G4 was able to get a walkthrough of the upcoming MMOFPS Huxley at GDC. The video talks about the different classes players will be able to choose from as well as the different types of areas and combat within the game.

Here’s a quick rundown for those of you who don’t want to watch the full 14 min video.

3 Class Types

Avenger – Media Armor Class – Medium weapon range.  Primary weapon, rocket launcher.
Enforcer – Heaver Armor Class – Close weapon range.  Primary weapons, shotgun and heavy machine gun.
Phantom – Light Armor Class – Long weapon range.  Primary weapon, sniper rifle.

As with any MMO each class has their own special skill sets.  Your characters armor has sockets, so you’ll be able to insert skill sockets into them which will give you additional skills based on your class, like invisibility or thermal vision.

2 PvP Types

PvP works just like any other FPS, you join a server/game and fight against other players.

BattleGrounds – These are battles on the server that effect the world map.
Virtual Combat – These are PvP fights that can go cross server, but do not effect the game worlds.  So that means if your friend is on another server you can still fight via Virtual Combat.

The graphics in the video look absolutely amazing for a MMO, definetly worth watching if you’re interested in Huxley.  No release date is given and closed beta testing is set for later this year.

You aren’t cool unless you hate WOW.

There, I said it.  As a new contributor to the MMO blogosphere, what better way to ingratiate myself with the unwashed masses, than to get mad at WOW?  I’m not good at jackass stunts.  I’m not good looking.  I can’t get you into any cool betas.

So… /sigh, I hate you WOW.  I hate people that play WOW, and the people who developed WOW and continue to work on it, and the people who pay the people who make WOW so that they can play WOW, and the people who defend WOW, and the people who live in Irvine, CA (where Blizzard’s home office is located), and the people who go to Blizzcon, and the people who like WOTLK, and the people who hate WOTLK, and on and on and on.  Can one person hate that much?  I think so …  I even hate the (fairly) hot chicks who dress up in WOW gear!  Beat that!

Blizzard… I fart in your general direction!!!  Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!!!

But more than anything… to be really cool, I have to hate WOW players who try another game and decide they don’t like it.  After all, that’s the epitome of serious MMO internet fashion these days.

What are these morons thinking?  Go back to lala-land, you stupid, silly WOW carebears!  I mean, why would you want to play a game that looks great on practically anyone’s PC?  Why would you want to play a game with tons of community and mod support?  Why would you want to play a game that had a great, fun treadmill system?  Why would you want to play a game that offered more competitive PvP than nearly any other game at the time besides Guild Wars & DAOC?  Why would you want to play a game with fun raid encounters?  Why would you want to play a game that redefined the genre with innovative questing improvements, talent trees, and more?

Next thing you know, you’ll all be doing stupid stuff like shoping at Ikea and Wal-Mart.  OMG I HATE U WALMART SHOPPERS!

Listen… I’m not a huge fan of the diluted, boiled-down MMO that WOW became (or even started off as, I guess).  But, I have really, really fond memories of WOW.  I spent a lot of time having fun with the game, and with familes and friends that played it.  I wouldn’t touch WOW with a 10-foot pole today, but why hate on WOW just because other people are still finding ways to enjoy the game?  In my opinion, it doesn’t hold a torch to a sandbox game like EVE Online, which I’m currently digging into, but that doesn’t mean I have to hate it.

In fact, I’m pretty damned glad that WOW exists, and that people are playing it.

True story for you.  I have a brother IRL that’s a pretty casual gamer, and guess what?  He never wanted to play UO with me.  He never wanted to play EQ with me.  Shadowbane?  Frak no.  DAOC?  Hah – no.  Can I blame him?  Not at all.  The barrier to entry in all of those games was just too steep.  Despite all of my best efforts to get him to plan an MMO, he never did.  Not because he was too cool for it; back in school, we played games like Diplomacy, Warhammer Fantasy, Shadowrun, etc.  We went to Gencon together.  We spent a year being Magic: The Gathering nerds.  We played EA sports games on the XBOX all the time.  But MMOs?  Newp.

