[Pai's Norrath Adventure Pt. 3]

Right outside of the main crafting building were some NPCs with crafting tutorial quests. Most of the materials needed were buyable, and the parts that needed to be harvested weren't too hard to find. Harvesting in EQ2 isn't restricted like in WoW -- clicking any kind of harvestable ore/plant/etc. lets you attempt to collect it if your harvesting skill is high enough. Also, there are no extra tools you need to buy in order to collect materials.

Once I collected all the ingredients for my first cooking quest, I parked myself in front of a stove and got to cooking. There are four progress bars that slowly fill up as you complete steps of the crafting process. Every once in a while, a 'problem' event will occur while the bars fill. At the bottom of the crafting window is a skillbar with 'counters' that you can click that will cancel out the problem event, while at the same time having a side effect on your item's quality. I found it kind of confusing at first, since many buttons have the same icon, and the tooltip is kind of hard to read quickly while in the middle of an event. But after a while I had successfully made several jugs of cider. I liked how there were unique animations and sounds for all the crafts. =)

I'm sure that at higher levels, the complexities of the 'counter' system become more clear and controllable. At the start, though, I wasn't really sure what the item's 'durability', etc. really meant.

My final opinion: It's a bit too slow. I do love the idea of actively having to respond to 'quirks' during the crafting cycle, but the pace is a bit too much on the 'doing nothing for most of the process' side. If the progress bars went a bit quicker, then it'd be perfect. =)

Overall: Everquest II has more complexity in character skill development and crafting than WoW. I like how you can do any kind of gathering skill, unlike WoW which limits you to only two and required you to keep the tools for them in your bag at all times.

As there was no way for me to try out any dungeons while on the trial (dungeons are my favorite part of WoW, if I could just run those all day, I would), there was no way for me to see what EQ offers on those. =/ If you're looking for something a little different than WoW, the free trial is an easy way to check out a new MMO that you might like, if you can overlook the various things that it lacks artistically.

[Aion is Pretty. That is All.]

I really want to try it out! Lookit the cool critters! =D
*crosses fingers for a pet class*

I just HOPE it's not just another Asian MMO grindfest.

[Pai's Norrath Adventure Pt. 2]

When my Fay appeared in the starting area, the first thing I heard was an NPC crying for help. I'd forgotten that many questgivers in EQ2 talk, so the first thing I did was turn off the voice volume in Options. After setting up my hotbars (I always need a bar dedicated just to emotes. =P), I decided to see just how far I could tweak the graphics settings for some nice screencaps. The result was this bizarre message. After some more tweaking I got it looking as good as possible while still running fairly well. There weren't a lot of people around however, so I'm not sure if I'd have to turn things down even more if I went out into more populated zones.

Most of the character animations are generally awful; very unnatural and sometimes creepy-looking (the Ratonga dance emote is downright disturbing in an 'uncanny valley' sort of way). They were a big turnoff to me. In my opinion, SOE should hire better animators and revamp them all. =P


The quests are the same as WoW's in essence. I killed some wolves and goblins, ventured into a cave to find a lost Dwarf, and got myself a bit of money and new armor. When I hit level 5, I got a new skill called 'Heroic Opportunity'. This is a 'special attack' that is triggered if you cast your spells in a certain order before a timer runs out. It was pretty easy to understand. Apparently group members can work together to complete a Heroic Opportunity too. It seems like a cool mechanic. =)

I realized that because I'm on a trial account, I'm unable to talk in any of the chat channels, or whisper anyone, even if they whispered me first. Which was awkward as I had several people whisper to me but was unable to respond unless they were standing in /say range. This also made it impossible to ask questions in the general channel. But I didn't mind having to figure things out by myself too much.


Once I finished with the starting area, I was sent off to the capitol city area of the Fay, Kelethin. On the way there, I found a cave with some shroom-people questgivers deep inside. I personally really like hidden quests or quests that you can find by exploring off the beaten track, and it seems like there were several of those around, which was cool. Also, you can collect 'sets' of small items that are scattered throughout the zone (and appear as tiny sparkles on the ground), which you can turn in to Collector npcs for exp. Getting exp for stuff other than killing = cool. =)

Once I hit level 10, I saw that there were special spells and abilities I could choose to customize my character more, using the equivalent of skill points. Fay have several race-based specialties they can get, like increased jump range or an AOE fire attack. Every several levels you get another point to spend on these kinds of abilities, kinda similar to WoW's talent tree. I also learned that you can get upgrades and new skills for your class through certain quests and crafts, and I also had a Wolf drop an upgrade to one of my spells while I was questing.

