Generally speaking, whenever an MMOG company closes down servers it is seen as a bad thing.  A very bad thing for a variety of reasons.  At best it was in a lapse in judgment, and at worst shuttering servers is seen as the beginning of the end.  Most companies recognize this, and attempt to explain why it is a necessary step, or a temporary solution to the underlying population problem.  Not Sony.  To Sony the upcoming closure of 12 servers is an “overwhelming success.”

To be fair the company explains that the success isn’t the closure of the servers, but a campaign that the company started a few weeks ago to consolidate users.  The Free Character Transfer Service went off so well that Sony Online Entertainment will be closing the following dozen servers on October 15 at 5:00 PM PDT to consolidate the population.

• Corbantis
• Europe-Infinity
• Intrepid
• Kauri
• Kettemoor
• Lowca
• Naritus
• Scylla
• Tarquinas
• Tempest
• Valcyn
• Wanderhome

Characters on those servers have until October 15th to move to one of the 13 remaining servers, or risk being unable to access all content and even their Station Access account.  Under the service players will be granted one free transfer to any of the baker’s dozen of servers.

Note: This article is a rewrite from my previous post on mmorpg.com, but because I am on this “Memorable Moments” kick, I wanted to share it here.

My regular gaming group has been playing City of Heroes since Beta. Many of these guys were comics fans, but not heavy computer gamers, and only a few had played an MMO. Nonetheless, CoX struck a chord with them and they have become what I would consider hardcore gamers, multi-boxing and forming uber farm teams that steamroll mobs and missions to keep the XP flowing like water. Teaming with them is great XP and it is fun… for a while, but at some point, you realize you are missing the game. Of course, these guys have already seen it all, and done it all, or don’t care to do it, because it isn’t good enough XP. Unfortunately, having closed and opened my CoX account more times than I can count over the past 5 years, I have seen and done very little and so when I return to CoX, I would really like to experience some of the actual game outside of purple, 8-man, Council spawns.

To experience the rest of the game, I created a new character on the heavily populated Freedom server and decided that I would level to 50 in pick-up groups with only the occassional interlude of soloing. Thus a new Plant/Storm controller, Song of Land and Sky, was born. Yes, the name is fruity… horribly so. Unfortunately, naming a new character on Freedom is like being in a bar at closing time, you take what you can get… or go home alone and end up making a scrapper named xxG.O.K.Uxx. Faced with those two choices, I downed one more beer, stuck with the hippie nature goddess and dug deep into the name barrel.

After a few solo runs and some PUGs in the Hollows (which everyone hates, but honestly, I love), I had Song up to level 16 and she was quite effective. One night, after someone’s last mission was completed and the team had broken up, I was standing around, deciding whether to solo one or two more missions, or head to bed, I received that fateful tell that all defenders and controllers get in their careers.

“Can you heal? We need another healer.”

I sadly replied that I did not in fact, heal, but instead brought confusion and holds to the table. I figured this would kill the conversation, but surprisingly I got another tell:

“That might work. We are fighting CoT.” And along came the invite.

I should have been wary. See, excepts in very specific circumstances, I feel that most teams in CoX don’t need healers. In fact, in most cases, if you have a defender or controller on your team and you relegate them to healing duty, you are likely making them less useful to your cause than if you allowed them to unleash their full slate of buffs, debuffs and holds. Healing can be useful in CoX, but more often, it is the security blanket of the barely competent. Now remember, this guy indicated his team needed another healer. Not a healer, but another one.

It’s amazing how a single word in a sentence can conjure up whole scenarios. I started picturing scrappers charging headlong into hordes of purples, crazed fire blasters firing Rain of Aggro… I mean Rain of Fire on the second spawn, “just in case.”  I saw tanks with crappy defenses and defenders without buffs. Oh and team wipes. I saw lots and lots of team wipes…

Sign me up!!!! This was just the kind of epic PUG train wreck I was looking for! I accepted, greeted the team and headed straight to the mission door.

Once in, we were faced with a gaggle of level 19 purple CoT. The first few battles went… ok. Slow, but steady and we didn’t get into too much trouble. However, the first room we came to, we were faced with three Ruin Mages and their minions. Before anyone could say anything about a plan, the tank (obviously heady with success) charged into the middle of the room, aggroed all three Mages and they just pummeled him flat without giving any of us time to react.

When the bad guys turned to face the rest of us, I moved to block the doorway and fired my Seeds of Confusion, hoping to buy us a little time to flee. Success!!! Ok… let me rephrase that… Moral Victory!!! The seeds missed everyone and I bought the team a whole 0.3 seconds with my graceful death flop to the concrete. In what had to be less than 10 seconds, everyone was at the hospital heading back to the mission.