Then, WOW came around, and he thought it would be worth trying.  After all, how could a Blizzard game be bad!?  He got hooked, and since then, we’ve played EVE, LOTRO, and WAR together.  We currently have a blast kicking into WAR and running scenarios and ORvR.  What changed?  Like all of Blizzard’s games, WOW was easy to understand and start playing, and after you got settled in, additional layers of complexity and challenge evolved to continue making it enjoyable.  In fact, he enjoyed WOW from minute one, as opposed to other MMOs that made him immediately confused and frustrated.

Ultimately, my brother grew out of WOW, just like I did, but before he was an MMO gamer he was a WOW gamer.  And after that, the much-dreaded, much-maligned WOW tourist.  So hate on WOW and WOW tourists?  I don’t think so.  I can’t do it.  WOW made an MMO gamer out of my little brother, and even though he sometimes begrudges it (we waste so much time online…!), we have a good time gaming together.

The morale of this story?  If you think WOW killed the MMO genre with it’s relentless pusuit of the casual gamer, think again.  WOW is the reason that the MMO genre is as vibrant as it is.  WOW gamers are this genre’s lifeblood.  They should be treasured, sought after, appreciated, and pursued… and guess what?  They are.  Any new MMO that wants to make money is going to appeal to that market.

So, don’t hate the tourists who venture out.  A lot of them won’t like the non-WOW world, but a lot will, and let’s face it — games like Darkfall are an acquired taste.  A lot of people who love PvP don’t even like that game.  It isn’t bad; it’s just the MMO equivalent of lutevisk.  No one in their right mind eats lutevisk, unless they grew up liking something that tasted so bad.  I grew up on Ultima Online before UO even had a murder system, and really wanted to like Darkfall, but after getting a chance to eat the MMO equivalent of McDonald’s for so long, I can’t go back.  I’d rather play WOW than Darkfall.

Looking forward, the last thing any of us should want is some set of tired, “purist” hardcore MMO rules that developers should follow.  If that’s what you want, look for a niche-game like Darkfall or EVE online, but realize that even your “hardcore” games will have more people playing them, because games like WOW introduced MMOs to a bigger audience.

After all, the M in MMORPG stands for massively.  If a game like WOW gets more people playing games with us, that’s a good thing, regardless of whether they’re hardcore or not.  Lonely MMOs don’t tend to do well.

As a MMO player communication becomes an important aspect in order to be successful in quests, raids and PvP.  Players need to be able to quickly communicate what’s going on amongst each other and typing just doesn’t cut it.  Having said that I’m sure most gamers have a headset, so today I will be reviewing the Ax Pro by Tritton Technologies.   To give you some basic info about the headset it’s compatible with  Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the PC and utilizes Dolby Digital 5.1 technology along with Dolby Surround Pro Logic.  Each earphone has 4 individual speakers which become the center, front, or rear speaker, along with the larger 40mm subwoofer, so this headset is packing some serious power.

The first thing I noticed is just how sexy the headset is, I mean just look at it.  The second thing I noticed as I was unpacking it was holy crap this thing has a lot of cords and not one but TWO AC power adapters.  You heard that right, it takes 2 AC adapters to power this baby.  Having my power strip already full, I had to unplug some things like my TV and printer just so I could get this thing going.

Normally I’m used to a headset with 1 cord, plug it in and I’m good to go.  Not so with the Ax Pro, I had to actually take a look at the instructions.  Along with the 2 AC adapters the headset came with  a USB cable, an optical cable, an analog 5.1 cable, and a 2.5mm headset cable to connect to the Xbox 360.

Once I got everything plugged in I was ready to go.  Since I’m not actually playing any MMO right now, I ended up testing it on Left 4 Dead, Counterstrike and Call of Duty World at War.  One thing I also want to mention is that the cords hanging all around where a little annoying, but the sound quality def made up for it.

The headset, although looking rather bulky was actually quite comfortable once I had it on.  The first thing I noticed was the sound quality blew away my normal headset, I mean you can’t even put them in the same category.  I could hear footsteps and know exactly what direction they were coming, gun blast felt real.  This was even more noticable in CoD where there’s mayhem going on all around you.  Honestly it was like I was playing a new game.

