A few weeks ago I wrote about a botnet attack against two MMORPG auction sites, MMOBay.net and Playersauctions.com, which brought both sites down for days.   Since then I have been in contact with many of the individuals that run or own these types of sites and what’s going on is nothing less than a major attack on the entire MMORPG account and gold selling industry.

In the last few weeks I learned that it just wasn’t these two sites that were being targeted, but dozens of similar sites, many that are still down today.  The attacks are sophisticated and scalable, by scalable I mean they gradually increase in power until the site goes down then plateaus.

Talking with many of the site owners, many have stated they have received extortion emails asking for money in return for the attacks to stop.  I was showed a few emails and they were something along the lines of “Pay us and we’ll leave you alone“.

The email address used originated to a Russian website, but I will not post the site as the email address could have been faked or stolen.

After 3 weeks of continuous attacks, it seems like many of the larger sites are back up and running, however the smaller sites that can’t afford to upgrade their networks are still down.

It seems criminal orginizations have taken notice of the success and sheer number or these virtual good sellers and are now using their vast bot networks in an attempt to make some quick cash off of them.

The First Ten Hours of Runes of Magic is a multi-part editorial column by iTZKooPA.  During his journey he will spend a solid ten hours tackling the opening of today’s hottest MMORPGs that he hasn’t played to death.  Be it new game, old game, new faction, or new class, it’ll all be new to him.  All titles are judged on the same basic points as described below.

Welcome to my early review of Runes of Magic.  As the premiere WoW-a-like free-to-play title, it’s only fair that we tackle Runewaker’s MMORPG, and Frogster’s localization of it. The title has been out for months now, allowing me to jump in and take in all that is Taborea on a few different characters – the highest being a level 18/15 Rogue/Scout. It’s also allowed the tandem of Frogster and Runewaker ample time to ferret out any glaring bugs.

Character Creation:  There are many games out there with crazy amounts of character customization.  However, Runes of Magic is not one of them.  The game is severely limiting for your basic choice of race, Humans being the only candidate at launch.  Thankfully the latest Chapter has added a second race, the love-em or hate-em pointy eared Elves.  Although gamers are limited to only two races, and obviously two sexes (look to sci-fi MMOGs to change that one day), to start, once we select our poison the creation opens up.  From hairstyle to bust size to foot size, the game is loaded with thirteen additional multi-position sliders.  The mix of combinations gives Runes of Magic one of the more in-depth character creation systems in the fantasy genre.  But that’s assuming you can look past the extremely limiting number of races at the surface.

Opening & Lore: Diving into this title is incredibly bland. There’s no opening cinematic to speak of, and no opening quest lines to get you started. You just pop into existence and are hit with a minimap full of icons demanding your attention. If one wants to find out what’s going on, then your best bet is to spend time on the title’s official website (perhaps while downloading the beastly package). Played any other MMORPG in your life?  Then expect to be bored to tears with the opening of Runes of Magic. “Kill 10 foozles” and then “Kill 10 foozles” some more.

User Interface: Runes of Magic’s interface is something that MMORPGers will be very comfortable with. The control scheme is essentially a clone of so many other titles and the keybindings match World of Warcraft’s more often than not. RoM has a myriad of buttons surrounding the very busy minimap, most of which take you to useful places like the Item Shop. For better, or for worse, everything is in your face and readily accessible.

Quests & Grinding: Get ready to be bored. Considering that the opening of the game is very uneventful it’s unlikely that the later levels get anywhere near epic. After leveling my Rogue/Scout for a healthy amount of time I have yet to find an interesting quest. Making matters more tedious is the fact that the company employs the idea of daily quests from the early going. And all of them have you grinding a collection of foozles. For those of you who leveled a WoW character back in Stranglethorn Vale, you’re probably familiar with the The Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest. The original designer of the quest has admitted that it’s the worst quest in WoW for numerous reasons. Yet the creators of Runes of Maker copied it, right down to the required page numbers. How’s that for a synopsis of quest design?

Dungeons: Dungeons are everywhere in Runes of Magic. They present themselves through kill quests early on in the game and offer appropriately awesome rewards. They aren’t exactly original or expertly designed, but they offer a good distraction to the monotonous grindfest of the quests proper. It’s worth mentioning that RoM has a ton of outdoor bosses, or named mobs if you prefer. I call them bosses because you have absolutely no business attacking these suckers if you’re around their level and alone. They hit like trucks and possess a healthy amount of hitpoints. Another worthwhile distraction to the awful quest design.

