Ald Demo

It's no secret how much i absolutely love housing in my MMO's.  It's a game feature that can not only add hours upon hours of replayability but can also drive an economy.  This is one of the main features often overlooked or tossed aside as simply "fluff" in today's MMO's.  This is a huge mistake and one i think game devs are starting to realize.

Rift realized this and eventually implemented dimensions not too long ago.  GW2, on the other hand, missed a golden opportunity to launch with housing in place.  They had the perfect platform for it as well.  Our personal story area would have been the perfect location to include housing, farming, or even some sort of horse or mount breeding.  I'm more than positive that this is coming in some form or another, perhaps in the first expansion which should be sometime around the corner.

This is also why I'm so excited about Wildstar and the possibilities it seems to be bringing to housing.  A new MMO, launching with housing from the start?  What world are we living in?!  It's obviously still early and we really don't have any idea of the overall scope of their housing, but it's nice to see another studio taking this feature seriously.

My first experience with housing was FFXI.  Everyone had an instanced room that we could not only decorate but also served as a storage hub and a crafting location.  I spent hours upon hours just moving furniture around, though my options were limited items wise.  Doing more with less isn't always possible.

My mog house in FFXI

One of the aspects of Neverwinter that i surprisingly enjoy is the short solo instances.  They're essentially all the same with a bunch of rooms with trash packs to defeat of your way to a story related boss.  Despite that fact, i enjoy them a lot more than the normal run of the mill fetch quests.  At some point i hope all MMO's get away from those blasted kill quests.

At the same time, I'm not a fan of the over-instancing of so much content in an MMO.  I get that Old Republic feeling again, which isn't good overall.  Destroying any sense of grandness by splitting up the playerbase into small chunks is just bad.  It works though for this game simply because i looked at it as a dungeon crawler first with co-op thrown in.  As an MMO, it's not really my cup of tea.

Open beta, which is essentially a soft launch of sorts, is upon us.  While I'm still not sure i even enjoy the game, i thought I'd get a head start in leveling in hopes to avoid the crowd.  Oh how i underestimated players willingness to jump all over anything new.  After a 2 hour queue, which should have been expected honestly, i jumped in and got going.

Simply by accident, i swear,  i managed to create a rogue that has an uncanny resemblance to a 40-year old Cloud mixed with a little bit of Wolverine.  I know it sounds silly, but tell me he doesn't!

Well done Anet, well done.  You've managed to successfully take me back to the laste 80's and my childhood Nintendo days.  This new mini dungeon is amazing and put a huge smile on my face the moment i zoned into it.  Almost made me bust out my old Nintendo Power magazine for cheat codes and secret content walk-through.

I was lucky enough to have created my account long enough ago to qualify for the free prowler mount given to everyone last year.  The rest of my mounts are all rewards from quests in certain zones.  There's a rather large variety but I'm trying to stay away from any mounts available via the cash shop.  I also find it interesting that some mounts are basic, some leapers, some gliders, and of course flyers.

Opalescent Prowler

Scaled Mountain Saliraptor

Carpet of El'khazi

Wind Comodo

Rilissian Soldier's Mount

I'm really digging the armor selection so far on my SK.  Granted, they do a really good job at hiding just how ugly the character models are, but i still like it.  Hurray for appearance slots and capes as well.  Yet more options that seem to be overlooked in newer MMO's.  Being a huge fashion diva in my MMO's always gives me more to not only do while in game but more to strive for.  I'll spend a ridiculous amount of time camping anything that has a distinct skin or looks good.

Knight's Nebulous Plate

Dragoon's Plate

Bloodsaber Corruptor's Plate

It's 8.5 years later and I'm playing EQ2 for the first time.  I've had this game installed for almost 3 years and never got around to actually giving it a shot.  It's a shame really because the game is surprisingly solid and quite fun.  Albeit it's slow and clunky at times but it's almost 9 years old so it's expected.

I'll be honest, it's completely overwhelming  how much content and options this game has.  From classes to races to dungeons and housing.  Oh the housing, how i love thee.  I think I've spent the majority of time just messing around with this feature more than actually questing or running dungeons.  That's a good thing though and wish more current MMO's had an extensive a feature as this.  The more non-combat options an MMO has, the more replayability it has to me.

Now, what made me jump into this game this late in it's life cycle?  Well i was actually missing the holy trinity.  I was a huge proponent of doing away with the trinity and raiding in general prior to GW2's release.  I now realize how important both systems are to that whole "MMO" feeling.  The key is balance and not making raiding the entire game, which most seem to fail at doing.

Another aspect that i really enjoy which doesn't seem to be in newer MMO's is running around and encountering rare spawns and elites.  It's such an important factor in exploration and gives a great sense of accomplishment as well.  I was having flashbacks of Leaping Lizzy and Jaggedy-Eared Jack which not only kicked my butt but also provided rare and interesting drops.

There are some aspects that i really do not like about this game.  First and foremost is the ridiculous amount of abilities.  I had 3 full bars of them by level 25 and went from bad to worse later on.  I'm all for more options but when they detract from the actual game and force you to manage the UI full time, then it becomes tedious.  Perhaps this was just due to the class i chose, which was Shadowknight, but i was constantly rotating all of those abilities.

The release date of this game coincided with me hitting max level for the first time in FFXI.  Looking back now I'm starting to wonder if i had given this game a shot, would i have ever gone back to XI?  If i had given this a chance, i don't think I'd have gone back.  At the same time, it took almost 8 months to hit max level in XI, so it was a lot more difficult to leave older games because of the time investment and requirements.  I love these sort of ponderings.

I had very little expectations going into this game.  After all, Cryptic is synonymous with cheap and over-instanced MMO's.  I got the same exact vibe as CO and STO when i logged in.  The game actually looks pretty good on max setting but again, it feels very claustrophobic.  It's difficult to explain but it's very similar to how The Old Republic felt to me.  Huge walls that surround you and keep you going down a predetermined path.  I enjoy exploring and climbing up mountains for out of the way locations.  I get the sense this is not possible in this game.

The combat, that is very fast paced and addictive at first, suffers from the same issues that i had with TERA.  I absolutely hate hate hate HATE animation locks in action based combat MMO's.  I'm probably just spoiled by GW2's combat at this point, but that game feels so much smoother to me.  I'm willing to accept certain big hit, wind-up, or channeled abilities require rooting to keep a semblance of balance, but when the spammable "at-will" abilities also root you, it tends to feel clunky.  It is still early and maybe things will get better later on.

I spent all my time on trickster rogue since the game also lacks enough options class wise.  None of the other classes interested me at all.  I'd love to play an archer of some sort, without a pet of course since I'm not a fan of them.  Maybe more classes down the line is what I'm hearing.  We'll see.

What does one do after acquiring a legendary weapon on his thief?  One rerolls to a far superior class of course!  Don't get me wrong, i absolutely love thief to death, but better is better.  I hadn't noticed how lacking in group dynamics thief really was until i made it to higher level fractals.  The difference is night and day in survivability, group composition, and overall synergy.

I should specify that i play thief quite differently than the normal glass cannon, full dps, don't care about anything thieves out there.  I normally group with a greatsword ranger that tanks everything and i make use of his Healing Spring to basically heal the crap out of everyone while doing massive damage.

Unfortunately i can also do that on guardian with a little less frequency but also keep protection up on everyone.  33% less damage to the group with a double splash AoE heal every 4 seconds while also hitting 5 mobs is just too damn good.  I won't even get into the other group heals i have along with passive boon heals since it's a recurring theme here.  The bottom line is, guardians are just too damn good!