You know it is going to be a long night when you find yourself thinking how convenient it is that the hospital is less than 300 yards from the door.

Now, the tank is talking about finding another healer and though I usually try to stay off the soapbox, I felt the need to point out that healing wouldn’t have helped much in that room. No healer of our level would have had time to even click the heal button, let alone keep up with that onslaught.

We decided to pull.

Generally, I am not a fan of the corner pull in CoX. It’s dull and there are a lot of folks who are so used to pull tactics from other games, that they do it out of habit without realizing that CoX is supposed to be about big, messy, noisy battles where you blast a dozen foes while getting knocked 100 ft. into the next spawn. So once a team has established that they can kill whatever enemy they are fighting, I always advocate against the corner pull. In this case, our team was not going to be able to take the level of foe we were fighting, and so discretion was called for.

The first few pulls go well. The tank draws some aggro, a few of the CoT peel off and he drags them around the corner where the rest of us pounce. Unfortunately, pulling also takes a little bit of discipline and people inevitably get antsy. So once the immediate threat of death is over, “corner” pulling degrades into “hallway” pulling, degrades into “at the door of the room” pulling, degrades into “I will go with you pulling”. At some point, our dark defender was essentially following the tank into the room while he pulled, which was fine until he forgot that he had his enemy-debuffing heal power on autofire.

So the tank and defender wander into the room, the defender debuffs a random enemy, he panics, runs into another group, while tab-targetting a third group. The tank is oblivious and he is bringing us a fourth group. And you end up eating lunch in a hospital bed… but at least there’s Jello!

We head back and surprisingly, we’ve learned our lesson. The non-pullers stay back somewhat and we have a couple good pulls and start slogging through the room pull by pull. Hey, debt’s gone… time to make more!

This team-wipe was absolutely my fault. We had mostly cleared one of the rooms and had charged the last group. Everyone is pretty comfortable now and the tank is grabbing their attention, the defender is debuffing and healing, the blasters and scrappers are blasting and scrapping. I am spamming confuse and holds and when my paltry endurance bar allows, I fire an extra attack. It is tough, but we are doing well.

Suddenly, I see a flash of red in the corner of my screen. It seems we have an add or perhaps a runner. No worries, I figure, I can take care of him. So I dash after him, around the corner and am instantly gutted by the dozen or so of his buddies sitting there just out of sight. I turn to get out of there, but I don’t react in time. The enemies see me and aggro to me, kill me and then proceed to roll up the rest of the team.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bloodstains out of Lycra? But at least there’s Jello!

Ok, lesson learned… no need to be the hero… or at least use some stealth when doing stupid crap.

A few more battles and we have our collective stuff together. The fights are still tough, but we are in a groove and are moving from group to group. We cap a couple more groups and head into the next hallway. I am following the tank closely when we walk through a doorway and stumble into the annual CoT National Convention (held in a sewer near you). Obviously, there was a memo circulated that said there would be doughnuts at this meeting because I think every CoT in the game was in attendance. Strangely enough, this doesn’t cause another team wipe. We pull the CoT through the door and the controllers manage to get the fight under control. As the enemy comes through, they are held, confused, debuffed and subsequently slaughtered. The doorway is clear; we are still standing…

And that’s when the dozen or so Unbound Nictus start pouring through…

Not a Kheldian in sight, but somehow, we spawn a Crystal. And while we were valiantly fighting the CoT, what we didn’t see is that there were two crystals spawning their little black clouds of death the entire time. There are at least a dozen of them and they make quick work of our unprepared team.

Back to the hospital… again… and again… and… by now, I am ready to punch Bill Cosby right in the face if he even mentions Jello.

See, those crystals had built up quite a head of steam and had filled the antechamber with nictus and as quickly as we can kill the nictus, the crystals keep pumping them out. The only way to win would be to zip through the mass of enemies to get to the two crystals and destroy them. We would have to run a pretty deadly gauntlet.

So, the team gathers and makes the plan, no one engages the nictus. We head straight through to the crystals and everyone focus fire on one until it is dead. Right!

And we do. Everyone follows the plan perfectly and we manage to luckily get past the dark nictus clouds without dying. We see the crystal and the team follows the tank’s lead and piles on, laying a nice amount of damage down. Of course, all the while, our health bars are dropping and many of the team are dead, or very close before we manage to nuke the crystal and then…

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh right, forgot about the blowy uppy thing when you kill one of the crystals… and presumably our blaster has never seen it because she is dead and spouting a whole load of WTF!!! on the team chat. Back to the hospital, but by now, I was giggling like a schoolgirl at every encounter.