Polish: Polish is one of those things that isn’t often categorized. It’s an ongoing process in every MMORPG, and title’s always get more polished the longer they are around. Therefore many titles are launched in what is labeled as an unpolished state. Runes of Magic is one of the titles where its obvious that the idea of polish is not at the forefront of the developer’s mind. Actually it’s a mixed bag, some of the issues can be squarely placed on the localizing agent, Frogster America. Poor graphics, mixed framerate performance, jerky animations and balance issues lie squarely on Runewaker. Frogster is at fault mainly for the incredibly shoddy job of localization. The company seems to have taken on too much by trying to localize multiple languages at the same time. In all of the languages there are glaring errors including spelling and grammar mistakes and buffs who’s tooltips don’t specify what they do. Instead a player is shown a placeholder message. Annoying gamers further is that both companies seem to ignore the issue, releasing new content without fixing the glaring problems before them. Some problems can be fixed in just few minutes time.

Uniqueness: Runes of Magic is an admitted WoW-a-Like. It was designed specifically to cater to a crowd that enjoys World of Warcraft, but doesn’t have the time to invest in that title to make them a hero. Or doesn’t want to pay a static fee. At the surface it’s a simple clone, but RoM does offer plenty of uniqueness including the dual class feature (hence why I am a Rogue/Scout), a deeper crafting system, guild and personal housing and a quick content development cycle.

Overall: If you love World of Warcraft, but can no longer afford the time or monetary investment then Runes of Magic might be a good fit for you. It kept me, a staunch WoW lover, mildly interested much further than the intended ten hours of play time. I’ll likely keep it installed as I work my way up to the level cap of 50/50. And why not, it’s free.

Not a fan of World of Warcraft? Then Runes of Magic isn’t for you.

Is cheating really the question?

Call it timing, call it happenstance or co-inky-dink but I received an email from CCP at the same time of reading both Tobold’s blog, OF Teeth and claws and We fly spitfires articles on twinking. I received an email from CCP, who are holding a “Power of Two” sale running until October 13^th offering players with an existing EVE Online account the opportunity to have the second alternate (alt) account or “twink” as some would call it. I would pay $50 for 6 months of EVE for that second account, making that $8.33 for an EVE subscription that usually costs me $35 for two plexes. A Pilot License Extension enables 30 days of EVE playtime, bought sold on the in game market for Isk or $35 for a pair, meatspace money.

For me it’s very attractive, I get double the strength of a second player controlled by yours truly. Would it be considered cheating is sent by the company itself? The second account is something that is accepted widely in game, and sometimes people are surprised when I say I don’t have one. The only reason I haven’t is because I don’t know if my rig can handle two EVE client’s running and was working on a second unit or laptop to make this possible. That is neither here nor there.

A member of my corp told me the proper way of “leveling” my alt’s skills. First off you don’t need to be logged in to have the skills tick off, that’s done over time. That is a bonus; I don’t even need to play the character to advance it. But the trick is to install something called “Cybernetic Implants” to raise the statistical bonuses in order to learn skills faster. Then after those are “plugged in” then buy him the learning skills only and train those all to level 4. This is making a total of 8 learning skills that also boosts the stats in order to learn skills faster; on top of the initial 900,000 skill point 100% training bonus applied to the already beefed up stats. Bottom line, I could learn what it takes days in a matter of hours.

Is that twinking? Totally.

Is that cheating? Absolutely not.

Who will be paying for it all? Me.

Now here’s the twist: I will buy two PLEXs, start a second account, use one to extend my playtime into the month of November. I would sell the other for the market rate of 300,000,000 million isk. Yes, they are worth that much. And I will give all that money to my alt so he could have money to buy any skills and ships needed. By the way, I would roll a Caldarian, I wish I rolled that from when I started instead I rolled a Minmater. This opportunity will enable me to undo most of the mistakes I made when I started out as a newbie EVE player.

Some of the mistakes I made as a newb:

Hodge podge training: “Oh, will train for this ship. Oh, I want that ship. Oh, I need to learn Retail III for my trading. Darn I need to train mining for this stupid mission…” Etc, etc. Secondly, I had no idea what I was doing nor had some of the tools I use now such as EVEmon and the EVE fitting tool. Both of these have become part of my everyday plan of playing EVE and have helped me out enormously.

Let’s look at the tail of the tape. I use third party programs to “help” me play EVE. I will use my own money to “help” my new character along in his development and in turn this Alt character will “help” my main character. I will also use meatspace money to finance both characters and continue to do so. This is all in order to “help” my EVE gaming experience be more fun, enjoyable and (gasp!) easier. Heaven’s forbid that I even make an MMORPG easier on myself. I should be walking uphill to school barefoot even though there is a bus at the corner and I own a car. Some people just like doing things the hard way in order to 1) brag and 2) show other people up; three things I just I don’t like to do.