I then recieved a message saying that I couldn't level any higher than 10 on a trial account.... even though I was already unable to leave the zone because of that, and even though there looked to be many more quests, at least up to lv 15, still left in the zone. That was kind of a downer.

So I decided to try out Crafting, next. >=)

[Pai's Norrath Adventure Pt. 1]

So I decided to try the free trial for Everquest II this week. I figured I'd make a little review of it, from the perspective of someone whose first (and current) MMO was WoW, and has only played two other niche MMORPGs for a few months each. Reviewing those other games is kind of pointless, as both are currently bankrupt and probably going to die any day now, so I'll just stick with giving my opinions on EQ2. =P

I've never really felt a great desire to play EQ2, mostly because the character models and world style were generally unappealing to me. Sure, everything there has a zillion polys and bump maps or whatever it is that makes the game suck PC resources like crazy if you have the graphics set to 'Not look like crap', but even still, I always felt that things there looked too generic and plastic from the screens I've seen.

However, I'd heared that the Echoes of Faydwer expansion had some really beautiful zones and art, so I figured I'd see if/how things have changed since the game came out. I've heard the game as a whole has improved greatly since it's release, as well.

After about 8 hours of patching the client, I was ready to go. =P I decided to make a Ratonga and a Fey, though I also played with most of the other races creation options (cuz that's my favorite part):


I was overall disappointed in the customization choices for my rattie. Most of the facial-feature sliders made zero actual difference in how my character looked. There was also a limited palette of colors for her fur (yellow, brown, and black) and I noticed that all the color did was tint over the fur patterns (which were all brown), rather than actually changing their color. =/

I had a lot more fun making my Fey. Although they have the same issues with their face sliders making zero real variety in appearance, they had many nice hairstyles and wing options, which made up for it (in my opinion). You could pick 2 colors each for hair and wings, and a variety of skin tones ranging from purple and green to blue and pink. Also, their wings are very nicely animated, and shimmer/sparkle too, depending on the style you choose. Plus, there is an evil race of faeries, called the Arasai, which have even more different hair/wing options. So if you like faeries, there's plenty of choices. >=)


Now it was time to pick a class. The descriptions of the classes weren't very helpful, imo. I couldn't tell which classes were main tanks or main healer from reading the vague descriptions (though I could tell which were the utility/debuff classes, I think). It seemed every description said they did damage, many said they could heal and had buffs/debuffs, but there was no real way to tell what group role was the focus of each class (I knew they couldn't all be viable jack-of-all trades classes =P). I chose a Bruiser for my Ratonga (turns out that's a tank class) and a Fury for my Fey (which uses dots and debuffs and can heal). I would've liked having more concrete info on that page so that I could better choose the group role I prefer, without having to resort to surfing informational websites. Apparently some classes can also solo better than others; it would've been nice to know which those were, as well.

Next up: The Newbie Zones! >=)

[Elspeth Tory: Entering the Boy's Club]

A neat little interview here on MTV Multiplayer, interviewing Assassin's Creed dev Elspeth Tory about how she got into the industry and her experiences in the gaming world:

Multiplayer: One disadvantage [of being a female in the gaming industry] I can think of is that people can doubt your abilities. When I was interviewing Morgan Webb, she said that guys still come up to her and ask, “Do you really play games?” And in Jade Raymond’s case, people were doubting her work experience…

Tory: There’s a real difference, I find, between what you experience internally, in the company, and what you feel from the outside on the forums, which are ridiculous. The stuff on forums is ridiculous. It’s so misogynistic, and it’s awful. And so I really try to separate myself from that. I find at least internally, the industry itself, when we talk about the actual companies and our working environment, I feel it’s a lot better, and I feel there’s a decent amount of respect going on there. But when you want to step outside, it’s exactly what you’re saying. Experienced producers like Jade, who was a programmer, is a huge gamer, really somebody who knows what she’s talking about. And people say, “Are you just a marketing tool?” And it’s just like, “What are you talking about?” So I think on that level, I don’t know if that’s calling it the industry, or just the demographic who are playing are just not getting it.

Multiplayer: So it seems that you’re saying with gamers — or outside the industry — there’s the negativity, but within the industry, it’s not like that at all?