While excellent for FPS, I’m not sure how much better they would be for MMO gamers where sound is not as important.   To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend this headset if you strickly play MMO’s, however if you are a serious FPS gamer or play competitively in leagues then if you can manage the $180 price tag def go pick up a set, you won’t be disappointed.

Darkfall: Alliances and War

Since the writing of my last entry, massive battles have broken out across Agon, and with these battles, the formation of alliances are starting to shape the political landscape.  In a previous entry, I mentioned the web of guild relations and the possibility of a political map to help everyone understand it.  Apparently the Darkfall community has decided to take matters into their own hands and we are starting to see the community try to understand where the lines are drawn.

When you look at the larger map, you can see the workings of what appears to be geopolitical relationships in some areas of the world.  Specifically, the 4 sub-continents seems to have certain guilds who are working together in alliance to either fully control certain land masses, or who are bent on conquering them by driving off other guilds.

This very situation manifested itself over the weekend when one of the guilds on Nilfheim (Ice Island) became the target of a massive assault that brought hundreds of players to their city looking to retaliate against them for previous attacks.  While the attackers inflicted massive damage to all of the structures, without a formal challenge, the city’s ownership remained intact.  The next day a formal challenge was issued, but this time the defenders were able to rally a coalition of their own and managed to hold off onto their city.  Needless to say, the server was pushed to the limits and in some cases beyond leading to some people in the 300 man battle to suffer random disconnects.

The Challenge

In order for a city or hamlet to change ownership, and challenge must be issued by one guild to another.  When the challenge is issues, it lasts for a period of 6 hours that is divided into 2 stages.  During the first stage (4 Hours), the guild that issued the challenge will have its own city or hamlet vulnerable and up for grabs.  This adds what can be a substantial risk to picking a fight with another guild as you can rest assured that that they will try to rally their allies to derail the attack at the issuer’s city.  Once that stage expires, the challengers will then be able to commence their assault on their target (2 Hours).  If at any time during this entire challenge the guild leader who issues the challenge is killed or goes offline, it is considered a loss and the challenge ends.  There is also a monetary price that I will touch more on later, but guilds issuing challenges who do not own land will need to pony up a large amount of gold to compensate for the risk factor.  If they win they keep the gold, if they lose the enemy keeps it.

My Siege Story

I’ll try to put some of this into context from my first siege experience which happened over the weekend.  One of our allies decided they wanted to target a specific enemy city on a nearby remote island because one of its resources was a harbor, and they belonged to another alliance of guilds that they have an unfavorable view towards.  The challenge was issued by our ally, and our first order of business was to assist in the defense of their city and protection of the guild leader until we could progress to the attack stage.

We all decided to saddle up and put on our Sunday’s finest gear because after all, this is the type of situation we play for.  As a hamlet owner, we found the city to be awe striking in both size and complexity.  Upon arrival we saw the walls were lined with people on every side, and this particular city has large cannon towers on each side.  I was able to take control of the cannon for a short period of time just to see what it was like, and it reminded me much like sitting in a turret seat in an FPS game.  The guild leader who issued the challenge was held up in a very large keep, and the entrance leading into it was blocked by rows of people in the event someone breached the outer wall.

Since we showed up to the city in the tail end of the defense stage, we didn’t really see any action as the enemy was making their own preparations for the likely assault we were getting ready to mount.  There were probably upwards of around 200 people on our side inside making preparations, and my PC handled it better than I thought, although there were many in my guild who experienced some crashes and had to turn down settings.  I found that I only had to turn down the number of sounds in the audio options, and I was surprised how well the client handled this number of people in such a small geographical area.

As the defense stage came to end, the challenge issuing guild began to hand out siege hammers at their bank to all who could take one.  This was one aspect of the monetary costs I mentioned earlier, as these are the main tool for destroying structures at this stage in the game’s life.  Buildings in Darkfall can’t be destroyed with normal weapons and magic, only by siege related equipment, so these hammers are the main tool being used since nobody is far enough along to roll out war hulks and large boats.