Have I cheated CCP or other players to any extent? All these mechanics are provided by the company themselves and widely used and accepted by other players. It will suck for the pirate that tries to can flip my little alt when I uncloak my raven on him. That’s right!

Going back to a blog posted on The Ancient Gaming Noob (o/ hello) written about cheating. Some of the forms of cheating were using outside sources for information, using multiple character and outside sources of income. If these older statutes of gaming ethics where still employed then I should be blown straight out of New Eden because I am breaking numerous rules. However, these days the “gamer code of ethics” has evolved as much as the games themselves have. No longer is it all guesswork or trial and error. The community comes together to “help” each other in order to provide a better gaming experience. I applause that.

On the other hand, everyone has a different set of “gamer ethics” that they use while playing a game. Mine is was that I will not sell a PLEX for money and just rely on my real-life trading skills in order to fund my characters advancement. I have been wildly successful at it, so much so, as the corp employs me to sell off all the junk we get from missions and disperse the money to other corp members. Everyone is making money and having a great time so far.

I still will not use meatspace funded Isk to fund my main, there is no reason to, just for my alt. But I am slightly breakin’ my own code of ethics, my rationalization is that I am doing it once and after that my alt will have to become self sufficient. After all it will double my trading power and I will be able to make even more isk from trading by using two accounts. (Moar mMO’ Money! Muhhaahahaaaa!) Under no circumstances I will criticize someone else for using PLEX isk to either manage their account or buy an expensive ship or item, even before I have this second account I felt that way. It is my own code that I follow and am in no position to push that on someone else.

In conclusion to the twink issue, times have changed and some shortcuts have become the norm. Some have become widely accepted by the community and even become expected especially if endorsed by the company itself. Twinks also give players an opportunity to employ some of the knowledge that they didn’t have when they initially started. What I will say is that everyone is an individual and should be able to play their own style of game under their own code of ethics. If you have a set of ethics that you break rules that are detailed in the term of service you are due to get banned and have a bad game experience. There are some things that game companies just will not let you do. I feel that if any rule is written by the company is law, because their “code” is law. Lastly, if you have a code that enables you to use certain aspects of the game and not use some of the others available, that is also up to you.

Just remember, that is your code and your opinion, no one elses. I will listen to your opinion but not carry it; I have my own. I will observe you code of ethics, but not adopt it or judge it; I have my own.

If you think a “twink” is cheating then don’t create one.

Until then….

Play safe,

Frank

Today Ankama Group accounced the released date for Dofus 2.0 as Dec 2nd, 2009.  Dofus was originally launched in Sept 2004 and today is one of the largest MMORPG out there boosting 25 million online players.

Version 2.0 will be the most significant upgrade the game has ever known. The graphic engine, server and client code have been completely rewritten to offer a wealth of detail and an unparalleled gaming experience.

Following this update, Ankama plans to offer boxed distribution of its flagship title worldwide during 2010.

After remarkable performances in prestigious shows such as PAX (Seattle), GamesCom (Cologne) and the forthcoming Tokyo Game Show (24-27 September), Ankama is proud to introduce DOFUS 2.0 to the international press and players from all countries.

Available at the beginning of October in closed beta for the press and players in possession of an access key, DOFUS 2.0 promises to renew existing players’ love for the game, and also satisfy the exacting requirements of all videogame players around the world.

Today we received some new screenshots of the recently released Dungeons & Dragons Online:  Eberron Unlimited, which is now free to play.

DDO Unlimited delivers the best combat of any MMO and the most heart-pounding action this side of a keyboard, plus a lot more!

• DDO Unlimited’s New Content & Features – DDO Unlimited delivers a new class, increases the level cap to 96 ranks, introduces new adventure packs including a new 12-player raid, and features major combat improvements.
  
• The Fiercest Combat of any MMO – DDO Unlimited features an extraordinary heart- pounding combat experience that requires players to fully engage in the battle by relying on their wits and reflexes in real time. No more clicking skills and watching the action from the sideline.
  
• Mind-blowing Visuals – Explore a vast and dangerous online world that features the most advanced graphics in the industry and is stuffed with the legendary monsters, glorious treasures, devious traps, mind-bending puzzles and endless adventures from the world’s best known RPG.
  
• Full-featured MMO – Experience sophisticated systems found only in the best games including auctions, NPC hirelings, arena death matches (Player versus Player), crafting, and powerful social tools for finding a group, forming a guild or planning an epic raid!
  