Tory: Totally. Things have not gotten better outside the industry. For me, the important thing is in my working environment everybody gets taken seriously, and I am not in any way impeded in my progression. So that’s really important to me. On “Assassin’s” I started getting more exposure. You do an interview on GameTrailers, and you start getting comments. I was told to never go look at the comments, because they’re appalling!

But [being in the spotlight] has been an eye-opening experience for me. The forums in general, and basically all the websites that include all of these people who are really condescending and, I don’t know… It leaves a sour taste in your mouth. You just kind of feel like we’re making progress, we’re getting more women out there, the faces of the games are changing, and I think that’s so good. And then any time you put a woman in the position where she’s talking about things, there has to be at least a good chunk of talk about, for Jade, talking about how beautiful she is. Completely irrelevant to what’s going on and her job.

Multiplayer: Why do you think people reacted to Jade that way on the Internet?

Tory: It was really frustrating… The whole fan club thing, I think that’s fun and whatever. To me it’s just when they start criticizing her intelligence or her ability… It’s very frustrating to see that when you’ve worked with somebody for two years, and you know they’re good at what they do and they’re competent. I’ve found that she’s been an amazing role model for me, and to have people sit there and just, without any prior knowledge essentially, and truly because she’s a woman and she’s pretty, to rip into her. And to sort of imply that she couldn’t possibly have any idea what she’s doing. I think that’s a bit immature. It’s the kind of thing you expect from a 12 year-old. And maybe it is 12 year-olds making the posts. It could very well be. And if that’s possible, it’s not something I should worry about, because it’s just a 12 year-old making the posts. But it’s just the kind of thing that is not encouraging and doesn’t necessarily encourage other women to go in when they see that kind of flack.

Multiplayer: When disparaging stuff comes out on the Internet, what advice do you have for women dealing with that type of scrutiny?

Tory: Don’t read the forums! [Laughs] Don’t read the forums. That’s what I was told by some people and I stopped doing that, so that’s good. That’s helping. And try and focus on the positive aspect of what you do and the end result. I think it’s tough to know what to do.

I feel it's sad that Tory has to avoid online gaming communities altogether in order to not be brought down and upset by all the crap on them. If that doesn't show that there's a real problem here, I don't know what does. The whole 'Just be quiet and let the trolls have their way' is clearly a failed strategy. What's that's doing is driving women away from many gaming spaces entirely. And it shouldn't be this way.

Gaming community managers and members need to step up and stop tolerating (and doing) this crap, period.

[WoW's Greatest Weakness]

As someone who loves the 'virtual world' and immersion aspects of MMORPGs, I feel World of Warcraft is weakest in these aspects. WoW is an awesome game, and improvements to the game mechanics are always coming. But in terms of making an immersive fantasy world, I personally think it's dropping the ball (especially with the addition this last patch, of making interactive quest objects in the world sparkle and have big quest markers floating over them, so you don't even have to pay attention to your environment to find things anymore. It's very platform-game-ish way of dealing with interactive items, which I personally think is antithesis to the 'immersion' aspect which should be a goal of an MMORPG. The world should feel like a world, not a level in a platform game where you run around looking for the bouncing, sparkly items to pick up. >=(

It's the immersion in the world and community that keeps MMORPGers in our games, that makes us feel a connection to it. WoW is, to me, lacks the most in exactly those aspects.

Lots of loving care is going into raid content that few people ever see. Rep grinds and loot grinds abound. But where's that sense of fantasy and connection to the story and world, the sense that you are an inhabitant of Azeroth? To me, that is the most important aspect of an MMORPG. But currently, WoW is too focused on loot grinds and scripted static content that is consumed faster than it can be created, or is not consumed by most people at all. The next MMORPG that's looking to take a bite out of Blizzard's share of the market would do well to study these weaknesses and be strong in the ways WoW is not. Because there are many players (me included) that would consider leaving WoW for a game that could provide those things better, even if they weren't as 'polished'.

EDIT: I just found this post on Girls Don't Game, thats echoes a lot of my feelings:

Not to knock WoW or anything, since I still play it and don’t feel like being a hypocrite today, but I really can’t get over how they seriously have not planned on giving us player housing. This is a horse that has been so incredibly beaten, you can barely even recognize the corpse. But it’s true. While players whine on the forums every single day about the lack of player housing, Blizzard keeps continuing to raise the level cap and add more high level instance raids left and right. There is so much more that could be done, in my opinion.

