In my last post, I talked about my boredom with the latest crop of MMOs. Well, to combat that boredom, I went on a spree of installing games, some old, some not, on my computer. I mentioned Fort Zombie and King Arthur before and you can add to that list various versions of Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders and the venerable, but still unmatched Master of Magic. Those were good games and fun diversions, but ultimately, I was still bored. It seems I had a fever for which the only cure was an MMO.

More cowbell might have worked too, but would have woken the kids.

So, after a bit of waffling about spending more money so close to the holiday and possibly wasting money on a game I would not enjoy, I whipped out the card and bought Darkfall. Now there is no doubt that Darkfall is a risk. After all, its niche is free-for-all PvP with full loot. The only game I have ever played that was close is Shadowbane, which wasn’t full loot, had a safe newbie zone and was many, many years ago. Oh yeah, Eve… but I never got far enough with Eve to really make it count. Add to that the fact that the reviews at Darkfall’s launch ranged from “has potential” (which is the gaming equivalent to my six-year old’s baseball league in which everyone gets a trophy for being a unique snowflake) to “It made me throw up a little into my mouth” and yeah I would definitely say that signing up for Darkfall carries an element of risk.

But, I am itching for a new game and well… I need something to write about so I hit the “Buy” button and started downloading the client. A quick note: The client is huge (about 10GB), but with uTorrent, it took less than an hour to download. If you are thinking about getting Darkfall, save yourself some time by using the torrent as opposed to a straight download (and don’t forget to seed).

I fired up the client, sat through about 10 minutes of patching and then a quick character generation screen and the human, Vedis Bishop, was born and thrust into the world of Agon. The first thing I noticed was that the game looked pretty good. Granted, my standards for computer game graphics are low relative to the modern gamer and having read lots of reviews and commentary on Darkfall in the past, I had been conditioned to expect something like this (oh and name that game by the way… should be an easy one):

What I saw were decent character models and nice landscapes. I would love to show you some screenshots of my travels, but some dummy changed the default capture key on FRAPS without realizing it, so I was dutifully taking pictures, but nothing was happening. Thus, the tale of my first night with Darkfall will be unfortunately devoid of pictures.

After putzing with the user interface for a few minutes, I could walk around, use objects, equip, sheathe and unsheathe my newbie sword. I figured that was certainly good enough to start, so I walked over to the nearby Counsellor NPC and picked up my first quests — kill 4 goblins and collect their axes. Sounded easy enough. I checked the mini-map, found a nearby goblin encampment and headed warily over, knowing that at any minute, hordes of evil PKers would pour over the horizon looking to gank me and steal my stuff.

I should have been more concerned about the goblins… I reached their spawn point without incident. There were no PKers nearby and in fact, I was the only player here. In the distance I saw a couple of goblins and another within a short sprint. I figured I could easily take the straggler and then consider my next course of …

*THUD*

An arrow sunk into my shoulder, spraying blood all over me. The damn straggler saw me, pulled out a bow and started firing away. The first arrow had taken a noticeable, but not unmanageable chunk of my hit points, so I charged the archer, side-stepping to dodge his second arrow. I got up on him and let loose a couple of blows. He turned and ran and I gave chase, sprinting and swinging in hopes of landing a shot on his exposed back.

*THUD*

Too late, I realized that the goblin scout had managed to run me toward his comrades. Now the second scout had noticed me and started firing and the other fighter was on me with his sword. At this point, the fight had gotten out of control and I was sidestepping and swinging wildly. I managed to down the original scout, but was cut down.

I respawned back at the Counsellor and since at the time I didn’t know how to rest (or even that there was a rest command), I stood around waiting to get enough hit points to try the goblin spawn again. While I was delving into the help pages, I heard a zap and saw a big chunk of hit points bleed away. I fumbled around, closing the help window, re-equipping the newbie sword and looked around to find a fully armored player standing behind me. Now, I knew I was about to get my rear-end kicked, but I figured better to fight back than be bullied, I took a swing at him.

*ZAP*

Dead again… ah well. I respawned again and though the armored guy was still around, but he had obviously had his fun and didn’t bother with me again. Time to head back to the goblins. This time, I saw a lone goblin well away from the others. I quickly descended upon him and hit him a couple of times, to little effect. He retaliated with spells and powerful blows and quickly laid me low.

