Neverwinter Lore

courtesy of Wizards of the Coast

So we are about nine days out until the official release of Neverwinter the new Dungeons and Dragons MMO. It's really quite an exciting time to be a Dungeons and Dragons fan with two mmos to choose from. Justin Olivetti over at massively has done a good job of highlighting some of the differences between the two game settings in what is sure to be a long running debate between fans of both games. Personally, I have decided to upgrade my rig just in time for summer break so I can have a chance at enjoying this great looking game.

Just like I did when DDO released their expansions a few months back with the Drow, I bring you some resources for info. on the new setting, though some long time fans may already be familiar with it, it is always cool to have some background on the game settings for the Dungeons and Dragons newbs and the rest of us who did not get a chance to spend a lot of time in the pen and paper game world of 4E.

For starters here is a link to an excerpt of the Neverwinter Campaign guide from the folks at Wizards of the Coast and provided by the good DDO community. It is an excellent resource for lore and backstory on Neverwinter, while it may not be a game guide for the mmo masses, those who are interested in the story will appreciate having it as a handy reference.  There is also some good info here from WoTC. Here is a link to the various factions that play in the game.

There is also this wiki page with info on the Forgotten Realms which I found helpful and finally the link to the official campaign guide to Neverwinter is a must have and a fountain of info, especially for the mmo players who will be messing around with the foundry.

Whether back story is important to you or not when you play Neverwinter, I hope you find these resources fun to wade through and provide the necessary background to refer to when the game finally drops later this month.

Surveying the guild leaders and officers on the interwebs

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of posts these past few weeks, but I have been swamped with both work and school. If anyone reads this blog consistently (anybody? anybody? Bueller?) then you should know I have been working on a graduate school project involving mmorpgs.

It is still not too late to get involved and help me out, there is a link to the survey I prepared about regarding guild leaderships in mmorpgs, so if you are a guild leader or officer or know of any guild leaders in an mmorpg, please click on the image and take the survey, only takes about 15 minutes of your time, or encourage your guild officer friends to do the same, it would really help me out. I can't send you anything or reward you as I am a poor student, but you will have my gratitude.

Thank you. More to come...

10/10 Blogging project: One game a Day

courtesy of ggftw.com

In order to get out of his gaming rut, Syp from the popular BioBreak blog has been involved in a new project where he plays a different free-to-play mmorpg game every evening. He has challenged other bloggers to join him and I thought this was a magnificent idea to try out new games and to try and break out of my own gaming rut. I thought long and hard about how to participate and I have a few limitations which prevent me from going full throttle with this intriguing blogging project, but before I enumerate them, I will say that I have been having fun playing DDO, leveling my orc warrior in wow to take into b.g.s, and anticipating my eventual return to the mmorpg game I truly love (Dark Age of Camelot) this summer.

Limitations:
-My ancient gaming rig, though I have finally saved up to upgrade my ancient computer probably by summer, other personal investments may necessitate me to push that upgrade to fall, so I am still limited by the games I can choose and run on my machine

-Time! Grad school projects and research sap almost all my free time away when I am not at work
-preference for genres, I favor fantasy over shooters, in fact, there are very few fps games I like.
-money! That's always a big one, with so many f2p options out there, it's hard to justify p2p games like wow and others of its ilk, and more go f2p every day. Gone are the days when f2p games meant low quality, just late last year and this year alone we have TERA, The Secret World, SWTOR and Vanguard, STO and a few others go free to play, these are not exactly bad games at all!

So what games should I play keeping in mind those limitations? Well since the game nights don't have to be consecutive, it will take me longer than most to get through even 5 games, let alone 10, so I have limited my list to five for the time being. I have placed a poll on the side panel, so feel free to vote dear readers and I will choose one next week.

Here are the ones which made the cut and why:

-Aion (NC Soft) I actually dabbled with this game a long time ago, but it was so brief that playing the game again will feel entirely new and fresh, given my time on it was so limited. I remember essentially getting inpatient with the grind, but having experienced the grind in other games, Aion is suddenly looking a lot more tempting and primed for a return trip. It is one of the most polished of the f2p games of a few years back.

- Runescape (Jagex) This venerable game is so legendary, and so dated, I could not resist checking it out. It's browser based from what I understand so the idea of not having to sit through a long download appeals to me, as did the combat training tutorial. Runescape should provide an mmo experience like no other, or at least I am hoping a few hours of entertainment on a given evening.

-Torch Light 2 (Runic) OK so technically this one isn't even an mmo, in the true sense, but its Diabloesque motif and action RPG design makes it an appealing choice for a light evening of dungeon crawling. I actually played the original Torch Light and found it lacking, and I uninstalled after playing the trial, but now I feel I probably should have given it more of a chance. My only concern is will the sequel run on my old computer?

-Blood Line Champions (Fun Com) What? An on line PVP arena game a la LOL? I know I suck at LOL and I truly don't enjoy playing that game, so why on Earth would I put another MOBA on the list of games I want to try? Maybe I am a masochist, or maybe I just want to see if the problem is with the MOBA genre, or with LOL itself, as everyone else seems to love it, but I just can't play it worth a damn.