We soon traveled to the coast nearby and started making our way from island to island.  I have to say it was definitely a sight to remember seeing so many people at once moving together as a large mass and some people even brought rafts along to make the trip easier.  Unfortunately during this leg of the journey, some of the minor random disconnects that hit us earlier become a bit more frequent.  Some of the people who ended up being dropped while in the water logged back in to find themselves back at their bindstone miles away from the battle.

It was at this point that tragedy struck.  Among the large group of people who experienced a disconnect, was the challenge issuer.  The current rules state that if that person goes offline at any time during the challenge, it counts at a loss.  Needless to say there was a lot of anger and frustration on the part of the challenger.  The previous 4 hours defending, the organization getting the army together, and the extremely high monetary cost all were wasted.  A source from Aventurine tells me they are aware of the issue and looking at ways to make this aspect easier, so we can only hope that some changes to this part of the mechanic are considered to prevent future unintended forfeits.

Despite the upsetting setback, the remainder of us decided to keep going just to see what happens.  As I was marveling at the sheer number of people we had, I wondered if it was really going to be necessary.  When I finally arrived at the enemy city, I was in amazement at how many people were there waiting for us in a defensive position as the city was located atop a cliff (reports are upwards of 200).  We were greeted by the largest volley of magic that I had ever seen, it reminded me of a scene from Star Wars with all the energy flying through the air, no screenshot or words I can say will ever really do it justice.

The enemy alliance had one of its guilds try to attack from behind, but the accidentally tipped their hand too soon and were discovered.  With our numbers diminished from the disconnects and all the plasma flying at us from the well defended city, we decided to make the most of the situation and turn our focus to the guild trying to flank us.  This led to an initial melee that quickly had them retreating into a chase that went into the ocean and nearby islands.  The result was widespread fighting and chaos that left many of them dead, and quickly stripped naked of their belongings.

Apparently hell bent on getting every last one of these guys, someone on my side dropped a raft into the water where literally a dozen guys packed onto it, effectively chasing down and shooting at anyone who was still left alive.  After we finished them off, most of the force decided to recall home and reflect on the evenings events.  I have to say that despite how much it sucked to lose the challenge, many of us still had an experience that we will remember for a long time to come.  Hopefully Aventurine will continue to evaluate and make changes to help streamline the siege process to prevent future incidents from occurring.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Recently, I’ve been craving a little PvP action. Having been mostly playing Final Fantasy XI on my free time during the past few months, you can see why I would. Clearly, World of Warcraft was not an option; I dreaded the thought of ever laying my eyes upon Warsong Gulch again. Yet, for some reason, I was drawn back to Warhammer Online. I was curious as to what had happened to the ORvR lakes. You know, those places you went to when you wanted to do those scouting quests they give you in the warcamp before queueing for the next scenario? I had heard several changes had been put into place to make ORvR more appealing. Seeing as I had a 6 month subscription to Warhammer Online that was still active, I decided: what the hell? I already paid for it, I might as well see what they’ve added to the game.

You’ve no doubt read around MMOCrunch already, from posts made by Mike that several servers had been completely closed off. It saddens me to say that while this is a great step to keep the player base to high-population servers(I use the term loosely), instead of low-population servers it does little to solve the imbalance problem some servers experience. Volkmar, for example, suffers from a lack of Destruction(Tier 4). This makes the RvR experience for both sides very unpleasant. Destruction complains that Order only wins because they have greater numbers, and Order complains that Destruction never shows up to fight because of that reason. When Destruction players read about these problems, they are further discouraged from playing on that server, and so the problem seems to never fix itself. But, I digress. We are here to talk about ORvR! More importantly, non-T4 ORvR. Why should anyone care? Call me old-fashioned, but I like the journey to be as enjoyable as the destination. Much to my surprise, it seems many others feel the same way, recently.