Ugh… that was my third death in about five minutes. It was obviously time to rethink my technique. I knew now to avoid crowds of goblins, be careful when chasing the scouts and to steer clear of shamans for the time being. Oh… and that armored guy mining over there is a jackass, but try to ignore him.

I approached the goblin camp from the other side and found a goblin fighter. He caught sight of me and pulled out his bow. I dodged the first arrow and then crouched behind a rock. He responded by edging down the hillside, firing another arrow or two into the boulder. When he was close enough, I sprinted from behind my cover, hacking away. We fought a short and bloody battle which ended with me standing over the fighter’s tombstone.

*ZAP*

Crap! A lousy shaman spotted the battle. There was no way I was going to take the shaman, but I wasn’t going to leave empty-handed. I put away my sword and hurriedly looted the fighter’s corpse, grabbed an axe, bow, arrows, a carrot and a handful of coins and fled back to town as the goblin pelted me with spells. My first victory!! As trivial as it was, I have to say, it felt like I had worked for it. And that felt pretty darn good.

Now, with a handful of hit points left, I just had to figure out how to rest… Darkfall’s UI is certainly different from most MMOs. Much of this comes from trying to jam the fluid aiming and shooting interface of an FPS together with the bulky, key-and-menu-laden interface of an MMO. Thus, you have binds such as right-click to switch between shooting mode and interface mode. To an FPS-player, this is second nature, but to a traditional MMOer, right click is usually used to spin your character, leading to the occasional frustrating experience of hearing a noise and trying to spin to see what is going on, only to be frozen in place and greeted by your character screen or the world map.

Other interface “issues” come from a deliberate attempt to make certain actions clunkier. For instance, having to sheathe and unsheathe your weapon to perform certain actions, or having to drag every single object from a corpse into your backpack. I am pretty sure this is by design to make sure people aren’t looting in the middle of combat.

A few issues are just clunky design, or part of a poorly conceived newbie experience. I saw no mention of the rest action in the beginning help guide, or any of the tips. None of the basic actions such as rest or recall are on your hot bar by default. So I asked and learned that you have to open your skills screen, drag the rest and recall icons to your hot bar. Then when you want to rest, sheathe your weapon, hit the hot bar item to rest, then left-click. (Quick note: Left-click is always your action button. The hot bar items don’t actually perform the action they are assigned, but instead change what your left-click does. Another example is when you put spells on your hot bar, clicking those spells just sets up what your next left-click casts.)

A little on the tedious side, but I can learn it and deal with it. It will take some practice to get some actions to be smooth in the heat of combat.

In any case, once I had gotten my first kill, things started to look up for me. I equipped the goblin axe and it did significantly more damage than my little leaf blade. Baiting and luring the goblins using cover seemed to work and if I drew two, I could use the cover to protect me from arrow fire while finishing the first enemy. At some point another player wandered by and we started killing goblins together. Soon, the field was littered with goblin tombstones and both of us were fairly rich (in that “I just started playing an hour ago” sort of way).

A couple of sorties (and bank trips) later, I had killed my allotment of goblins and collected the axes required for the quest. I had a helmet, a leather chest piece, arm guards and leggings. I had about 150 gold, a bow and arrows (though I have not tried archery yet) and a few spare swords in case I was killed and looted. As I was adventuring, I was awarded with a steady stream of gratifying messages telling me that my mastery of axes, running and sprinting had increased. I even found a random chest with two amethysts! I continued on a bit, completing a couple of the gathering quests, but then had to reluctantly head to bed.

I would rate my first night of Darkfall as a positive experience. A lot of other modern have gone so far out of their way to sanitize the low level play experience that it often feels as though you get your first ten levels for just logging in. Darkfall does nothing of the sort. It lets you learn the game by trying and failing and in doing so, reaches a balance between accessibility and challenge that I have not seen in a while. Now I realize, that it is impossible to judge a game by the first night and it is quite possible that the skill grind will eventually wear me down, or that the infamous horde of gankers is waiting for me at the next town, but I will say that as far as first nights go, Darkfall was amazingly enjoyable.

