bastun_ie finishes up the Star Trek Online open beta.
I said last time I'd finish up the STO preview by talking about ground and space combat, and Klingons and PvP, but before I about that, I have to mention the event that closed off the Open Beta.
Continue reading "Star Trek Online: All Good Things"
Posted by Drew Shiel on February 5, 2010 at 22:42
The continuing adventures of bastun_ie in Star Trek...
Having finished the tutorial, as written about in Part 1 of this series, my starship arrived in Earth orbit, approaching Spacedock. Wow. The visuals are impressive. Spacedock is a huge space station, surrounded by other structures and a flotilla of other players' ships, floating above a gorgeous planet Earth. Approaching the station, I was given clearance to dock, and beamed over to Spacedock.
Continue reading "Star Trek Online: Hailing Frequencies Open"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 26, 2010 at 20:14
bastun_ie returns with further coverage of Star Trek Online.
My fears about having a Closed Beta client proved groundless, and as Open Beta rolled around, I was able to seamlessly patch up to the Open Beta and log in. As expected, STO character generation is indeed a highlight - something Cryptic do very well. After choosing race (either a default Federation race as listed previously, or a customised one) and skills, you get to use some very detailed customisation options to design exactly the avatar you want. A good variety of base uniforms are also available, which allow customisation too. Enter a name, optional biography, and a name for your starship, and it's time to boldly go where every MMO has gone before - the tutorial...
Continue reading "Star Trek Online: Part 1 - Open Beta"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 19, 2010 at 22:17
I'm sure, if you use Twitter, you've come across Echo Bazaar by now. It's the source of the peculiar tweets about bats, clay men, and gentlemen not using the word d--m. It is also an excellent casual game. Such that, at present, it is retaining my interest better than at least one of the MMOs I'm trying.
Continue reading "Echo Bazaar: The Best Casual Web Game Yet"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 18, 2010 at 21:48
bastun_ie wrote this before the Open Beta went live, but my scheduling chewed it up. Apologies! As he says, there'll be more from him on STO, and a bit from me as well - I've been playing for a couple of days in the Open Beta.
Drew has kindly let me use Dukestreet to write about my experiences with Star Trek Online - one of the most anticipated MMOs of 2010. STO, as I write, is in closed beta. It moves to open beta on Tuesday 12th, and anticipation is building. I've pre-ordered, and will (hopefully!) be rolling my first character on Tuesday. I'll be writing about the beta experience - chargen, the tutorial, early missions, gameplay (PvE and PvP), and so on.
Continue reading "Star Trek Online: Part 0"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 17, 2010 at 11:43
bastun_ie concludes his examination of Champions Online.
I lied about looking at the levelling system in this part, as it's pretty much covered in the last. Instead, we'll substitute in PvP, which I forgot about...
Continue reading "Champions Online, Part III"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 17, 2010 at 11:28
The second part of bastun_ie's investigation of Champions Online.
Champions Online is based on the Champions pen-and-paper RPG, first published in 1981 and now in its 5th edition. The Champions RPG is, in turn, an unashamed adaptation of the world of four-colour comics of the 60s and 70s. As such, its campaign world features all the common tropes of the genre - secret societies, evil corporations, mad supervillains, alien invasions - and, of course, the heroes who combat them, complete with their own super groups. This is the world you enter the first time you hit 'Play' in the Champions MMO.
Continue reading "Champions Online, Part II"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 17, 2010 at 11:24
Please welcome new guest writer, bastun_ie, writing about adventures in Champions Online.
There are too many elves. And orcs. Even if they're called by some other name. Every MMO I've played to date has been fantasy based - UO, DAoC, WoW. Oh, there's an exception - EVE. But I found the learning curve too steep and frankly, a 10-year-old game that manages to bluescreen a 4-year-old PC has issues. Plus, from my limited experience, the combat seemed dodgy - pick a target, orbit it at a certain distance, and keep shooting. Yawn. Space combat should be like Wing Commander (I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the Wing Commander IP is just crying out to be turned into an MMO!)