...I would love a game where I could just log on and not worry about hitting 20 that night, or farming primals. I would just like to log in, maybe redecorate my e-house, kill some monsters for new items, hang out with friends and then log out at the end of the night.
I heard that Blizzard was thinking about revamping the fishing skill or something but I have yet to see some actual hard evidence on this. Fishing is actually one of my favorite things to do in World of Warcraft. When I was still playing with friends, I wound up hitting fishing 300 because I was sitting on the dock in Orgrimmar all the time in private messages with them.

The open-endedness of MMORPGs is their strength -- it's what makes players feel like they're part of a world, and have many ways they can have fun in it. To run around in a fantasy world, with the feeling that you can find all sorts of different ways to make your place in it, is the main draw of these games. That is where WoW is lacking the most, in my opinion.

[Is Raiding Hurting WoW?]

A thought-provoking article on TenTonHammer discussing whether WoW's current endgame model is actually doing anything good for the game as a whole:

Here are the percentages of those guilds in the completion of various WoW raid targets:

Karazhan (99.45%)
Zul'Aman (32.00%)
Gruul's Lair (70.98%)
Magtheridon's Lair (30.63%)
Serpentshrine Cavern (33.81%)
The Eye (33.22%)
Hyjal Summit (5.37%)
The Black Temple (4.59%)

Karazhan and Gruul's aren't looking too bad, but four other raid zones have been completed by only about 30% of the guilds. The two hardest have been completed by only 5% of the guilds. Now, keep in mind that these numbers represent only the top 2 million players which are currently in raiding guilds-- WoW has 9.3 million customers, 7.3 million of which have never even defeated a boss in any of these zones. That means that the six hardest instances of the game have been defeated by only about 6% of the total WoW playerbase (about 600,000 players).

That's six whole zones, with scripted events, painstaking itemization, and hundreds of hours of development time and artwork paid for by money from subscribers that 94% of World of Warcraft players will never use, seeing as the Burning Crusade has been out for almost a year now and the next WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is right around the corner (bringing a new gear wipe with it that will make these current raid zones obsolete, much like BWL and MC are now).

...When almost 80% of your players aren't using content that you define as your "end-game," and 98% of your players don't even use two whole instances that you spent a lot of time designing, are you really catering to the needs of your players?

This is a very fair question. WoW's playerbase is a mix of Blizzard fans who never really wanted to play and MMO before this one, and actual MMO fans. These two camps want different things from the game, and as time goes on, the question of whether Blizzard can adequately make both camps happy looms larger with every new expansion. But in my mind, this trend of MUDflation cannot continue:

Because of the extreme gear disparity between raiders and non-raiders, the designers had a choice with Outland: balance it for raid gear, making everything in the expansion practically impossible for 80% of their player base, or balance it for "casual" gear (from solo play and 5-mans), making everything in the expansion absurdly easy for 20% of their player base with some raid gear. Either way, players were sure to cry foul. Instead, they did the smart move: Level the playing field by dropping raid-quality common items on new mobs and quests and balance everything for the new minimum. It made the most people happy while creating only a minimal fuss, and everyone happily went off exploring the new content.

Unfortunately, it also had the nasty side effect of making all the previous high-level instances totally worthless. Why would you bother with hard 5-mans or harder 40-man raid instances when easy greens with significantly more power are only a few levels away? Say goodbye to Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire (Upper and Lower), Dire Maul, Zul'Gurub, Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Onyxia, and Naxxramas [as well as both the Ahn'Qiraj Ruins and Temple].

Not only did MUDflation remove all incentive to go through some of the coolest 5-man instances in the original game-- it also made sure that there was no point for non-raiding players who hit the new level cap of 70 to go back into instances like Molten Core or Zul'Gurub and see what they missed the first time around.

That's a lot of work to ruin (and a lot of your subscription dollars wasted) just because raids are available to a game community that largely doesn't use them.

If the same amount of content development gets flushed (thirteen instances in Old World alone!) for every expansion of WoW, I cannot see it as a positive thing. It's a huge amount of effort and creativity being rendered useless in order to make each expansion's content scale with the gear of the small top raiding population. In other words, the minority is having the game's content being balanced to match their gear, rendering content that was used more by everyone else, instant trash. It's not an equal value trade off. It's not a healthy pattern.

[The Carnival Begins!]

Part 1 of the Feminist Sci-Fi & Fantasy Carnival is up! The title is 'Women, Gaming, and You.'

There's lots of links to great articles about gender and games, so check it out! =)