And I promise the second night will have pictures…

Say what you will about Champions Online, but Cryptic has been releasing steady updates that have gone a long way toward fixing the game’s issues and improving the play experience. Players logging into CO tomorrow will be seeing these new changes, not the least of which is the closing of the dreaded Costume Gender Gap! Otherwise, there is a reduction in the cost of creating high level crafted gear, several fixes to missions and no nerfs.

User Interface and Chat

• The confirmation window that appears when changing crafting schools now makes it more clear that changing specializations within a school will reset your crafting level to 1.
• The Purchase Power UI should no longer give an untranslated error message for the Pro Tips.
• Items can now be sent in the mail UI via the context menu.
• Logging in to a character will now correctly set the status message of your character for both player search and the friends list.
• Chat channels should no longer show themselves as having zero users in them.

Powers

Celestial

• Redemption: Animation should now always occur correctly.

Munitions

• Two Gun Mojo: Animation no longer gets interrupted when moving left to right too quickly.

Sorcery

• Divine Renewal: Animation will now be interrupted correctly when attacked.

Missions and Content

Desert

• Barbarians at the Gate: Fixed bug where critters could get stuck and prevent further waves from spawning.
• Blank and Stein’s Monster: Fixed bug where Damage Over Time powers could kill Dr. Blank before he finished his transformation.
• Minding the Mutants: Mission now fails properly if the mutant is not delivered before time expires.
• Neutronium Nightmare: This missions should no longer becomes stuck if the player fails to pick up mission drop after defeating the Neutronium Thief.

Monster Island

• Proclamations of the Lawgiver: Removed “This item grants a mission” data since this mission is granted by Father Elk.
• Raptor Rush: Mission now lasts the full 20 waves and requires 60 raptor defeats.
• Secret Manimal Den: Rescued manimal now pauses at secret door instead of clipping through it.

UNITY

• It Hurts When I Do This: Fixed scientist AI so they give credit quicker and avoid pathfinding issues.

Nemesis

• Nemesis Confrontation: There should no longer be any missing geometry in the Lair.
• Nemesis Confrontation: Improved quality and performance for low-end graphics cards.
• Nemesis minion ambushes should now be correctly targeted.

Items

• The VF-7 ‘Torchie’ Flamethrower and U-BKL Firesnake Flame Rifle now correctly apply “Clinging Flames”.

Crafting

• Crafting component costs for all Blue and Purple quality fixed stat gear have been recalculated. Most Primary quality Upgrades now require far lower economic value of components to create. Most Secondary quality Upgrades are slightly more expensive. Overall, creating high end upgrades should be easier and more affordable for crafters now.
• Several Blueprints that had incorrect scales of components were also fixed (Primary quality Upgrades that only took Secondary Upgrade quantities of components to craft).
• Fixed a bug that was causing recipes to be unlearnable at their required skill level.
• Epiphanies/Insights/Profundities are now correctly tagged as Components so that they get displayed in the crafting UI when set to sort by slot.

Costume Creator/Tailor

• Added the following Female Parts to match existing Male Parts:
• HANDS: Armor Gauntlet, Armor Sleek, Armor Scalloped w/ Claws, Ancient Mystical Claw, 2 Fingers.
• BACK: Backpack Tech, Rocket Pack Stealth
• FEET: Armor Knight, Scalloped w/ Claws, Simian, 2 Toes
• MOUTH: Armored Chin Square, Armored Chin Slim, Armored Mouth Guard, Armored Jaw Hinged, Armored Ventilator, Mask Wrapped, Helmet Grill, Tentacles
• EYE: Eye Plate Visor Robotic, Eye Plate Visor Wired, Eye Plate Robotic, Goggles High Tech
• EYE ACCESSORY: Glasses Round
• ARM ACCESSORY: Spikes Meandering, Armor Bolted, Armor Chitin, Shackle
• LEG ACCESSORY: Armor Bolted, Knight Plate
• HIPS WEAR: Subligar: Knight
• TOP ACCESSORY: Knight Helmet Fin
• SIDE ACCESSORY: Ear Caps, Horns Ornamental

Hero Games

• Zombie Apocalypse: Games will now start with two zombie players instead of one if there are enough players queued to fill the map.
• ”Fatty” Zombie: “Om nom nom” hold power is now prevented by blocking.