• Easier Than Ever! – DDO Unlimited gets you playing in minutes instead of hours, using new proprietary Turbine technology. Creating a new character is incredibly simple with guides and templates that speed you through the process. Features an all-new new player experience that gives gamers their first taste of excitement quickly while teaching them how to play solo or with a group of fellow adventurers.

Yep I said it, bringing IT! The game is still going strong, still fun, and now even more fun. City of Heroes Issue 16 has made it to live. The main aspect I am excited about is the power customization. We can now customize our powers, animations colors, and sets. A full list of the City of Heroes patch notes can be found here;
Here is a list of the features;

Powers Customization:

Hundreds of powers have been updated to allow new color selections and customization. Players can now pick new Themes for each powerset, adjusting colors, appearance, and even animations for some sets.
Key Features:
• Thousands of Tintable particle and geometry effects for powers, such as Energy Blasts and Stone Mallet colors.
• Customizable Primary and Secondary colors for powersets, with color choices themed to match the selected powerset.
• Powerset Themes selectable for a complete set, or individual powers.
• Powerset Themes selectable at character creation, as well as in the tailor screens.
• Independant Theme selection for each character costume.

New Theme selections:

New Themes of Spines and Thorny Assault available, including themes of Thorns, Metal Spines, Crystal Spines, and Slate Spines. New Animation Themes for Super Strength and Martial Arts.Huge variety of customizable powersets, including Cold Domination, Dark Armor, Dark Blast, Dark Melee, Dark Miasma, Devices, Earth Control, Earth Melee, Electric Armor, Electric Assault, Electric Blast, Electric Melee, Electricity Manipulation, Empathy, Energy Assault, Energy Aura, Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation, Energy Melee, Fiery Aura, Fire Assault, Fire Blast, Fire Control, Fire Manipulation, Fire Melee, Force Field, Gravity Control, Ice Armor, Ice Assault, Ice Blast, Ice Control, Ice Manipulation, Ice Melee, Illusion, Invulnerability, Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Mind Control, Necromancy, Plant Control, Psionic Assault, Psychic Blast, Radiation Blast, Radiation Emission, Regeneration, Sonic Resonance, Sonic Blast, Spines, Stone Armor, Storm Summoning, Super Reflexes, Thermal Radiation, Thorny Assault, Traps, and Willpower.

_______________________________________________

New Character Creator:
• The Character creator and Tailor screen have been updated to be easier to use and even preview the animation and color choices for powers!
Key features:
• Tabbed Character Creator: Jump between Archetype, Power Sets, Costumes, and Character ID in any order without losing progress.
• New Powers Customization screen, for adjusting powers and previewing animations.
• Select colors and themes for each individual power, or apply it to the entire power set!
• Preview live animations of all powers, showing the selected Theme and color choices.
• Save and Load Theme settings for each powerset, saving colors and selections for all powers.

Costume slots: Your active costume slot is stored when you log off will be the costume slot used when you log back in. It will also display that costume in the character selection screen.

_______________________________________________

Powerset Proliferation: More power sets are now in the hands of Archetypes who couldn’t use them previously!
Archetype – Blasters
• Radiation Blast

Archetype – Brutes
• Claws

Archetype – Controllers
• Cold Domination

Archetype – Corruptors
• Archery
• Trick Arrow

Archetype – Defenders
• Assault Rifle
• Traps

Archetype – Dominators
• Earth Assault

Archetype -Masterminds
• Thermal Radiation

Archetype -Scrappers
• Electric Melee
• Electric Armor

Archetype -Tankers
• Electric Melee
• Electric Armor

Archetype -Stalkers
• Broadsword

_______________________________________________

Enhanced Difficulty Options: The old notoriety system has been removed and replaced with a new difficulty system of independent settings. You can now fine-tune the difficulty levels of the missions you play by telling the game exactly how you want to be treated:
• Choose to fight monsters between a -1 to +4 level difference from the player’s level.
• Choose to set your personal team size (1-8).
• Choose if you want bosses to scale down to Lieutenants when soloing or not
• Choose to have AVs scale down to EBs.

The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled. Actual team size overrides any difficulty setting, so you will always get Arch-Villains if the team has 6 or more members. The difficulty setting is per task, so personal team member sizes do not add together.

You can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.’s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

_______________________________________________

Sidekicking Changes: Super-Sidekicking! One player can now sidekick or exemplar the whole team, everyone can always play together!
• Each player in the group’s level is set to the level of the owner of the active team task. If no team task is selected, everyone in the group’s level will be set to the level of the team leader.
• When the team level changes, players will be notified via a dialog and have the option to quit the team or immediately accept. The dialog will time out after 30 seconds at which point acceptance is implied.
• While in the pending state, players cannot receive rewards and any critters they damage will be worth no experience.
• Players can choose to auto-accept team level changes 0 to 50 levels above or below their current level.
• Exemplars will now earn XP and a level capped person will get XP converted into influence like exemplars used to.

