buffing/debuffing class. It brings some awesome buffs to a group in the form of its mantras, as well as having defense and speed debuffs on all its attacks. I’ve noticed the difference in how long a mob takes to kill if I’m standing back and healing or if I’m up close in melee. The Chanter is wasted if it’s not allowed to melee.

Group PvP
Well, I seem to die quickly in group PvP. Let me get back to you when I’m level 50

Healing with the Chanter
While the Chanter comes from the priest archetype, I wouldn’t consider it a healer. It’s a support class. I can heal and have found myself the only healer many times in groups but I just don’t have big enough heals to be the main healer. The Chanter is about mitigation. I have a Heal Over Time (HoT) and a single target heal, as well as a Stigma HoT and a healing mantra, which is more a health regen than a heal. But using all these tools I can fill the role of the main healer. I offer a money back guarantee against one epic mob. Two can get a bit scary and there are no guarantees, but if the group pulls a third it’s all over.

The Group Setup
The Chanter is a true support class, a Jack-of-all-Trades and Master of none if you will. It reminds me a little of my Minstrel in Dark Age of Camelot, but how does it fit in Aion and does a group need one? It increases the DPS output of the group overall. It increases the defense of the group and it fills the roll of a backup healer. A group needs a tank, and it needs a healer. The Templar and the Cleric fill these rolls. This leaves four spots still to fill. A Gladiator can act as off-tank as well as bringing some very reasonable DPS. A Sorcerer is nice to have for its high DPS and its Crowd Control (CC). So how do we fill out the last two spots; a Spirit Master, Assassin, Ranger, or the Chanter? I personally think the Chanter is essential and brings a lot to a group, but I get the impression that many people think it’s interchangeable with a DPS class, having seen that very call in the Looking For Group channel.

What the Chanter is not is a solo class. If you’re looking to solo your way through Aion, be it PvP or PvE, Chanter’s not the class for you. Me, I like to group, and I like my Chanter.

The Chanter of Awesomeness

I’ve been having a bit more success with my handicrafting of late and making a bit of money, as well as enjoying myself. There has been a demand for the level 28 Topaz Ring which adds Crit. Not really a demand so much as a low supply. I am able to make them and have been for a long while so I checked the broker, saw that the few listed were selling for a good price, and set about supplying the market. Now in order to make the Topaz ring I need to make Gold Rings and get them to proc. Since proccing is a random chance I decided on a run of 10 Gold Rings, hoping to get three or four to proc. Currently my crafting is high enough that I can make level 40 stuff, and since the Topaz Rings are level 28, I didn’t have any materials left to make them. Buying the materials from the broker will cut too much into my profits, particularly if I don’t have much luck with procs. To make a run of 10 Gold Rings I needed to harvest 80 Aether Crystals and 100 Gold Ore. I’d still have to buy the flux from the broker but if I harvest my own crystals and ore I can easily wear the cost of the flux.

So I went about doing that, starting with the crystals. It isn’t so bad harvesting the crystals since I’m level 33 and have the longer flight time of the level 30 wings. Plus my aether gathering skill is fairly high so I can harvest a node out pretty quickly. It still takes a while, but it’s not as bad as it was back in Verteron. The gold was more painful. I found a spot in Eltnan which had five nodes near each other so I could pretty much harvest those with little downtime, but with only three ore to a node it took a while.

To cut a long story short I made my 10 Gold Rings and was lucky enough to have four of the 10 proc. I then used the four to make the Topaz rings and again was fortunate enough to get a blue proc. I put these on the broker, the blue just shy of 400,000 kinah and the greens at 90,000 kinah. The next day I logged in and had sold it all so I set out again to gather my aether and gold and make another run of 10. Not quite so lucky this time, with only three proccing, but I did get another blue when I was making the Topaz rings. Again I put them on the broker, the blue for 395,000 and the greens for 85,000. Competition was starting to set in. Again when I logged in the next day I’d sold it all and went for round three. Similar success, back on the broker but now the competition’s getting fierce and the greens have dropped to 70,000. I put one on the broker but decided to hold onto the others and see how the market is later in the week. I sold the left-over Gold Rings to the trash merchant for 8,900 each.

It cost me around 130,000 in unavoidable merchant costs turning the Gold Ore into Gold Ingots to make the Gold Ornaments required for the rings. I spent about 45,000 in flux and Topaz Ore and I think about 28,000 to turn the Topaz Ore into Gems. So, around 200,000 in cost for gross sales of about 700,000, depending on the market. Not a bad profit, though you can see how crucial it is to get procs and you really want a blue proc or two. Playing the market like this is one of the things I enjoy about MMO’s, and I like the complexities of Aion’s crafting system.

Lastly, here’s a picture of one of my favourite mobs in the game; the Tipolid. Don’t ask me why I like it so much but I do. They’re awesome. Hmm, a Tipolid mount anyone *ponders*.

Hulking Tipolid