I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day about what we were playing and he dropped a line that resonated with me. He said, “MMOs are an easy way I can play online with my friends, but I don’t prefer them as games.”  As any true fanboy would, I mentally started to rise to the challenge, ready to defend my preferred genre with a discussion of how deep, complex and hard to design the typical MMO is, but I stopped myself and instead went over my own current playlist. Here’s what I am playing right now:

King’s Bounty: The Legend – A fun, tactical wargame/rpg in the vein of Heroes of Might and Magic and of course, the original King’s Bounty. A simple, but fun battle game with the RPG elements of quests and leveling your hero.

Borderlands – If Diablo and Call of Duty had a baby in a stylish, cel-shaded hospital staffed by Fallout 3, you would get Borderlands. An awesome, co-op shooter with the RPG elements of quests, leveling and loot. Heck, there are even pick-up groups for when I feel the need to have someone steal rare loot from me because “his buddy’s other character might be able to use it.”  What is more MMO than that?!

Fort Zombie – A clunky, buggy RPG about surivival after a zombie apocolypse… but a great game nonetheless. Rescue survivors, scavenge for supplies and prepare your fort for the coming darkness. If I were writing a Zombie MMO, I would start here for inspiration.

Elona – A roguelike that looks like an old-style JRPG, but has neat features like customizable housing, randomized side-quests and investing in shops.

King Arthur The Role-Playing Wargame — A cross between Total War and Master of Magic set in the myths of King Arthur? Sign me up!

Oh yeah and I am still messing around with Champions Online… on the side!? Heck, last night I was seriously considering reinstalling my old copy of Dungeon Lords for something “new”… which is the computer game equivalent to slitting one’s wrists while listening to Gordon Lightfoot. So, for the moment at least, like my friend, it seems I don’t prefer MMOs as games either.

This isn’t all bad (though from a standpoint of blogging about MMOs, it sucks) and probably not unexpected either. Part of it is a light case of burnout. (I think most MMO-fans have suffered from burnout at one time or another.) Another part of it is a bit of disappointment in the latest crop of games. I still think MMOs are the most complex and hardest games to design, but it seems that for all of that complexity, we are stuck in a rut of shallow, repetitive, themepark games that are all scrambling for scraps in WOW’s very long shadow. I still love MMOs for the character building and the persistent worlds. Unfortunately, most single-player RPGs offer even more character build options and most MMO designers have scrapped persistent worlds for linear hack-fests and fetch quests.

So… what does all of this mean? Well, I think it means I need a new MMO. Something different and fresh that can shock me out of my funk a bit. That is where I need your help. I need suggestions. What games are you playing and enjoying? Do you have any games that you feel are substantially different from the normal MMO fare? Do you have a game you are just plain dying to hear about?

Fire off a comment and help me find a new game… please… before I press install on Dungeon Lords…

We love the smell of 1.3.3 in the morning.  This simmering brew of bug fixes, balance changes and new features is expected to be ready for consumption soon after the Thanksgiving weekend (aka: Very Soon ™).  Just imagine, soon we’ll all be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of the Underdog System complete with a WAR Report chaser. No more haggling with flight masters upon log in, no more being at the mercy of horse speed; just the sweet, sweet knowledge of where the hottest action is at all times and the ability to get there as quickly as possible (Yes wet naps have been handed out to the entire developer team to combat excessive salivation caused by this addition).

But wait, there’s more: 1.3.3 revs up our environments with the addition of bloom and HDR lighting and heralds the triumphant return of Keg End this December, complete with boasting, toasting and fireworks. Expect more details as the event draws near.

Highlights:

• The WAR Report – The WAR Report window will give players a snapshot of the action taking place throughout the world.  The window will give you not only a list of current events, but a means to teleport to the closest warcamp, chapter hub or flight master!  This instant action teleport will be available every 8 hours.
• The Underdog System –This system is intended to aid the Underdog faction on a given server. Underdogs will essentially be granted a ramping RvR handicap that makes it easier for an under-populated realm to take objectives and cap zones. This system is tied directly to city captures and does not last forever – It will decay over time if not used.  In other words: Underdogs get out on the battlefield and start smacking some skulls together, the time of your revenge is at hand!
• Keg’s End – Fireworks and ale.  What more needs to be said?