Recently I was having a convo with another gaming friend when they mentioned all the games they were currently playing. There was a closed beta and Everquest 2 mentioned, I said I have been playing EVE steady since I started two months ago. Then she (yes, hot gamerchick, relax) bragged, “You are playing one game while I am playing FIVE!” I quickly defended myself, unsure why, but I started to explain how I am just about to finish up a skill that enables me to fly battleships.

She asked me if I had the loot to buy one, I responded yes. And one of the only reasons why I had that money is that I dedicated time to gathering it. If I was jumping from game to game I might have the hundred million Isk or I might not.

I explained how I am an endgame player and like to see things through, how I wish I had the hours in the day to play five games. Then it occurred to me, that even if I had the time, I wouldn’t. Same aspect as EVE based skills, focusing on one until its finished then start another. I wouldn’t dare take out a skill from the queue until it finished unless I desperately needed another one, or it was a quick level one.

I tailor my gaming hobby in the same fashion; I don’t need another game once I settle into a good one. I usually meet a good group, which I have and try to get the most out of the game and my new relationships. I spoke about my corp, nice core group of guys and I was trying to share her enthusiasm, meanwhile my friend goes on to blab about how her guild in EQ2 is the oldest guild on the server. I was getting nowhere, I chalked it to her being happy about her games.

I know quite a few people that play multiple games, are they really progressing or just playing as a casual gamer with hardcore habits. Not judging. I feel that variety is the spice of life but also dedication is the mother of mastery. Nick Yee over at The Daedallus Project posted an interesting article on the lifespan of a mMO gamer in a chart form. How the discovery period arches up into the mastery portion, simply to nosedive into burnout and ultimately tapering off into casual gaming. And I know this person has left a few well geared top level characters in the dust, so have I.

This could be why many gamers burn out in general, too focused and not diverse enough. I love pizza but would get sick of it if I ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week. Why do some not have the same reaction to video games? I could play (insert game here) for one week and still be excited about day eight and nine. I do get to a point in mmo’s that I feel that I’m just grinding to be par with the joneses and just keep replacing good gear with good gear but with slightly better stats.

MMORPG’s are tough games to master, they take time and commitment to progress; there really is never an “endgame” since game companies continue to add content. Once you hit a certain level and think you have it licked, game developers release a patch or an expansion to “keep you on the treadmill”. It’s all about growth and customer retention to them. That is the focus of every business out there, keep your clients and get new ones.

This might be shades of the dichotomy between the “’ardcore” and the “casual”. For me personally, I am a commitment-phobic person, however, when I finally do commit it is for a long time. I have a graveyard of mmo’s that I have played casually, some I just can’t bring myself to delete. I have maybe…five mmo’s installed on my rig as we speak and play one. I am committed to EVE, for now, although I am looking forward to a few games for the future. My skillplan spills into 2010 and by the time it finishes I will have almost every bell and whistle for my fleet of cruisers and battleship. One thing that I loved about EVE from the start is that I don’t have to be online to progress; it just takes time, not pressing W or a mouse. Better yet, I can stack market orders and make money while I sleep, that’s a good thing.

I do not have tunnelvision, looking forward I am really excited to play Dragon Age in November and Epic Mickey is going to be announced next month. There is an article in this month’s Game Informer as a teaser. Don’t ask me why I am looking forward to it, I just have a hunch that it’s going to be cool. I’ll keep you posted.

Until then…

Play safe,

Frank

“Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.” Sun Tzu

There was a big to-do in the Champions Online forums on launch day. The Cryptic team decided to push a sweeping patch that cut many players’ defenses by a significant amount, while at the same time increasing the damage done by the low level henchmen NPCs. Regardless if you were affected by the patch, or not, or whether you think it was a necessary change to a game that was too-easy, it was an abrupt and sweeping change to the balance of the game.

What’s the big deal about tweaking the defense? Because MMO combat isn’t about teamwork. It’s not about healing. It’s not about crowd control. It’s not about aggro. It’s not about the Holy Trinity. It’s not about skill. It’s not about build.

MMO combat is all about defense.

More accurately, MMO combat is about ALL of those things, but all those things are all about defense.

Ok, that was overly dramatic, but it is true. Taunts, heals, mezzes, stuns, roots and resists, pretty much all your MMO powers aside from attacks, are all about mitigating damage. I categorize defenses into two categories: passive mitigation (where you affect yourself to stop the enemies from hurting you) and active mitigation (where you do something to the enemy to stop them from doing damage to you).

