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!

Misadventures in Gaheris

I have been absent from the blogging scene too long. This has been due to heavy work hours this spring, but I suspect with my summer vacation fast approaching, I will be logging in more frequently and updating all of you on what I have been doing mmo-wise. Do you play DAoC? Chances are that you are not playing it, perhaps busy sampling Tera or some of the other shiny new mmorpgs out there, maybe even indulging in some Diablo 3.

For me, I have had the most fun playing Camelot the past few weeks, first leveling up my Midgard Berzerker to 50, then I switched over to doing "glass" questing on TOA, but to be honest, I did not like it as much as running b.g.s, and I dreamed of leveling another class altogether to see how the pve side matched up to the pvp.

Well, I rolled a Bonedancer on the Gaheris co-op server. For those of you not in the know, Gaheris is DAoC's co-op sever, meaning there is no pvp. The battleground NPCs are all there, but I don't think they port you anywhere, and the factions can all work together towards defeating bosses and doing pve questing. Even though I am not big on raiding, I just wanted to try it out and found it lacking, that is until I found the great Gaheris forum. An entire forum dedicated to a specific DAoC server in 2012? And not even one dedicated to pvp! Go figure! (click on graphic above to check it out)

This should convince EA Mythic to continue developing resources for the game, the population may never be what it once was, but there are still dedicated members and subscribers alive and well in this forum.   

So how's it been leveling the bonedancer on Gaheris so far? Well pretty slow going to be honest, and not as much fun as leveling in the pvp servers. The xp gained from doing b.g.s is actually substantial and fun, but here on the pve side of things apparently you gotta join a guild, find a friendly soul to pl you, or take hours to level up on your own. It can be a daunting task if you have a caster or a squishy class, and it can get pretty lonely as you may feel you are playing an RPG, because most won't group with you until you are closer to max level. Is it as much of a grind as wow? No, but in some respects, wow might be  better because with the Dungeon finder, you can pretty much get a lot of xp by running instances as soon as you hit level 15.

So the jury is still out on how far I can go leveling my BD. As much as I love the atmosphere and old school feel of DAoC, wow has a bigger advantage at the moment: more of my mmorpg loving friends are running through Azeroth still and  I know I won't have problems joining the PUGs. It may all be academic anyhow, as summer rolls by and I have less disposable income to spend on games, I may be playing DDO's new expac or LOTRO, or even LOL and Dragon Age 2 as they say, stay tuned!

The battle for Gilneas vs. fun in the Dark Age of Camelot b.gs.

Remember when choosing a game to play was easy? I remember when I would play pac-man, or a game I was fond of as a youth: an isometric 3d combat RPG named Realms of Arkania.

Back in those days, I had to qualms grabbing a game and playing through it without making many choices at any conscious level, it was a visceral private experience and there didn't have to be any association with the dot chomping pacman. I felt no ties to him, nor did I wonder why he had to race around a maze chomping down the ghosts, that was just the way things were. Not so with a game like World of Warcraft. In wow, you have to choose a side, there's a raging conflict between the two factions in the game, the horde and alliance. I think if you read this blog fairly regularly, you know which side I tend to group with.

Recently, a friend presented me with a resurrection scroll for wow, and I started playing my neglected fire mage once again. However, the scroll allowed me a free upgrade to cataclysm, an expansion I never played before, so I had the chance to play the two races I had never played before, the goblins of kezan on the horde side, and the Worgen on Alliance. When I first heard about Cata back in 2010, (or was it 2009? I can't remember) I thought the horde got robbed. The Goblin are a joke race, they are mostly there for comic relief, who would not want to play a werewolf in a fantasy game? But why did the Alliance get the cool race? The more I tried to reconcile it, with being OK with the Goblin in the horde, the more I resented Blizzard for giving them to us. Then I heard about MOP and the stupid monk pandas, but that's a whole other story....

I learned to hate the Worgen as I mowed them down with my mage. I found it easy to hate them as they camped around Alliance zones and sprung out at the most inopportune times in instanced dungeons. Then something weird happened, I started to get the urge to roll Alliance, so that I could play one! I think it was after seeing the intro video with the Gilneans. The Gilneans were members of the Alliance once, until their wall cut them off from the horde, but now in the Cataclysm reality, they had to defend their land against the foresaken, while concurrently trying to deal with the Worgen curse. Suddenly they weren't the twits of the Alliance anymore, but they were a people resisting being conquered, and I always side with the underdogs. Like the Liliputians they have an irresistible allure Why does Garrash Hellscream want to take over Gilneas in the first place? Because it's a strategic foothold in the war against the Alliance? Because he is a power hungry bastard? Maybe both?

The Gilneans don't shout "For the Alliance" like those humans do in Stormwind, at least in the early part of their campaign, and at least they have a valid reason for joining, but still I shudder to play one and watch that horrid Alliance flag fly. I am horde, how can I turn against my own virtual faction? So I played DAoC instead and had a blast leveling up my berskerer in the Molvik b.g.s.

The last days of Camelot

What you see here at left is Gannisper my level 80 fire mage, and one of the main reasons why I am going to be leaving Dark Age of Camelot for a while.

