Aion doesn’t reinvent the genre at all. It isn’t perfect, but what developer NCsoft has done, and done quite well, is taken major elements from other games and improved upon them. Yes, there is a huge leveling curve involved, and yes, you should be prepared to invest a good amount of time playing it – but underneath the wings, clawed feet, and girly looking characters is an solid MMORPG experience well worth trying if you’re a fan of the genre. There is something for everyone here – MMO vets and newcomers alike will have no problem finding something to like about Aion.
I’ve always found it curious how every modern MMORPG launch manages to mess something up. To be fair, MMORPGs have become a much more popular gaming medium over the past few years, but still – shouldn’t developers be anticipating this kind of shit by now? Especially when you’re selling pre-orders for early access, isn’t that at least a way to gauge the amount of people that will want to play the game?
I spent the better part of my Sunday night trying to get into the Aion servers, only to be greeted with a thirty minute plus login queue. Pretty retarded, considering the population seems to be spread out enough.
Oh well. Here’s hoping that I can actually get into the game and play some tonight!
I have a rather love/hate relationship with Champions Online. On one hand, I love to sit at the character creation screen and make new heroes over and over (like Scorsese, pictured above), but on the other hand I hate how the game is bogged down by performance and balance issues. Still, Champions is a solid offering from Cryptic, the same game studio who made the original superhero MMO, City of Heroes. The fact that it is a subscription based game should also go in it’s favor, as most of the gripes I have with it will certainly be ironed out in a few months.
MMORPG games are a type of game that is best enjoyed with a group of friends – much like gang-banging a hooker or robbing a bank, and Champions is no exception to that rule.
I’m not quite sure how something could have a broader appeal than World of Warcraft, but apparently Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick thinks his company can do it.
Just in case you live under a fucking rock, World of Warcraft is the biggest and most dominant game in the MMO space right now – topping something like 10+ million subscribers. That’s a lot of people playing this fucking game.
To me, that seems about as popular as a game like World of Warcraft could be. Although some things that might be considered more popular, perhaps the subject of Activision’s new game:
That is actually all I can think of right now. Failing a game about blowjobs, I’m thinking that Blizzard might be making a more fast paced and modern MMORPG game. The Massive Multiplayer Online genre itself dates back a little more than a decade or so, and considering the age of the genre, not much has really changed about the gameplay. Most games are cooldown or auto attack based, and character advancement can slow down to a crawl or become tedious after a while. Part of this is that these type of games need to be designed around a range of computer hardware configurations, and part of this is due to somewhat lazy developers trying to copy design elements instead of innovating.
My money is on a massive third person action game, like Mass Effect, perhaps set in modern day or a sci-fi setting. If there is anyone who can pull this off, it’s Blizzard. And frankly, I’m sick of swords and sorcery games. Just give me a fucking railgun.
Simply put, the Knights of the Old Republic games for the original Xbox and PC are not only the two greatest Star Wars games ever made (suck it, X-Wing Vs. TIE Fighter), but also the two greatest RPG games ever made, and also the two greatest games ever made. Seriously. If you think otherwise, you are wrong. I’d go so far as to say it should be a punishable crime to speak ill of these games, but I digress.
Perhaps that is why I’m so excited for Bioware’s first MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Since the game was first revealed last October, I’ve been grasping on to every piece of information and news about the game, and up until this point, Bioware has been rather vague about the game. Friday, Bioware released a twenty minute developer walkthrough, showcasing the very demo of the game that was shown behind closed doors at E3 2009. This is the first actual look at a couple solid minutes of uninterrupted gameplay – featuring the Smuggler, Bounty Hunter, and Sith Warrior classes.
The videos speak for themselves, but if you’re like me and the idea of a massive multiplayer Bioware RPG gets your love-juices pumping, the wait for SW:TOR is going to be a very long one, no matter when the game comes out.
As if we didn’t have enough time sinks, being gamers and all, now we’ll have another MMO to keep us busy for days, weeks or months on end. NCSoft’s new MMO, which has been out in Korea for a while now, has been certified gold and is all ready for its release date next month. Whenever I load up Steam I see that the pre-order for this title is near the top of the sales charts. That’s a good thing, right? Will it be the next hopeful to challenge World of Warcraft’s supremacy in the MMO market?
Consider this: Quite a few MMOs over the last four years have been labeled “WoW killers”. When I used to read the WoW forums on a daily basis (losing IQ points in the process, I’m sure), it seemed to be the “in” thing for each MMO that comes along to be declared a “WoW killer”. Yet, to date, nothing has toppled the king of the hill.
I’m hopeful that another game will come along that will give Blizzard’s baby a run for its money – competition between MMOs can only be good for the gamers that play them. I’ve quit WoW and don’t plan on going back, but will Aion be the next MMO for me? I’m not a PVP-er, and Aion seems to have a strong PVP aspect, so we’ll see. Since I haven’t been able to get into the beta events, hopefully they’ll have a free trial download once the game launches. All I know is NCSoft games always look absolutely amazing. I guess we’ll see what happens come September 22.
My first MMO experience was with Final Fantasy XI, Square-Enix’s first entry into the genre. For whatever else it was – forced grouping, unneeded time sinks, brutal deaths – they did one thing exceedingly well: telling the story. Here’s hoping they change some things about the game mechanics here and there so it can be more enjoyable to go adventuring in the land of Eorzea in their next foray into the MMO realm.
Zombies. I love zombie movies. I hate paying for stuff. Dead Frontier might just do it for me. Jagged Blade Games brings us Dead Frontier, a free to play, web browser only MMORPG based in a world facing a serious zombie virus problem. The beta has just opened so go check it out at www.deadfrontier.com.
Hit the jump for a few screens and always remember to aim for the head.
I know a lot of you out there are creaming your pants waiting until late November when Wrath of the Lich King gets released. Al is stuffing his face with Red Bull and Cheetos trying to get to level 70 with his Hunter, I’m sitting pretty around level 12 with my Blood Elf (haven’t had a ton of time to play lately). If some of you are out there are making your own 80’s montage and getting fat and pimply like the kids in South Park trying to level up quickly, you’ll be happy to know you don’t need an insane PC to run the upcoming expansion pack.
PC:
Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (Windows 2000 no longer supported)
Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1.5 GHz (up from 800 MHz Intel/AMD). Dual-core recommended.
RAM: 512 MB/1 GB for Vista, same as before. 1 GB/2 GB recommended.
Video: GPU with hardware transform and lighting and 32 MB VRAM, same as before. Recommended 128 MB VRAM.
Mac:
Mac OS X 10.4.11 (10.3 no longer supported)
PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo. G4s are no longer supported. Intel 1.8 GHz recommended.
Warhammer Online is looking to upstage the two giants in the MMO world right now (WoW and Age of Conan). Do you think it can match their power? Me, I think it could be AoC but I doubt it’ll come close to WoW. Check out some character creation gameplay and get ready for a new MMO to suck up your time.
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