The final door is in sight. Victory is ours with just one more room! Everyone is feeling pretty good as we open that last door, but beyond is the toughest room yet. Three large groups with bosses in a tight bunch, and all of them are staring at us, daring us to cross the threshold.

It is at this time that my own boss, my wife, gently reminded me that it was 1:00 am in the morning and the baby was awake and perhaps I should tend to him… like right now. And so sadly, I had to leave my team in the lurch. I wonder if they ever got that other healer?

It might sound like I had a miserable time. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I had a great time. The mission was hard. The players were fun and did a nice job given the circumstances. I was laughing the whole time. This is why I will always have fond memories of CoX and why I rolled on Freedom!!

I enjoyed Anarchy Online for several months. I never got that far, I think because AO is not forgiving to alt-mongers like me, but I did end up with a mid-level scout which was pretty fun to play. One of my scout’s earlier adventures involved exploring the Temple of Three Winds, one of the early dungeons in the game. So picture my lowbie scout and my friend (playing who knows what) slowly sneaking through the chambers and hallways of a cult-infested temple. There are only two of us, and we really have no idea what to expect here, so we are carefully picking our way through, hoping not to draw too much aggro.

At one point, we find ourselves in a long sloping corridor lined with alcoves. Many of the alcoves contain cultists that will aggro as you go by… we found that out by running headlong down the corridor the first time. This time, we are inching forward, taking a few at a time… not the fastest method, but we are making progress. After clearing the corridor, we are resting a bit to regain our strength when all of a sudden, a player comes running past us. Zoom! Straight by us, doesn’t turn, says nothing, seems to be going pretty fast (sprinting).

(Keep in mind that, though AO has instances, the dungeons are open zones and so you are exploring with other players, competing for spawns and generally getting in each others’ way.)

Anyway, this guy shoots past us and as I turned and watched him zip down the hallway, I remember thinking, “Hmm… I wonder what that was about,”  when a second player trucks on by. I was just about to type something to my friend, when I see in chat

“run”

I look up at the screen and the hallway is now filled with cultists. That’s why those guys were doing their best Jesse Owens imitation up the hallway. There had to be thirty of them. They were everywhere. I run. I take big chunks of damage. I curse. Fortunately most of the bad guys have continued down the hallway, hot on the heels of their original prey. Unfortunately, I am separated from my friend, badly wounded, and two (three? I can’t remember) of the baddies are on me. I am desperately trying to lay some damage down while healing myself. I manage to kill one of the two enemies, but I am down to a sliver of health.

I retreat a few more steps into a chamber with four columns. Inspiration strikes and I duck behind a column. The bad guy follows me, but he is obviously confused by the obstacle. I duck out, fire an attack and then zip back around the pillar. He is damaged, and I am not (yet) dead, so I try it again.  We end up dancing around the pillars, me firing off attacks and getting just enough time to heal to counter the damage he is doing back to me. Boom! Attack, duck, attack, duck, desperate heal, attack… He’s dead!!

I am alive with my sliver of health intact!! I survived the massive train.

I am about to ask my friend how he did, when I see in chat

“TRAIN TO DOOR!!!”

Now you warn everyone!!!

Stupid as it sounds, I miss open dungeons and trains… nostalgia, I’m sure.

Cryptic Studios announced that Blood Moon will be Champions Online first seasonal celebration when it is released to servers on October 27.  Although seasonal event probably isn’t the correct term for the CO version of Halloween.  Instead of ushering in a time of zombies, ghouls, ghosts, werewolves and other related diversions, which are coming mind you, the developer is also preparing an all new Power Set!

The Celestial Power Set is a new set that toons will be able to use to call the power of Serphim to “heal and strengthen your allies, or release the fury of the Nephilim.”  The four listed abilities change depending on the nature of one’s target.

Other distractions include:

• A zombie apocalypse in Canada.  If your hero dies during the skirmish it will rise again as a zombie to attack other players!
• Battles against wolf packs.  Just a single bite and you’ll be infected by their dark magic.
• Freeing the undead souls of those who perished during the Battle of Detroit.
• A chance to confront the Undying Lord himself.

There is a chill wind blowing through Millennium City. It’s late October and the moon has taken on a sinister aspect, staining the sky a bloody red. The superhero Witchcraft, of the Champions, warns that this is a dire portent of an approaching mystical threat. There have been sightings of strange creatures emerging across the world, those of savage werewolves and flesh-craving zombies. Even worse, they bear with them the tidings of a great evil returning to the world… Takofanes, the Undying Lord!