Bloom & HDR – The game client now allows users to enable Post Processing effects to heighten the visual experience of WAR. This will add bloom and HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting to the game world.  Users will experience a visually harmonious and enhanced feel in the game world through these two rendering techniques.

I have been toying with the idea of trying Warhammer again, just to see how it has progressed. With the endless lowbie trial and 10 free days of play if you re-enlist, it might be worth taking a look.

I was recently given an opportunity to ask Cryptic’s Bill Roper some questions about Champions Online’s powers, data mining and the infamous “Launch Day Nerf”. Check out the Champions Online interview and see what he had to say.

The original design of Cryptic’s original game, City of Heroes, was supposed to have open power choices, but the design fell through and we ended up with the archetype and power set system. What do you think was learned from that first outing that allowed Champion’s character system to be a success? Does the character progression in CO draw from any other games?

The open power system is incredibly flexible and players can create the hero of their imagining without feeling “locked in” to a specific class or set of powers. While the Custom Framework option can be somewhat overwhelming in sheer number of options, we’ve tried to make it more user-friendly by organizing the powers into sets. We’ve continued to work to make it more comprehensible and easier to use through tips and better descriptions and we’ll continue to tune this to make it easier to understand and navigate.

When you look at the powers in Champions Online in terms of balance and fun, what three powers really hit the mark and why is that? Now, what three powers miss the mark and need work?

I went straight to the powers team with this question so you’d get the pure, unfiltered answers. They’re crawling through every power in the game a second time right now looking at just these issues, so here we go!

Powers that Worked

Force Cascade

It looks great. It hits hard. It’s incredibly expensive unless you play its internal schtick and use it in conjunction with a field power, in which case it’s a great and efficient engine of destruction. It’s a bit complicated to use, but the reward of getting it right was sufficient that players experimented, figured it out, and bought into it. Overall it’s a win. Gigabolt is very similar, but I’m happier with Force Cascade.

Secondary Energy Mechanics

Killer Instinct, Thermal Reverberation, and the other similar powers worked out well, I think. They’re a cheap investment that reward and incentivize otherwise different game play. I feel like they’re beefy enough that many players are happy they have them, but not so overpowering that they’re “must haves” or limit your valid options.

Uppercut / Haymaker

Melee has its issues, and having a long charge up get wasted because your opponent moved out of range at the last second is frustrating. That being said, though, the risk vs. reward on these attacks is great, and when you can get off a full charge, the visceral impact is amazing and rewarding.

Lackluster Powers

Offensive Passives

In a game where encounter groups are four or five at a time, a passive that lets you do MORE overkill versus a single target doesn’t feel nearly as useful as a power that provides substantial protection versus all enemies you’re facing simultaneously.

Possible Solution:

An idea we’ve discussed is having all of the offensive passives grant a bit less bonus damage per attack, but add a small AoE component to all of your attacks. This would help the value against large spawns, where powers like Electric Form feel weakest.

Chain Lightning

Most other powers do more damage when they’re charged. Chain Lightning doesn’t; when charged, it instead hits progressively more targets for the same amount of damage. In theory, this makes it a great bread and butter power – when taking on a large group, full charge for the pull and then just tap for rapid DPS. In practice, players always do full charges, even against single targets, because that’s what the other powers teach them is the “right” way to use them.

Possible Solution:

In the future, we’re probably going to make the damage versus the primary target scale up slightly as the power is charged, so that charging the power is no longer a “strictly worse” choice.

Rituals of Summoning

One of the people on our team (Antiproton) summarized the problem with these well during a playtest a few weeks ago: “You mean I have to sit here, just standing in this circle, watching while my pet runs off and get to play the game and have all the fun? That’s lame!” Champions is an extremely mobile game, and we’re very happy and proud that it is so. None the less, we know that some players may not appreciate all the frantic run and gun elements. The Sorcery tree, in theory, was supposed to be for them; it rewarded you (significantly) for picking a spot, standing there, and making the rest of the world come to you. I think the set, as a whole, succeeded well enough at rewarding you with power for standing still, but it completely fails to make the enemies come to you, and this issue is most pronounced, I think, with the summons.