Continue reading "Champions Online"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 5, 2010 at 16:03
David X. Messer's final Darkfall post... for now. And I'd like to thank David for his work on this over the past month and a bit; it's brought a great many visitors to the site, and I've really enjoyed reading it all myself.
Start any MMO (with the possible exception of WAR) and you're going to need a touch of paitence to get used to the UI. Initially I found the UI Darkfall an exercise in frustration. Everything seemed to take several more mouse clicks that it needed. Most of these things I managed to get over simply by repeated use so they became second nature and I could largely ignore them. Apart from the Journal that is. These days I just don't bother opening the Journal as it takes so long to navigate through it to get the information I want from it. Two simple pieces of information I wanted when I first started playing were what quests I was on and who from my Clan/Guild were logged in. I've no idea why Darkfall makes these simple things so difficult to get. It got the point where after about day three I stopped trying. You've probably already gathered I'm not a huge fan of Darkfall's UI.
Continue reading "Darkfall Day 30"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 4, 2010 at 20:06
David X. Messer's penultimate Darkfall post...
I'm cheating a little. This is the last post, next post will be a bit of a wrap up piece on thoughts so far. I'd love to say that for my last day there was a huge amount of action and that it was a day to remember, in truth it was probably a day to forget!
Continue reading "Darkfall Day 29"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 4, 2010 at 20:03
David X. Messer makes with the images. Lots of images.
In lieu of any real content today, have some pictures.
Continue reading "Darkfall Day 28"
Posted by Drew Shiel on January 4, 2010 at 19:07
David X. Messer provides guidance for newcomers to Darkfall.
This post is basically a checklist of things I did as a new player and either got dead right or got wrong. Essentially I thought it might be useful for other people completely new to Darkfall, as I was.
Continue reading "Darkfall Day 27"
Posted by Drew Shiel on December 22, 2009 at 20:57
David X. Messer gets attacked by sea in Darkfall.
My new favourite past time is hunting for chaos chests. These seem to spawn fairly randomly and containt random items. Mostly money, the odd bit of materials. Early evening I went on a quick circuit to see what I could find. This netted me 100g or so, nothing major, and by the time I got back to the city and banked the proceeds. There followed a 20 minute gap where I chatted to one of the Clan leaders about the future of the Clan when there was an almighty crack of what sounded like thunder.
Continue reading "Darkfall Day 26"
Posted by Drew Shiel on December 22, 2009 at 20:54
David X. Messer investigates sieges in Darkfall.
The slow death of our clan continues as a lot of the new members we'd gained over the past three weeks have started to leave. This was to be expected and isn't really news.
I've been spending my time around a city which is part of the new alliance we'd formed with another clan. When I logged in this evening the word was that we were about to get hit with a siege. I don't quite understand how the seige mechanices work, but apparently you need to give 24 hours notice of a siege or something along those lines. Either way there were a lot of heavily armoured players standing outside the City bank.
Having missed the previous attack there was no way I was missing this one. I grabbed some basic gear, nothing I'd be upset at losing, mostly arrows and a staff. I took up a position on one of the cannon towers and waited. While I waited I watched a lot of people dueling. I seem to be missing something about dueling before what's supposed to be a large scale attack. Surely if you're about to get attacked at any moment then being low on health is the last thing you're going to want? Seemed a bit strange.
I waited some more. An hour passed. I waited some more. After an hour and a half I asked around the Clan channel, "It's coming", apparently. Two hours later the dueling players had moved to some rooftops across the city. Still nothing happening. So I ditched my gear, picked up a mount and went out in a circular route around the island hunting for Chaos Chests. This took about 30 minutes. By the time I got back to the city there were a lot of naked recently dead players standing around the city bank. I'd missed the attack.
War involves a lot of sitting around waiting, apparently, and I'd imagine the real thing feels a lot like this.
Posted by Drew Shiel on December 22, 2009 at 20:49