When Takofanes last strode across North America he killed all who crossed him to swell the ranks of his undead army. The first attempt America’s superheroes made to stop him resulted in the death of half a dozen of them. A second more concentrated attempt managed to drive Takofanes from the battlefield, but he could not be defeated. Now Takofanes has returned once again with hordes of his minions, citing prophecies of doom and proclaiming his coming reign over humanity!

We’ll post a follow-up with video promotion when it becomes available.

Every once in a while I tend to go out on a tangent and write a post that’s not MMO related.  Today is another one of those days.

Yesterday I finally got a chance to watch the new Stargate series called Stargate Universe.  Now before I get into it allow me to give you some background on my SG experiences.  I’ve only seen the movie once, thought it was ok, and never watched more than 5 mins of any of the previous series cause they looked cheesy as hell, Power Rangers cheesy.  So you can call me a Stargate noob since I don’t really know any of it’s history.  But I do love me some good sci-fi and since it looked pretty good in the commercials I thought I’d give it a try.  On another note, I’d say Battlestar Galactica was my favorite series of all time so I was hoping that SGU would be its replacement show.   Apparently not.

The show starts off interesting enough, then flashes back to show us how everyone got there.  This is where we’re introduced to Eli, a pudgy gamer who happens to be a genius and solves a mathematical proof while playing some sort of video game.   This was the first tipoff that the shows was going to be horrible.   Who the hell wrote this? Some Stargate fanboy high school dropout gamer?  I’m sorry, but solving a mathematical proof in a video game is not possible.  Forget about the logistics of how you would even go about integrating a extremely complex math problem into a graphical video game, but how the f*ck would the game know that the answer is right if it was never solved in the first place.  Seconds after he solves it the doorbell rings and we see a guy in a military uniform and are introduced to Rush, the genius mathematician that wasn’t smart enough to solve the equation himself, but smart enough to integrate it into a video game.  Hmm, maybe if he didn’t spend all his time doing that he could have actually solved it himself.

The conversation that follows was so ridiculous  I started to think maybe the show was going to be a comedy spoof of Stargate.  Sadly it is not.

After being beemed to a spaceship that’s orbiting Earth, he meets some other people and is then beemed to another planet where the military is working on a Stargate they found.  First of all, what year is this?  Is SGU supposed to be present day?  The video game he was playing sure looked it it.  Do people know about the space ship or the other planet?  Nothing was explained which would have been very helpful.

If everything was a secret, then the show can just end now cause it’s a huge pile of crap.  Why the hell were there civilians everywhere if it was a secret?  Why would you invite a Senator and his daughter?  Oh, she’s your assistant, ok, here’s access to top secret information about our space ships and colonization of an alien planet.  But it’s ok, she’s your assistant and daughter.

Seriously WTF is wrong with the writers.

Next there is an attack on the planet where the Stargate is by some unknown alien race.  Again I don’t know anything about how Stargates work, but the reactor that generates power for the Stargate was damaged in the attack and when it blew up the entire planet exploded.   Can someone explain this to me?   Can someone please explain to me how a reactor that is so powerful that it can blow up an entire planet is so ill protected that a few attackers with laser missiles can blow it up.  Maybe there was an external exhaust pipe that lead all the way to the core and one of the alien attackers used the force to get a direct hit.  Come on, that was ok 40 yrs ago, but not today.

The stupidity continued after all the survivors from the military base jump into the Stargate to end up on some alien ship that has been traveling for millions of years without any crew.  Aside from Eli bugging the sh#t out of me with his “humor”, I didn’t understand why everyone was mad at Rush.  Did I miss something?  It seems like everyone jumped through the Stargate, then everyone was mad at him because he spoke first.

More stupid sci-fi cliches continued as you had Rush and Eli reading and being able to use alien computers without the slightest knowledge of what they were actually doing.  I’m sorry, but it takes me a few mins to figure out a Mac yet alone a computer thats 100 million years old, but it’s ok Eli’s good at vidoe games.

As the series opener I don’t think it could have gone worse.  They need to kill off Eli and fire the writers if they want to save this show, the’re both terrible.  Considering just how horrible the writing was, I actually think everyone aside from Eli did a pretty decent job, but still the series opener for Stargate Universe sucked.

“Does anyone have a spare 10 million Isk I could borrow?” – random blurb seen in EVE Online rookie chat.