Possible Solution:

First, Pets in general need a review. The ones summoned by Rituals don’t have any benefits to offset their drawback (that you have to stay in the circle). Second, Sorcery needs better techniques to “herd” and control enemies, bringing them into your reach, but keeping them from standing on your head. Finally, they need to be faster to create; it can’t feel like a chore to bring them out.

Regarding the infamous Launch-Day Nerf, I think a lot of people believe the changes were necessary for the good of the game, but many others are skeptical about the timing. Was the possible impact on preorders and lifetime subs a factor in the timing of the nerfs? What is your take away from the players’ reaction to the changes?

The conspiracy theories that have found their way into the gaming space can be pretty amazing. There was no element of “timing” the difficulty and experience curve other we saw the game had become trivially easy and we needed to address that before we had all of our players online. Unfortunately this didn’t come to light during the beta and we only really saw it happen with the numbers of players we got during the head-start period. Interestingly, anyone not in the head-start period didn’t come in and complain about the game being too hard, and once the initial shock of the shift subsided (less than a day) the vast majority of head-start players even said the game felt better. The biggest impact was that there was a lot of outcry when it happened and this leaked into reviews – even from editors that never played in the head-start time period. It was something we had to do for the good and longevity of the game, but trust us – with Star Trek we’ll have a LOT more people in the beta near the end to better test the global experience and difficulty curves.

From gamers’ point of view, there have been aspects of the launch that have gone smoothly, and other aspects that have been pretty ugly. In your mind and the minds of your team, how has the launch gone? Is there anything to the negativity on the forums and in the press and what can Cryptic do to turn that around?

We definitely needed more time on balancing the game overall, and that bit us when we had to do a large shift in the experience / difficulty curve after the head start program ran. We had the experience curve very close to where we wanted it by the time the game launched wide, but this definitely caused some of our early adopters to be upset that the game play changed after it went live. We also should have done a better job with balancing powers before launch. We’ve been chasing this ever since, and have made strides to making it much better, but this will be an ongoing project as with any MMO. Finally, after adjusting the experience curve, we had some content holes that we had to fill. This didn’t take us long, but it did mean that the game launched with very thin content.

As for what went right, the game was incredibly stable. The only real down time we had was one 8-hour period due to human error on our end. The game servers never had a catastrophic failure, we never lost character data, and we really breezed through a lot of the technical issues. We also had a wide variety of systems in place a solid foundation on which to build moving forward – an open power system, vast customization, Nemesis, PvP, Open Mission, Crisis Zones, and Lairs.

When City of Heroes came out, it had the advantage that it was the only game in the superhero MMO space. Champions Online was launched with established competition, and more coming relatively soon with DCUO. Does that competition change how your game is managed and how it is developed? For instance, is there a need to match features with CoX, or a plan to have x number of updates before DCUO releases?

We’re in a very different market than it was 5 years ago when City of Heroes launched. MMO players are educated and discerning set of gamers now. Our biggest challenge was in getting in a solid, broad foundation that we could build upon while still delivering a solid, quality game. We delivered in some areas and fell short in others, but no matter what you do you’re going to be compared to games that people are playing right now, no matter when they came out. Obviously a game with several years in post-launch development is impossible to equal, so while it does affect our development strategies, it’s more about making sure gamers know we’re able and willing to keep growing the game just like those games did after they launched.

Certainly CO has room for expansion with regards to new powersets and missions, but are there any more “killer features” coming down the pike? Also, are there any features that needed to be cut from the original release that you feel have to get in at some point?

We’ve added quite a bit into the game that is far beyond just new missions and power sets, although we added those, as well. Crossover Missions allow players to share any mission with another person, even if their character isn’t eligible for that mission. As opposed to the helper getting the same Primary version of the missions, they get a special Crossover version that has all the same goals, but a different reward scale. This gives them incentive past just being a good person to help out someone, even if they have already completed the mission in question.

Next week we’re opening the doors to the Nemesis Confrontation lair that combines the UNITY and Nemesis systems. Top level players will be able to get a UNITY mission that end up with a team of 5 heroes battling against their Nemeses and a villain powerful enough to draw such a conglomerate of evil together. We always wanted to be able to have multiple Nemeses in a fight against the heroes that created them, and now we have it.