I still wholly believe that DAoC is a superior game to wow, well at least in terms of atmosphere and pvp. The b.g. pvps are rife with conflict every time I log on, and especially at peak hours. Why would I ever dream of giving up all that much fun for a game I am already familiar with like wow?

Things were just getting interesting to! I joined a guild and I was one step away from the Molvik b.g. where a lot of the heavy duty RvR is actually supposed to take place, and I have been told is as much fun as Thid, or even more if you can believe that. Also, at level 30 with my berserker, I was only 5 levels away from acquiring a precious mount! A mount! Hot dog! That would be sublime! Although i still considered myself a DAoC noob, even after 30 levels, I don't think I could have done any worse than this guy.

Alas, my reasons for leaving DAoC (at least temporarily) are valid. Even though wow is a p2p game, economics don't really figure into the equation, as I am already used to the idea of having to pay for a small subscription to get in some quality gaming time. The devs over at Mythic claim that DAoC will never convert to a p2p format because they use the revenue to sustain the game. Fair enough, DAoC is so good, I would not mind pitching in so that it would continue to exist. No my reasons for suspending my time has more to do with immersion than anything else.

This spring, having switched to full time work, I simply have little time to devote to any one game, so I will continue to rotate and getting my gaming fix anywhere I can get it, dreaming of the day where I can max out one toon on any mmo. Those will be the days! But alas retirement is far away, so I must be content with weekends and the occasional free time to game.

So recently my friend sent a wow resurrection scroll my way, which not only got me interested in roaming through Azeroth once more, (there's seven free days attached an the instant boost of my toon to level 80) but to make the deal even sweeter, I can also create toons in Cataclysm. Yes I know, most people were disappointed with Cata as an expansion, but for me, damn it, I was too busy or broke or both in the fall of 2010 and into 2011, so the chance to try out the goblin starting area, or even (gasp!) a Worgen, never came my way, that is until now.

MOP betas be damned! I am always behind the 8 ball in terms of current trends, so why should this venture be any different? All I know is I see any panda come my way, decked out in Alliance gear, he's going down like Santy Claus down the chimney on Xmas eve!! Gannisper don't play that Kung Fu Panda nonsense.

My love affair with a classic mmorpg continues

Hello fellow gamers I am back! Finally updating my very first gaming blog ever on a consistent basis. Who could have forseen it? With all the available mmorpgs out there and f2p options, the one game which has captivated my imagination the most of late has been Mythic's classic pvp Dark Age of Camelot.

There are few gaming experiences as rewarding as doing RvR in DAoC. It is a truly unique and satisfying thing, which is hard to explain to those who have never tried it. It took me a long time to accept the fact that a decade old game would be the most fun grouping experience, outside of DDO, but that is a fact. So I rolled a Berserker Warrior in Midgard and leveled him up all the way to 25 in a short time, which is pretty damn good for me, that's halfway to the level cap on a game I didn't really care for at first, but only because I had not given it enough of a chance.

I have extolled the virtues of this classic mmorpg in the past, and vets won't disagree with me. Recently a contributor over at massively made DAoC the subject of his very entertaining "Choose my Adventure" column. I must say I found his experiences as a DAoC noob to be similar to mine, except I seem to have progressed more in RvR thus far.

Don't get me wrong, there are some fun mmorpgs out there which may be different than DAoC, such as the aforementioned DDO, and STO. I have been also playing Cryptic's f2p Trek game, but that game is more story driven and missing driven,whereas DAoC, especially in the chaotic pvp b.g.s is more of a frenzied free for all. I like both games, but I find I have a little more fun playing DAoC.

There are some very compelling things which a game with dated graphics has over a more modern game like wow. 1. b.gs. are more fun. As fun as one may find b.gs. in a game like wow, they don't compare to the RvR bedlam found in DAoC , especially running with a good group. A lot of wow's b.g.s depend on gear and degrade into sad gankfests, there is a lot of ganking in DAoC as well, but there is a lot of team work which to me makes it more fun to group, if you find the right group, which is easy to do. Also, you don't have to queue for a DAoC b.g. unlike wow, where there is a lot of waiting around.

Here are some things I didn't understand first but which I now have a better handle on: Realm ranks in DAoC RvR. My toon is now L14, which means he is done adventuring in the b.g. appropriate for his level (level 25.) I look forward to the next b.g. which I have not really explored at all.

DAoC also boasts of an incredible array of classes to choose from in the 3 realms. Some people think because it is an older game with lower population, it is deserted, or lonely to be a low level player. This is not the case, if you play on the ywain servers, you will find plenty of players to run group with. I have found this to be the case, especially on weekend and late nights when people have the most time to play.

Lately I have been very tempted to try an alternative way to level in DAoC, and to try out some pve play, perhaps even roll a toon in the pve co-op server, but when in Rome...DAoC was voted best pvp game of the decade for a reason. Plus I think I would dislike having to team up or not being able to attack Albion and Hibernians, since as a Midgard players, I have grown to hate the other two factions, and isn't that what war is supposed to be about? See ya in the frontiers!