Passive Defenses

• Dodge
• Resists
• Heals
• Buffs
• Blocking (if your game has active blocking)
• Line of Sight/corner pulls
• Movement powers
• Stealth

Active Mitigation

• Taunts
• Debuffs
• Stuns, mezzes and roots
• Knockback/down
• Offense/damage/debuffs

You may have noticed that I threw offense and damage in with the active mitigation. Dead enemies can’t shoot back and thus, the ability to kill your enemies quickly, before they can do you any real harm, is a good form of defense. Picture an encounter where you are facing 10 lower level NPCs who can each do you 10 points of damage per second. That’s 100 damage per second vs. your 300 hit points, which might be a problem, except you have an area effect opener attack that will kill 8 of your enemies. All of a sudden the fight goes from difficult to trivial, because you can mitigate 80% of the damage instantly.

Of course, offense is the way to ultimately win the fight. When we talk about mitigation, damage is the thing we are trying to mitigate… yet it is also a form of mitigation. The point is that the two concepts are coupled very tightly and in a way that might surprise you.

Every character (and team) has a slightly different set of mitigation tools available to him and those tools vary in effectiveness based on the situation, but also the game balance set by the designers. Every character also has the ability to win the combat by offense and this is also the one mitigation tool they all have as well.

Let’s take a game where defenses are too good — heals are very powerful, dodges and resists are too high. In this situation, offense makes a poor mitigation power, because you can’t kill anyone fast enough to nullify their damage. However, you still need offense to win a battle. In this case, you see characters and teams striving to get more offense, because they need it to push past the overpowered defenses of their opponents.

So, in a game where stealth is too effective a defense, you see people countering with more perception. In a game where opponents can dodge 95% of incoming attacks, people counter with accuracy bonuses, or debuffs. In games where heals and resists reign, you see people getting more and more damage to compensate. More defense means people compensate with more offense… makes sense.

Now, let’s take a game where defenses are too weak — heals don’t quite keep up with typical incoming damage, resists aren’t great, movement and stealth are designed such that you can’t escape a fight gone bad. In this case, you still need offense to win a battle, but you probably have enough of it without tweaking your build. However, because the other forms of mitigation are so poor, you find that damage has also become your best form of defense and thus, you need more of it.

In this game, you see alpha strikes and powerful AoEs rule the battlefield. No one can stand up to any concerted attempt to kill them, so the goal becomes do as much damage as fast as possible before the other guy. Strangely enough, less defense generally means people compensate with more offense.

Somewhere in that continuum is a sweet spot, where the relative power of offense vs. defense is matched such that sometimes it is better to have the heal, buff, or dodge, and other times it is better to kill your enemies with a massive alpha strike. That sweet spot is hard to find and some games never find it. Time will tell if the Champions Online devs are getting closer to that perfect balance, or not. Until then, I would definitely take a really, really big AoE.

Chicago, Illinois – Disney announces it’s latest acquisition of Wideload Games. Along with the buy of Wideload they acquire entrepreneur game designer Alex Seropian who founded Bungie studios. As reported from Kotaku.com, the buy of Seropian’s studio is following Disney’s acquisition of Marvel Entertainment last month for $4 billion.

Alex Seropian will oversee the creative development of  six video game studios under the Disney Interactive label. Nice job Alex!

Disney Interactive is publisher of such games as Hannah Montana Music Jam and Club Penguin and  Wideload Studios has published titles “Stubbs the Zombie Rebel Without a Pulse.” I never even heard of these games, but I know who Bungie is and what they are responsible for. The “Halo” franchise that was sold to Microsoft a little over three years ago and has since become a household word in the gaming industry.

Ok, now let’s look at this on paper.

Walt Disney’s money and media power…

Plus game developer and game studio manager extraordinaire Alex Seropian…

Plus the entire Marvel Universe and all it’s movie rights and game contracts that touch studios such as THQ and Gazillion…

Equals: Future gaming powerhouse.

I see some pretty big squares being taken on the chessboard. I am not saying that Blizzard and EA should start shaking in their shoes just yet, but expect something big coming from Disney in the near future. I am curious to find out what “Epic Mickey” will turn out to be.

Just one thing…no more Hannah Montana please, but a steampunk-style MMORPG created with Disney characters I will definately play. I don’t know about you, but I grew watching Disney cartoons and you really can’t beat Disney style art. After all, they are the grandfather of animation.

Thanks.