It may be difficult to see exactly what’s going on in the image above, but it’s very clear what I’m trying to show. I started a new character, a Knight of the Blazing Sun, and no sooner had I stepped out to the ORvR area that I let out a loud high-school-girl-esque yelp of glee. To those with a keen eye, it may seem like an imbalanced fight. There’s roughly 50 million order killing a single Choppa. This was near the entrance to our warcamp, though. You don’t really see many Destruction characters venture that far. In this particular case, the fight was at Festenplatz, where Destruction awaited with inferior numbers, but still managed to put up an amazing fight. So how did Mythic achieve this? How did they convince people to stop queueing for Nordenwatch and get out to the ORvR lakes to fight? Well, the same way any game developer gets players to do anything in their game: they add a grind to it. Every ORvR lake has an influence bar now, and whenever you kill a player, capture or defend an objective, you get influence. The rewards are amazing for the level they are available at. Tier 1 offers an almost complete set of blue armor, weapons, and rings. Tier 2 offers purple items, etc. The grind for these items is not as long as you would expect. For example, Tier 1 has a total influence requirement of about 3.3k INF to reach Elite. If you have two warbands, one Order and one Destruction constantly killing and taking/defending objectives from each other(which is not a rare sight these days, even in Tier 1), you can reach full influence in a couple of hours.

Some concerns:

One of the first things I noticed when I created my new character and hopped back into the game was the Rally Call function. The first time I got one of those, I got up from my chair, and stood straight as  I valiantly declared: “My brothers need my help, I must answer their call for reinforcements!” When I got there, though, it was nothing more than a skirmish between a couple of Order and a few Destruction at the Harvest Shrine. Angered, and hurt that my role-playing act had been in vain, I promptly returned to questing. I later learned that these rally calls are automatically issued by the server, roughly every hour or so. Why? There are very few times when these rally calls will actually yield any amount of people, and a lot of times, it’s just a way to facilitate travel to the nearest warcamp. I can’t see any real solutions to the problem, but then again I can’t really see the purpose they were intended to serve, either. Everyone who wants to RvR is already at the warcamp in a warband or in the RvR lake itself; they’re not out questing. If someone’s doing PQs, it’s because that’s what they want to do; the likelihood that they will answer a rally call  is very slim.

The keep contribution system is still very random and unreliable. Not to mention, it’s always the same loot(non-T4). Why is that bad? Because people can get a gold bag more than once. For example, I’ve gotten two gold bags from keep sieges in Tier 2. I was happy the first time, because I got a pretty good set piece from it. I was not so happy the second time, because my choice was either the same set piece, some crafting items, or some silver. It’s not so much that I didn’t have any other loot to choose from(although that may have been nice), it’s that I took someone else’s gold bag, and pulled out silver from it. Someone who really needed their chest set piece would have made better use of it. The game is in desperate need of a “pass” function, both for keeps and PQs. Allow players to set their preferences for what kind of bags they want to roll on. I’d be afraid to keep doing keep sieges on my knight with my friends if one of them hasn’t gotten a gold bag and I get a third. This effectively prevents me from playing with my friends.

There’s still little incentive to attacking a heavily defended keep. In most cases, a warband that’s attacking a heavily-defended keep will give up after one try. The INF and XP you get from killing a few people inside their own keep is nothing compared to how much they got for wiping the entire warband. Not to mention, they will get “ticks” of influence everytime they defend the keep from an attack(which translates to: everytime a player dies near the keep). One possible solution could be to add “ticks” for sieging a keep. The longer you continue to assault a heavily-defended keep, the more influence both sides will get. In order for this to count, however, the warband must make considerable progress in taking the keep. If it’s just one destruction and order player killing each other near the keep, it shouldn’t count. Progress could be measured in several ways: amount of players killed during siege, damage dealt to the door or siege engines on the walls, etc.

Overall, I am quite happy with the changes made to ORvR lakes. While I’m still leveling up my new character and getting into Tier 3 now, so far the journey has been enjoyable. By defending keeps and turning in the “kill 15 players” quest there, I’ve been able to actually obtain a level or two this way. Leveling through ORvR is possible, although not as fast as questing, doing scenarios, or combining the two. Hopefully, they continue to provide changes to improve this area of the game. I, personally, can’t wait to see what the next 6 months will bring to the game.