I’m sure along the lines of your mMO’ career you have run into the occasion where you are short a couple of gold, Isk or gil for something; it happens to us all. But if you’re like me you will be damned before you are going to ask for 1 red cent in local or regional chat, regardless of how bad you need it. This problem is usually solved by rummaging around our bags or banks for something to sell to an npc for the small bit we need. If that isn’t possible we might possibly lower ourselves to ask our guild or a close friend (in private chat).

Some people make a career out of begging. In real life and in virtual, some aren’t as fortunate as others and I am a sucker for someone who is in a bad position. An old friend of mine would de-brief me whenever we went out to the city. “And NO money to bums!” she would say with a furrowed set of eyebrows. Usually by the end of the night I would find my way to some homeless man or woman and put some money in their hands as she would roll her eyes. Call me a sucker or a bleeding heart.

Although when it comes to virtuality I am one of those folks who read someone’s plead in chat, “Just 5 gold preeeeeze!” only to find myself typing “Go farm!” or “Grind!” I guess that is where my soft-heartedness ends. That is nothing compared to the tirades of abuse that other players give a person who begs in public chat. Heavens forbid that YOU BEGGED IN PUBLIC CHAAAT!!! @.@ !!!

“Slit your wrists!” or “Go die in a fire noob!” were the typical responses and these are the more politically correct ones I choose to enter here. Have we no mercy? No kindness for our fellow man or woman in need?

Nahhh. We farm like everyone else does! Money always comes easy to some of us; we get online sometimes specifically to run our route of dailies or crafting to make ends meet. Or we might be virtual entrepreneurs and find an unexploited fresh market to expand our wallets quickly. Tobold has a rune business, I have a missile business and I’m sure you have your own type of revenue stream. Whatever it is we find ways and means to make enough money to sustain ourselves. We look at our accounts and feel confident only to end up looking down on someone just because YOU BEGGED IN PUBLIC CHAAATT! @.@!!!

Granted some can be very annoying and sometimes downright offensive. I remember one of the ploys in Ogrimmar was someone opening trade to you and saying, “gold plz.” Eww…no…stopbeggin’ and have a fresh /ignore while you’re at it. Still here!?!?! Be gone, go away, shoo! How lazy can someone be? Well maybe they are role-playing a beggar (yeah ok sure). So how does the compassion I feel in real life differ from my virtual life?

Virtuality is set up so you can make money instantly. Sign on to new game: Level 1. Go outside, bop something on the head with your level 1 sword and sell whatever it drops for you when it dies. Take that back to Joe Blow NPC and sell it for whatever “The Code Gods” deem it is worth and walk away with more money as you started. Rinse twice and repeat. MMORPG’s have built in jobs and usually the economies are a joke, such as the economy in Warhammer. Economies are the glue that bond some online communities together and if they aren’t fully developed can break a game. :::cough:::War:::cough:::Hammer:::cough:::

I don’t understand how someone can have the finances to own the pc or console to play a mmorpg. Have the money to buy the game (considering you are not playing a free-to-play) and afford the monthly fee if there is one and not have the sense to JUST GO KILL SOMETHING! Virtual economics couldn’t be easier to get ahead. It’s not like you have to work to keep a roof over your head or feed a family of four, we just need enough to buy the next (insert paper doll slot here). If we don’t have the money then oh well; go out with our level 60 sword and bop something on the head until it dies … blah, blah, blah. You get the idea – rinse twice and repeat.

In virtual economies many of the same real-space rules of finance apply. Words like: Saving, supply, demand, sell, buy and labor all have a place in our vocabularies. If you want something then work for it by saving your money and (labor) grind out the gold the old fashioned way. I am an IGF: Italian Gold Farmer. If I want something bad enough I will sit there and kill whatever I can make the most on until I get what I want. Good old fashioned hard work, determination and stick-to-it-ness never hurt anybody. That is why when someone asks for money in public chat the roof caves in on them. Because each and every person on that server has at one time or another had to work for something and no one feels that they deserve anything given to them.

My advice for someone even remotely thinking about asking for money in public chat: Just don’t do it. If you are really short a few bits then go do a quick quest or sell something. If only it was that easy in real life, I would be out in the field right now whackin’ away at something and it would probably solve the world’s economic crisis. However, if I went out and killed some wolves in the wild I would end up getting arrested for trespassing on someone’s land. “I’m telling you, Your Honor I was on a quest and the farmer told me to kill five wolves and come back!” Times have changed and we don’t need to kill animals for their fur to survive anymore, instead it goes on rich women’s backs. That is another tirade entirely.