Play safe,

Frank

Disclaimer: I originally posted this in the Champions Online forums, where it was quickly buried under gripe posts. I grabbed it, added a little and posted it here so that it would see the light of day. For those of you playing Champions Online and having trouble with the patch, I hope this post gives you some ideas and saves you grief.

Defender just got nerfed!!!

The launch day patch for Champions Online has hit many headstart beta players pretty hard and at least from the rumblings on the forums, a lot of folks are upset. I enjoyed the game during the open beta and the headstart, but I did remember thinking, “If I can defeat everything this easily and level this quickly, will this game have long term appeal?” Even so, logging in after the patch and playing some of my characters was pretty rough. The defenses upon which I relied now seemed like paper.

After a couple extended evenings of play, I have a few thoughts on the patch I would like to share. This is in no way intended to belittle those who are upset, or to suggest that everyone needs to scrap their concept build and switch to a min/maxed one. One of the things I like about CO is that you can have concept builds in the first place. These are just things to think about and possible suggestions that you might consider to have an easier time post-patch.

0. Take a deep breath — The patch is pretty ugly and sudden. Things probably went a little too far and I think we will see corrections in the future that will make people happier. This seems to be Cryptic’s MO. Ultimately, things will get better from here and once a few more patches come down the line, the game will be better overall.

1. Switch out Personal Force Field for Regeneration — I have a couple of characters that were PFF users and it seems to have been hit much harder than regeneration. There are several reasons for this, but I think the main one is that PFF repairs too slowly to be useful in extended fights. If a fight is over quickly, PFF wins, but you probably didn’t need it anyway; Regeneration is better for most fights now.

If you are building your character on a concept, then Regeneration is nice simply because it does not have any noticable graphics with it, thus the fact that you are hard to hurt could be explained with almost any effect, including “I have a force field… you just can’t see it.”

2. Don’t Ignore the Little Guy Anymore — I think a lot of the problem soloers are having have to do with the damage henchmen are doing. Most builds with any passive defense could stand in a small sea of henchmen with little fear. Doing that now is suicide in most cases; the damage the henchmen will do to you is significant. You need to mitigate this damge to survive the pull.

3. Big AoE Damage Helps — One way to do this is to kill as many henchmen in a group as quickly as you can. AoE damage is a great way to do this and so the mines in Power Armor and Munitions are good, as is the Gadget chainsaw and the Force explosion. Once you deal with the henchmen, and thus have reduced all that incoming damage, you can now deal with the tougher opponents.

AoE damage gets rid of the riff-raff quickly

4. Get a Crowd Control Power — Aside from PvP, I saw little need for crowd control pre-patch. Post-patch, you should consider picking up a CC power. Most sets have one, or you can dip into another pool if it makes sense. In a spawn of three, hold one and start working on the other two. If you can defeat one enemy before the hold ends, you have effectively reduced your incoming damage by a third… that’s great damage mitigation for a single power pick! If your set has holds that affect multiple enemies, even better.

5. Throw Stuff — Even for characters without Super Strength, throwing stuff is a great opener. It is a low endurance attack with potential knockdown and area of effect. For certain characters, throwing stuff really doesn’t make sense, “This is my scrawny telepath, Eat Mailbox Man”. If you can conceive of your character tossing a lamppost at enemies, try it.

6. Team More — Yeah, I know everyone wants to make the lone-wolf hero, but teaming is a great way to cover holes in your build without breaking your character concept (unless your concept is the “Shadowy, Anti-Social Avenger”). You don’t have AoE mines and don’t want them? Find a munitions guy and team up. Can’t be bothered with crowd control? Ask The Mesmerist if he wants to team.

7. Turn Off Hyperactive Ferret Mode — We were teaming the other night, getting our butts kicked when I realized, the game had changed, but we hadn’t changed our behavior. We were still charging into quest areas, scattering, and aggroing half the bad guys, heedless of danger. Slow down, just a little.

On a team, that means staying together and taking a brief rest between fights. It doesn’t mean a nap after every pull, just enough time to stop, make sure everyone is still here and no one has gotten dragged into another battle, and take the 10 seconds or so so that your “rest” healing kicks in. I think (though I am not 100% sure of this) that no one on your team gets their out of combat healing until the entire team is out of combat. Also, that few seconds allows Personal Force Field time to repair, and cuts time off of cooldowns for certain powers. All good stuff.

When solo, this means taking a few seconds before combat to assess the situation. How many opponents are there? Are there groups nearby I am going to aggro? Do I have an escape route if things go bad? Instead of Superjumping into the middle of a dangerous area, try starting on the edge and killing your way into your target. While adventuring in a tight spot, pay special attention to enemies that wander, or will respawn behind you.