MMOCrunch is looking to add another blogger to our staff.   We are looking for someone with some previous writing experience and a dedicated MMO gamer.  The position will be paid per post and you will need to meet a minimum requirement of 5 posts per month.  If you cannot dedicate the time to meet the minimum 5 post requirement,  please do not apply.  If this sounds like something you are interested in, please contact me at admin [at] mmocrunch [dot] com for additional information.  Currently we are only looking for 1 additional writer to join the staff.

There was a strong buzz around Star Wars: The Old Republic last week when it announced bounty hunter as one of the games official classes.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t that bounty hunters would be in the game that generated the buzz, however, as they had appeared in game artwork and been alluded to for quite some time. No, what started the buzz was the less-than-subtle inferences in the class description that it would be a class for the Sith faction only.

That’s right… besides the obvious point that bounty hunters don’t work for any particular faction anyway, it staggered many TOR watchers that if the class had to fall under a faction, that it would, seemingly, be limited to Sith players only.

Accordingly, I have an explanation for this: story. BioWare is making such a big deal out of the storylines for each character class in the game, that I think it’s going to make EVERY class unique to its faction and, through doing so, not have to write a Sith-flavoured and Republic-flavoured version of each class storyline.

So in the weeks and months ahead, expect to see, for example, smugglers and troopers announced as Republic-only classes and, perhaps, spies to join bounty hunters as a Sith-only class. Jedi and Sith Lord characters, of course, will be Republic and Sith faction respectively. That’s a no-brainer. What does this mean for the gamer?

It means that BioWare had better be planning on some sweet faction-swapping in its class storylines, or the game is going to be horribly unbalanced come end game.

Just think of it… your Jedi gets to the crest of their storyline… along the way they’ve made some mistakes and maybe done some dubious things. It’s my conjecture that, at this point, if enough dubious behaviour has occurred, that a fall to the darkside might be available. Or think of a spy for the Sith. Perhaps, over time, they haven’t been quite as ruthless as a good Sith should be… will they get the option to join the Republic?

In this way, BioWare only needs to write six to eight unique storylines, depending on how many classes the game ends up featuring (some people swear it’s six, others swear it’s eight, but no one seems to have proof), yet, at end game, with spies turning good and troopers turning evil, etc, the game will start to balance out with bounty hunters, spies, smugglers, troopers, etc, appearing within both factions.

Mentioned on the TOR forums, the concept of faction swapping has been rejected by as many people as embraced by others. All this correspondant will add to that debate is that EQ2 has allowed faction swapping, in the form of a “betrayal” quest series for many years. That alone shows that characters can change faction in an MMO and the sky will not fall down, nor will fire and brimstone rain down from the MMO gods in disgust.

Meanwhile, if BioWare doesn’t allow faction changing as part of its storylines, it’s going to have a LOT of very pissed off gamers on its hands. People who want to play Republic spies or Sith troopers, to name just two. I guess all we can do is wait and see!

Let’s face it, single player RPGs are a dying breed.  Even games like Diablo that have online game play are still a single player game at heart.  Sure you can join a instance with a few other people to run through quests, farm for item drops or trade, but there is no persistant world.    There is nothing that binds players together except for the BattleNet chat channels and it certainly is not a “Massive Multiplayer” game, emphasis on massive.

While it seems most RPGs are taking the MMO route there have been some within the last few years that remain as single player games.  Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts series, Zelda, Final Fantasy to name a few.  However others like Star Wars: Kotor have been announced as MMOs.  The Elder Scroll series has also been rumored to make the jump to MMO as well as the next Fallout game.  The Final Fantasy series went MMO back in 2002, although single player FF games continue to be made.  Other RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate and Ultima  just seems to have disappeared.

With the Diablo series only a very small percentage of players choose to play offline, the rest of us play online through Bnet.  The way the game is currently setup Blizzard has to limit how many people join an instance.  If you never played Diablo basically the more users that join an instance the more the monsters get scaled up in power and health.  So if you have 100 people in one instance it would just become a mess.   I’m a little rusty since I haven’t played D2 in a few yrs, but I think the limit was 10 or 12, I could be wrong.