In December, we’re going to be launching some new technology that allows players of any level to fight side-by-side against a common enemy. This is huge because it allows us to balance an encounter for a number of heroes regardless of their level.

Moving forward, we have a few systems on the drawing board that will allow players to investigate and find their own crimes to combat, as well as a few other surprises to really extend the life and fun of the game.

We see a lot of MMO companies talk about how “data mining” helps them determine what is going on in their game. How does Cryptic use data mining in CO? What types of data do you gather and how does the data affect your decision-making? What types of information does data mining fail to get you and how do you fill that gap?

We have some amazing tools to gather and sift through the massive amounts of data generated in the game. This is everything from player leveling curves to various levels of enemies defeated to heat maps that show where players congregate in each zone and on and on. All of these data points can be used to better tune the game.  For example, we can see how many heroes use what powers and for how long. This allows us to investigate powers that may be over or, more importantly, under-powered.

There are some things that we’ll never get form data-mining. It’s impossible for us to pick up combinations of powers that result in unexpectedly high damage or over-heightened defenses just by looking at numbers. This is where our forums and community feedback come into play as our gamers let us know the issues so we can get them into the correct parameters.

One knock against Cryptic is that when it is time to take out the nerf bat, you guys pull out the nerf BFG 2000 and crush the offending power into uselessness, perhaps buffing it back over time. Is this a fair criticism? Is the harsh nerf/buff slowly a deliberate design decision, or is it the result of mistaken over-nerfs?

I don’t think this is fair as a global statement, but it sure sounds like what you get from forum posters. We did take some grossly over-powered powers and push them down pretty hard, but that ignores the very slight modifications we’ve made or, more importantly, the large number of power increases we’ve made. The only large nerfs we do are against egregious aberrations, and if you really pour through the powers and items section of our forums, many of these changes are at the behest of our players who are smart enough to know when something is simply so good it’s obviously broken.

Scarab

Scarab is my Gadgeteer. The goal of the build is to create a solid core out of the gadget powers and go from there. I went through a couple iterations of the gadget build before settling on this one.

Powers

Sonic Blaster (Rank 1 + Refraction of Sound) — This is a nice energy builder with decent damage (as energy builders go) and a good energy return rate. With the advantage, it goes from a single target attack to a cone and this makes it even better because then it can be used as a carrier for the dreaded Sonic Device.

Gauntlet Chainsaw (Rank 3)– Ok, so I go from being a hero to being that guy in Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Well, I am supposed to be arresting the bad guys, not killing them so… maybe the chainsaw just stuns them! That’s it! It’s a Taser Saw!!! Overblown rationalizations for a silly power aside, GC is a great melee power, perhaps one of the best in the game. It is a high damage, maintained, cone melee attack that ticks every half-second. Its only drawback is the fact that it has a prohibitive energy cost.

I putzed around with lots of different builds with lots of different attacks, and had even tried the Chainsaw and dismissed it because of its high energy cost. However, I later revisited GC and specced into a build with super Endurance and Intelligence. With the extra energy and reduced power cost, I could now run the saw for a full maintain, cutting through bad guys like teens in a slasher flick. If you spec correctly, you can cut through henchmen, villains and even master villains in a few seconds, making this the signature power of the build.

Sonic Device (Rank 1) — Though this power does good damage, its main purpose in Scarab’s build is for crowd control. I charge in with my cone Sonic Blaster and then click on the device and all of the henchmen are either dead or stunned. More fresh meat for the Chainsaw!

Personal Force Field (Rank 2) — PFF is a power that has taken its share of criticism and rightfully so; it is probably the least useful passive defense in the game. Still, I was determined to make use of Personal Force Field and Scarab can do so because of his mix of super Endurance, great crowd control and high damage output. Scarab is hoping to stun and kill (taze) his opponents quickly and only needs the “up-front” defense that PFF provides. Is PFF going to fail me at higher levels? That is part of the experiment.

Field Surge (Rank 1) — This power allows me to regenerate my force field and doubles as an oh crap power when things get dicey. I would never take PFF as my defense without also picking up Field Surge.