8. Learn to Juggle — Many attack powers have useful secondary effects (holds, fears, knockbacks). Take Telepathy for example. The Ego Blast power applies a hold to its victim. This is great against a single opponent, but against three, you may find yourself taking more damage than you would like. One useful tactic is juggling, which means quickly tab-targeting between the enemies and hitting them so that your effect can be applied to all of them before you start your main attack. So, your attack sequence might look like this:

So easy even a child can do it

Target baddie #1
Long charged blast
Tab Target baddie #2
Short blast
Tab Target baddie #3
Short blast
Tab Target baddie #1
Start your regular attack sequence

Of course, this depends on the specific attack and your energy situation. In the case of Ego Blast, you can be charging the kill shot on Baddie #1 as he comes awake. You will still take damage, but a heck of a lot less than if you would have just charged and spammed attacks on Baddie #1 until he was dead.

9. Get a Heal — Just like holds, I never saw much need for a heal pre-patch. Post-patch, the game plays a little closer to a traditional MMO in that everyone needs access to healing. This could be a matter of teaming more, but if you are trying to make your character an island unto himself, you need a heal. There are heals in the Telepathy, Gadget, Martial Arts, Supernatural and Sorcery sets. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages. Unless I was creating a team healer, I would be wary of maintained heals (that break on damage) and heals that scale with Presence (since you probably don’t have it). That still leaves lots of options for you to try and if none of those powers suit you, remember you can craft healing consumables as you level your crafting skill.

10. Consider an Escape Power — If all else fails, you may need to escape and leave the field to your enemies. Teleport is insanely good at this, as is tunneling, but is not very concept friendly. I have had a bit of success with superjump, swinging and to a lesser extent acrobatics, since all of them have a nice jump component that can be used to open the distance quickly. Flight is horrible at escaping, though I can occassionally escape by going straight up. I haven’t tried superspeed yet, so I cannot comment.

However, you don’t need one of the “class A” travel powers to escape combat. The Smoke Bomb power will drop aggro for several seconds and Evasive Maneuvers, if slotted with an advantage, will do so 50% of the time, on a 17 second cooldown. Also, if the worst happens, you can get away with a little bit of forethought… you did plan an escape route after all, didn’t you? One of the best tactics is to fight near a corner or doorway, using it to cover your escape until your travel power kicks into “non-combat” gear.

11. Watch the Runner — When teaming (or when multiple players are nearby) one NPC out of any group will say, “I am going for reinforcements” and head to the nearest other group and aggro them. This guy then brings his friends and suddenly, instead of fighting three enemies, you are facing six. Stop that guy! It is often tough to kill him before he gets to the next group, and if you chase him, you risk wandering into the aggro range of yet another spawn. If you have crowd control powers, a root, a snare, or a knockdown, this is the time to use it. Assign “runner duty” to the guy on your team best equipped to handle the runner and make sure he doesn’t get to that next spawn.

12. Get Under Control — A friend of mine who absolutely rules CoX is having quite a bit of trouble playing CO. We talked about it and even went as far as swapping accounts to look at each others’ builds and try them out. While I admit that his characters were more fragile than I would like, I found I had considerably less problems than he said he was having. I think one reason for this is that he is a “clicker”, meaning he uses his mouse to click powers instead of using the keyboard. Not a big deal, even in a fast game like CoH, but it seems to me that CO ramps up the speed even further and that extra second or two to get to the click heal, or to fire the AoE could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Consider working your keybinds to get all the important powers on the 1-5 keys, the alt 1-5 keys, as well as Q, E, R, X, and C. Move non-timely stuff to keys further from your driving hand. Or… and I have not tried this myself, invest in a 360-style controller and play the game that way. Everyone I have talked to that has tried it has indicated that “the game is made for it” and that they have had an easier time since switching from mouse and keyboard.

13. Pets Do Help — The general opinion on the CO forums is that pets stink. I agree that there are tons of problems with pets. My Gadgeteer bots have a disturbing tendency to get stuck or lost and I have to unsummon/resummon them way too often. My wolves seem to be better at following me, but have the disturbing tendency to eat any crates, boxes and cars they find. Nonetheless, on characters where pets make sense, I have found them helpful. The bots do decent AoE damage, and the wolves do a good job of grabbing and holding aggro… to the point where they can almost tank a master or super villain. They will die during a tough fight, but not before my head-start in damage has already decided the outcome.

Anyway, I hope some of these tips will help ease your way through Millenium City. Good hunting heroes, and I hope I helped you avoid this fate…

Mmmmm... asphault flavored asphault