For the rich enchanter or the billionaire ship captain: it doesn’t hurt to pay it forward a little bit now and then. I am sure that someone has helped you out with something in your history that your readily couldn’t afford. Something that had changed your game experience just a tiny bit – think back and pay it forward.

Until then…

Play safe,

Frank

Today Vogster Entertainment, the developers behind the recently released MMORPG CrimeCraft, have announced a new subscription structure.  The changes will take effect towards the end of October and will include 2 subscription options and a unlimited free trial.

·        Unlimited Free Trial –New CrimeCraft players will be able to experience the major features of the game for free for as long as they want.

·        Varied Subscription Options – CrimeCraft will introduce a new Standard Subscription for $4.99/month in addition to the current $9.99/month Premium Subscription option. The major differences between the subscription levels is the extent of customization, skill slots, speed of experience gain and inventory capacity. Standard and Premium subscription features will also be showcased behind “velvet rope” areas to allow players to make a fully-informed subscription decision.

·       Seamless Transition – Players can seamlessly convert from a free trial to a paying account and switch between subscription levels. Features will be placed “on hold” or unlocked based on the current subscription level.

·        Original Gangsters – In appreciation of our current CrimeCraft customers, everyone that purchases the game between launch and the introduction of the free trial later this month will receive a third month of Premium Subscription at no cost, and a host of in-game rewards including an “Original Gangster” tag and icon for their characters as well as priority access to future content

The boxed version of CrimeCraft that is sold exclusively at Best Buy and FutureShop retail stores will remain the ideal way to jump into the world of Sunrise City. It now includes three free months of premium membership, an initial stake of 100 gold bars and access to exclusive in-game items – virtual apparel from Marc Ecko and Atticus Clothing, a discount card for in-game purchases and a combat backpack to expand carrying capacity.

Obviously sales and subscription numbers are not meeting expectations.   CrimeCraft was only released a little over a month ago on Aug 25th, so to see this kind of promotion this early on you know the game is in trouble.  If there are any CrimeCraft gamers reading this, we’d love to know the state of the game, so please write to us.

Aside from the new subscription options, Vogster is also planning the first major update also scheduled towards the end of Oct.

· Sunrise City Times – In-game newspaper that will feed information to the players concerning the latest news and happening in the game, including dynamic exploits by players and gangs.

· Your Name in Lights – In addition to making stars of players inside the newspaper feature, top ranked gangs and players will see their alter egos promoted on billboards.

· Titles Through Achievements – By completing certain difficult achievements, players will gain access to in-game icons and titles to make their character stand out and further communicate street credit and reputation.

· Kill the Boss Mode – A new PvE mode that allows players to cooperatively fight AI controlled enemies across every in-game map and take out bosses to get the best loot. This dramatically enhances the variety of environments for the highly praised PvE instances currently in the game.

· Storytellers – New Municipal Agent NPCs will provide a more in depth look at the back story that makes the universe of CrimeCraft a place of guns, gangs and intrigue.

· New NPC Gang and Mission Chains – A new NPC gang will offer additional missions and jobs.

· Player Loot Drops – Now players will be able to gain loot from participating in Riot Mode PvP, with the highest ranked players dropping more valuable loot if killed.

Patch 3.3 is on the test server! Lots of changes for classes and some game changes going in on this one. The notes reflect what we know so far. Looks like Rogues got some loving in this patch. Patch notes are listed below for your viewing pleasure.

General

·         Icecrown Citadel

o    The Forge of Souls, the first wing of the 5-player dungeon, is currently available for testing.

o    Additional Icecrown Citadel dungeon and raid content will be made available in future test builds.

·         Dazed: Creatures attacking a player from behind can no longer cause players level 1-5 to be dazed, and have a reduced chance to cause players level 6-10 to be dazed.

·         Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

Classes: General

·         Default Equipment: Starting weapons are now more uniform. Rogues now start with a pair of daggers equipped. All other classes except shamans start with a 2-handed weapon equipped and the required skill already known. Shamans start with a 1-handed weapon and a shield, as they benefit more from the shield than they would from a 2-handed weapon.

·         Glancing Blows: The mage, warlock, and priest classes no longer have an increased chance for their melee attacks to be glancing blows; and the damage penalty due to their glancing blows is the same as for other classes.

·         Health and Mana Regeneration: These regeneration rates have been increased by up to 200% for low level characters. As a player’s level increases, the regeneration rates gradually reduce, returning to normal rates at level 15.

·         Spell Mana Costs: These costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.