-Age of Conan (Fun Com) The most savage Online Game Ever. With a tag line like that, you gotta give it a try, though I am not much for savage violent games, this one looks like it may not be too bad and at least it is a mmorpg unlike the previous two. To be honest, I saw a video of the game play for this awhile back and it did not appeal to me, but in the spirit of the 10/10 I am willing to give it a shot.

So there you have them! Please vote on one and the one with most votes I will pick and play.
Let the mmorpg revolution continue! See you in the catacombs :-)

Camelot Unchained First of the Kickstarter MMOs??

My inbox has been blowing up lately with news of Camelot Unchained's Kickstarter progress. For those of you that are not that pvp-centric, or regular followers of Mark Jacobs' exploits like myself, CU is Jacobs' bid to develop an mmorpg that is strictly pvp oriented but which promises a brand new mmo experience. So far, to date the project has raised more than $600,000 of its intended $2M goal. We have to wait an entire year and a half to see the fruits of the developer's labors, but the reason this mmo project seems to be getting more press is because it is a big name usually associated with big name developers like Mythic Entertainment going the indie route and funding strictly through crowdfunding methods. Personally, even though Jacob and his team are quick to deny the fact they are trying to make a rehash of Dark Age of Camelot, they have obviously taken the 3-faction pvp model made famous by DAoC and are banking on the nostalgic appeal of that masterpiece to drum up interest in an updated version of that game. 3 factions, Arthurian Scandanavian, and Irish mythological influences, these are some of the features that harken back to the days of Albion, Midgard and Hybernia.

 Personally, anyone who knows me and who follows this blogs knows what a huge fan I was and have always been of Dark Age of Camelot, unlike Warhammer Online, which was a good game but structurally flawed because it wanted to be too much like World of Warcraft, DAoC has always had its own flavor and distinct back story and no other mmo has come close to it in terms of pvp combat, until now? It would be exciting to get into a game from the ground floor, but I for one don't think it is necessary to pledge our souls to City State's project, that is unless you want to for the reasons stated above. I will definitely play Camelot Unchained once it comes out, but I seriously doubt that you can catch lightning in a bottle twice, call it the skeptic in me.

Academic Research mmorpg style

Will Wheaton's table top web show on Geek and Sundry has sparked interest in a lot of modern table top rpgs.

There's a lot going on this weekend. It's International table top gaming day, so all across this great land at hobby shops across the country people are currently engaged in their favorite board or rpg game. This blog is primarily about mmorpgs not table top gaming, but I bring it up because as descendants of RPGs, mmorpgs owe a great deal to their table-top heritage.

Today I have the misfortune of missing out, so instead of playing D&D, or fun games like Zombicide, Bloodsuckers, Clash of Cultures, and countless others, I am trying to work on my research paper for my theory class in graduate studies.

I have spent a great deal of time scouring the forums and trying to contact guild leaders to take part in my study, but thus far, the response has been less than spectacular. I figured, why not reach out through my blog? So if you are reading this post and you are a guild officer in a current mmorpg like Rift or World of Warcrat, or if you are the leader of a guild, it does not matter what game, please get in touch with me. You can respond to this blog post, or contact me via email at journalismdude@gmail.com

I appreciate any and all help, as there is a deadline involved and I am getting kind of antsy. If you happen to be one of the lucky ones who is either playing your favorite table top RPG today at your local hobby shop, or even at WonderCon in Anaheim, then oh how I envy you! Peace out!

MMORPG Kickstarter projects I would have funded

wow I am back blogging on my original blog after nearly a year of being AWOL!

Well, it has been a while but I think the reason I decided to get back into blogging about mmorpgs here at my original blog is mainly because I already have a built in audience on blogger and I want to take advantage. So for my return post I decided to follow up on a blogging project that I have been kicking around in my head for a while, now that I am on spring break from grad school, I decided it might be a good time to work on it. It dawned on me while hanging out with my gaming group this spring that a lot of interesting projects are going the crowdfunding route these days. One phrase I heard a lot was, "I kickstarted so and so, or I really like this game project and I am kickstarting x or y." It got me thinking, What exactly makes for a successful indie project and  conversely, what factors help to make a failed project? I will be exploring this topic in a series of posts with an emphasis on mmorpgs and mmo-related projects.

I ask myself, if these indie projects were available now would I play these games? why or why not? and are they innovative, or more of the same old same old? I started with a successfully funded comic book based on a mmorpg called "Meatspace" A sci-fi comic book by NY based comic book author Josh Gorfain.

As described by Gorfain, this is a cyberpunk story that is one part mega-multiplayer online roleplaying game, one part revenge thriller and one part story about a man re-entering society from his own self-exile partly from his own doing and also from someone bringing him back. Sounds like something I would dig reading and wish I had written myself, and it has been developed into an Amazon Kindle book. Check out the promotional video in the kickstarter campaign which was funded in the fall of 2011. This was supposed to be a 5 part series so is Gorfain working on the second edition? Seems like a long time in between editions, but that is the thing about these indie projects, some take a while to see fruition. More on this later!

I should probably note that this particular project was funded after a first attempt which failed, and the writing and editing team had to modify the specific to make a successful run of it.