The only thing stopping Diablo from becoming a MMO is a persistant world, all the other elements are already there.  With the success Blizzard has had with WoW, I just don’t see them releasing Diablo 4 as another single player online RPG.

We all know Blizzard is already working on a new-gen MMO.  Whether it’s going to be Starcraft, Diablo or a new IP is anyone guess, but I doubt we’ll be seeing a D3 and Diablo MMO that soon together.  My money is still on a SC MMO.

On a side note, didn’t I do a nice job editing the D3 logo

The more I learn about Mortal Online the more excited I get about this game.  It seems like someone read my mind about how to create a MMORPG then went and made Mortal Online.  For those of you who are not familiar with this game let me fill you in.  It’s a first person fantasy MMORPG with an open player-controlled world being developed by Swedish video game company Star Vault.  Mortal Online promises a true sandbox experience.

Character Class – MO borrows many features from the Elder Scroll series, most notably the class system.  When you create your character you’re not selecting any specific class.  As you play through the game you can join a guild such as Thief Guild, Black-Smith Guild or Mage Guild then learn skills based off that guild.  You can at any time quit the guild and switch to another class type, however you will lose any bonuses that guild provided you.

Leveling/Skills - There are no levels in MO.  However there are skill levels of sort, again similar to Elder Scrolls.  There are two types, Action Skills and Learned Skills.  Action skills increase the more you use them, while Learned skills will increase passively over time.

There is a third type called Deva Skills, which is a skill that links all your created players.  For instance, if you learned “Poison Making” and made this your Deva skill, any future characters you create will automatically have this skill so you don’t need to retrain them.  It does not mean they will have it from the start, however once you meet the prerequisites, it will become available at what ever level you trained it to.

Combat - Combat will be real-time, no click and watch fighting here.  You can swing or aim your weapon where ever you want and that’s where it’ll go.

Legendary Monsters/Quests -There are bosses and quests that do NOT repeat once completed or killed.  These are supposed to be historical battles that will change the game.  The items or rewards that are won from these are also unique and will not be repeated.  I absolutely love this idea.

Looting - Full looting! The fact there are going to be 100% unique items, this makes looting even more fun.  Imagine killing a player that had an ultra rare item from a Legendary quest or monster.  Very cool indeed.  However looting will tag you as a criminal temporarily, so you’ll have to be careful.

Free World -  The game will have a minimum amount of rules which really gives the players control of what happens.   You can become a fighter, explorer, crafter and have that become your main gameplay element.  A cool thing about exploring is that when you discover a new area you get to name it.  Can we say hello to “Bunghole Cave”?

Graphics -  The graphics also look amazing and they should as it runs on the Unreal 3 engine with Grome, Speedtree.

Honestly everything about this game sounds awesome. I just signed up to the Mortal Online Beta, which hopefully I’ll get in to.  The game is slated to be released in the summer of 2009 which is just around the corner.

We’ve all done it before, going back to a past MMO that we either quit or swore we never come back to.  In most cases it seems that there’s a particular MMO that we go back to, whether it’s your first MMORPG, a game where your best/highest level character is, or it could just be the last MMO you played.  For me, I usually end up going back to the last MMO I’ve played.

There’s a few reasons why I tend to do this.  For one, many of the people I’ve gamed with are still playing, I still remember how to use my character and how the world works, so there’s less to relearn.  Going back to a game I haven’t played in 2-3 yrs feels like I’m almost starting over.  New expansions, new items, classes, balance changes, plus your guild might not even be around anymore or if it is it might be with a bunch of people you no longer know.

However not everyone is like me, there is definitely something special about the first MMORPG you’ve played or I should say played for a prolonged period of time.  It’s the place you created your first serious character at and when you return it gives you a feeling of coming home.

Since having quit Warhammer Online about a month and half ago, I’ve dabble with Atlantica Online which just didn’t do it for me.  So once again I’m MMOless and decided it’s still way to early to already be thinking about going back to Warhammer.  I’ve been thinking about trying out a older MMO like Dark Age of Camelot or Planetside, but I’m not sure if I could get over the old school graphics, it might be too much of a distraction for me.  Any suggestions, I’m open to new and old games, PvP plz