Races: General

·         Racial Attribute Bonuses: These bonuses have been recalibrated to even out the amount of starting health on the various races. All races start with a standardized level of stamina, except for orcs, dwarves, and tauren who now start with 1 extra point of stamina. For each class, bonuses and penalties to all attributes have been adjusted so that each race has an equal attribute total.

Death Knights

·         Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.

·         Talents

o    Unholy

§  Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Druids

·         Pets

o    Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Hunters

·         Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

·         Talents

o    Beast Mastery

§  Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.

·         Pets

o    Avoidance: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 30/60/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Mages

·         Talents

o    Arcane

§  Arcane Empowerment: This talent now also grants 1/2/3% increased damage done by the mage’s party or raid for 10 seconds after the mage gets a critical strike with Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, or Arcane Blast. This effect is exclusive with Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution.

·         Pets

o    Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Priests

·         Pet

o    Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Rogues

·         Dual Wield: Rogues now know this ability upon logging into the game at level 1.

·         Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.

·         Vanish: For the first second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability.

Shamans

·         Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.

·         Talents

o    Elemental Combat

§  Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.

Warlocks

·         Pets

o    Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

o    Summon Imp: This ability is now available from the trainer for level 1 warlocks and no longer requires a quest to learn.

Warriors

·         Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level 6.

·         Talents

o    Protection

§  Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.

User Interface

·         Quest Tracking Feature

o    This system is currently under development and is not fully functional.

·         Looking For Group System

o    This feature is undergoing several improvements and is not available for testing at this time.

·         For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Graphics

·         A new feature has been added to the D3D graphics engine to improve texture management (particularly for Windows XP users). This is currently enabled by default on the public test realms. For more information please visit our Test Realm forum.

Professions

·         Enchanting

o    Black Magic: This enchantment now sometimes increases haste rating for the caster rather than inflicting the caster’s target with a damage-over-time effect. It is also now triggered by landing any harmful spell rather than inflicting damage with a spell.

Items

·         Glyphs

o    Death Knights

§  Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.

o    Shamans

§  Glyph of Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Glyph of Fire Nova. This glyph now reduces the cooldown of Fire Nova by 3 seconds.

Bug Fixes

·         Druids

o    Rejuvenation: Rank 15 of this spell was providing a 15-second duration. It has been correctly reduced to 12 seconds.

·         Mages

o    Flame Strike: Some ranks of this spell had an incorrect cast time of 3 seconds. All ranks now share a 2-second cast time.

In Champions Online, there is a power called Ego Sprites which is a point-blank, area of effect, damage over time power. You fire it, it hits up to five people around you and ticks for moderate damage. There is an advantage for this power called Slave Mentality. If you take this advantage, then 10 seconds after you fire your Ego Sprites, you will get a slight heal over time effect based on the number of people you hit with the initial damage DoT.

The sprites do their dirty work

Originally, Slave Mentality was bugged. Instead of stacking once on every creature in the affected area, it would stack as many times as you could fire it. So, if I jumped into a group of five enemies and fired my Ego Sprites (with SM) five times, in 10 seconds I would get twenty-five ticks of healing each second… which for those of you who don’t play Champions Online, can add up. To test the power, I duelled one of my friends and fired no other power but Ego/Slave and I could easily get the power to overstack enough just on him to out heal any damage he could do me (and he was the PvP FoTM ice build… which has since been nerfed, but then was quite the damage dealer). If you abused the bug, it was the best heal in the game.

So, they rightfully fixed the bug, making the SM so that it stacked only once on each target, but they also nerfed the heal to 50% of what it was before. Because this is Champions Online, people complained… and probably rightfully so… why fix the bug and also nerf the power? Why not just fix the bug and then see how the power performed? The answer from the forum community was “Ego Sprites is a AoE damage power; the heal is just a nice bonus.”

Now, I had characters with Ego Sprites and Slave Mentality, and I did use it with impunity to essentially heal tank for my group. It needed to be fixed and it was. After the fix though, I felt that the heal advantage was useless and ultimately respecced out of the power. But this isn’t a nerf whine post… in fact, the nerf is just a small part of what this post is about. This post is about hybrid powers and how they perform.

What really got me thinking about this topic wasn’t the nerf itself, but the response to the nerf:

“Ego Sprites is a AoE damage power; the heal is just a nice bonus.”

See, before the fix/nerf, Ego Sprites was a decent damage power, but certainly not a top performer. With the Slave Mentality advantage, the power became a decent damage power with a super-broken-awesome heal component. After the nerf, Ego Sprites is still a decent damage power, but now the SM advantage is just a “bonus heal”. The problem is, I don’t need a decent damage power. I need a great damage power. I don’t need a “bonus heal”. I need an honest-to-goodness-keep-you-alive heal. With that thinking, I tried a little thought experiment:

Say, I am a game developer and I am creating a power that is a life drain — a hybrid attack/heal. In the rest of my game, the regular, single-purpose attacks do 100 points each round of combat (a few seconds), and the regular single purpose heals heal that much as well. Since, this power is a hybrid, it can’t be top-tier in either attack or heal, and I take the common sense road of balancing it by reducing the damage component by a similar amount as the heal component I am adding. In the end my power ends up doing 70 points of damage and healing 30 every “round” of combat.

Let's geek out with some numbers

Now, I take my newly created power and head out to fight a standard npc who has 100 hit points and does 50 points each round. Strangely enough, I find my new power underperforms. In a typical exchange, I attack my opponent, knocking his health down significantly and then he smacks me for 50 points of damage. I then attack a second time and kill my enemy, while healing 30 of the 50 points dealt. At the end of the combat, the enemy is dead, but I have taken 20 damage for my trouble. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize had I just taken the regular attack, I would have alpha-struck my enemy and killed him taking no damage.

In this example, the “balancing” reduction in damage allows the npc to remain alive longer, thus he does more damage, thus any benefit I might get from my heal is negated. We can do a similar experiment with a hybrid attack/hold power. Let’s say it is balanced 50/50, so it does half the damage of a straight attack, and holds enemies under a certain threshold (level, or “eliteness”). That’s a fine power and in fact, in our original example, the enemy would take 50 points of damage in the first round and then be held and finished off in the second round with no damage to us. So… THIS hybrid power is good, right?

Sure it is… and let’s even ignore the fact that you effectively doubled the time it took to kill this guy (I am not THAT much of a min/maxer). The problem comes when you fight that next tier of enemy — the Master Villain in CO, the Boss in CoH, or the Elite in WoW. Let’s say that the developers have made it that much more difficult to hold this guy and it requires a hold with an effectiveness of say 75 to do so. A full on hold power would hold this guy, but your hybrid does not, and now you are left to plink away at this baddie with an attack that does 50% damage.

The problem with secondary effects is that they are often balanced in such a way that when they are effective, you don’t need them anyway and when you need them, they aren’t strong/reliable enough to be effective. That’s the new Ego Sprites/Slave Mentality: The power is a moderately effective DoT that is fine against trash mobs where I don’t need its healing capabilities — but there are better AoE attacks out there so why not take one of them? When the going gets tough, and I need the hit points from Slave Mentality, they won’t be nearly enough, so why take the advantage?

In many games, procs suffer from this balancing act as well. The idea is I take a weapon or power and give it a 5% chance of doing something cool in addition to its normal damage. Ok… that sounds great. However, let’s say that the developer balanced the aggregate effect of the proc and lowered its damage by that amount. In our very crude notation, that would make it a 95/5 item… doing 95% of the damage of a normal sword, but having an additional effect that “makes up” for the lost damage. If we go back to our original example, in 1 out of 20 fights, I take no damage, but in 19 of those fights, I take 50 points of damage!

Even worse, is that with this proc item, I am not just giving up damage, I am giving up control. The randomness of the proc makes it even less likely to be useful than the gimped hybrid power. Sure, when it fires it is nice, and over the long run, I will do the same, or more damage, with the proc. However, remember that most of the time, the proc does not really affect the outcome of the fight. Let’s say the percentage of attacks where the proc does not matter is 90%. So it might matter 10% of the time… but it is only 5% likely to fire, which means that 99.5% of the time… the proc does nothing useful for you; it either fires when no one cares, or does not fire when you needed it.

That leads me to The 110% Rule which is: When balancing a hybrid power (or a proc), none of the effects should be trivial and the sum total of them should be more than 100% of a non-hybrid power. MMOs favor big numbers over versatility (this post is longer than I anticipated, so we should go into this one later) and so for a hybrid to be worth the power pick, it has to add up to 110% or more of the effects it is made up of. Actually, my guess is that the sum total should be closer to 133%… more of a 66/66 split… but in deference to sports cliches everywhere, I settled on 110%.

I love hybrid powers and procs because they make characters more interesting and allow lots more variations than straight up heals, attacks and holds. However, game developers take note that these types of effects need to be balanced carefully, and in a way that on the surface looks overpowered. There should never be a hybrid power where, “the heal is just a nice bonus” because that really means, “the heal is next to useless… take a freakin’ heal power instead.”