Munitions Bots & Medical Drones (Rank 1) — I took both types of bots because I wanted to go with the Power Suit/Gadget theme and I thought robots would be cool. The munitions bots are pretty good pets, doing great cone damage in their immobile turret form. The med drones are ok as a maintenance heal, but when there is an emergency, they are either healing someone else, on a cooldown, or dead. Fortunately, between my highly offensive style, my force field and field surge, I rarely need the drones.

Field Eruption (Rank 1 + Gravitational Polarity) — This power is used almost exclusively as a damage buff.

Stats

Scarab has super Endurance and Intelligence. This combo allows me to run the chainsaw with impunity and has the nice side effects of reducing cooldowns and buffing pet damage (though I think the way pets scale with stats is pretty weak).

Tactics

My tactics on Scarab are pretty simple: energy build, trigger sonic device, chainsaw. On tough enemies, I can use Field Eruption for the damage buff and make sure the bots are in their offensive turret mode. Large groups, or very powerful enemies can surprise me with their incoming damage and so against such foes, I have to keep an eye on my health bar and use Field Surge as soon as I start taking damage (meaning my force field has dropped). Unfortunately, this leaves my

Thoughts

Though it is common knowledge by now, one thing to note about Scarab’s build is that he lacks Experimental Blaster, the default starter attack for a gadgeteer. This is a low-damage, long-charging blast that has a number of wacky effects that have anywhere from a 1-20% chance to proc on an attack. Well, what I would really like to proc is DEATH, so I think this power underperforms. If you save your cash through the first 5 levels, you can respec out of that starter power and get another. I dropped the blaster and got Gauntlet Chainsaw which is infinitely superior.

I have mixed thoughts about Scarab. On one hand, he is fun to play and pretty effective… and a snappy dresser to boot! On the other hand, at level 21, I feel that the build is mostly complete and that any powers I get now are just gravy. This brings up one of the design oddities of Champions Online: there aren’t any cooldowns on attacks and thus, you don’t need to acquire multiple attacks to form a chain. For Scarab, this meant that quite early, I had my full attack chain (Sonic Blaster, Gauntlet Chainsaw and Sonic Device). Similarly, at the moment, I don’t feel the need for any more defenses. That leaves utility powers and there aren’t many. So, though I may be having fun with this guy, being “done” with his build at level 21 is a little disheartening.

I’ve been talking with friends about Champions Online builds. Few games allow the amount of freedom and choice seen in CO’s character development; it is by far the game’s strongest point. However, such freedom doesn’t come without cost. A game with an open build system risks having powers that are must-haves, or on the opposite side of the scale, powers that are useless when compared to other powers of a similar type. This leads to players making similar “cookie-cutter” builds so as to be as effective as their peers. Another possibility is that with so many choices, some players are overwhelmed and make bad decisions, gimping themselves and quitting the game in frustration.

Fortunately, building a character in Champions Online is easy. With a little forum research and experimentation, you can make lots of viable character builds that are effective and fun to play. In the next few posts, I am going to go over five character builds that I am currently enjoying. I will give you an overview of the powers and advantages in the build, the ideas behind it, and my play experience with it. I am under no illusion that these builds are the absolute best builds in the game, but they are fun and effective and I think you will like them.

Paragon

My goal when I build a character is to take an idea, stick with it and make it as effective as I can. With Paragon, the idea was a Power Armor build focused around melee. Now, melee builds are generally considered to be weaker than their ranged counterparts, due largely to the fact that the melee powers do only a small bit more damage than ranged powers and are a ton more inconvenient to bring to bear – no big deal if we are sticking mostly to PvE. Let’s see how it turned out.

Powers (in no particular order)

Wrist Bolters– Nothing special; just a run of the mill energy builder. At one point I used a full respec to try to spec out of Bolters and get the Gadgeteer’s energy builder, but could not then get the rest of the powers to fit, so I am sort of stuck with these.

Laser Sword (Rank 3) — I did spec out of the Power Gauntlet and took this as my second power and then proceeded to max it out. It is the bread and butter power of the build.

Invulnerability (Rank 3) — This is a good passive… not as good as Regeneration at low levels, but I think it outpaces it at higher levels.

Energy Shield (Rank 2 + Laser Knight)– Laser Knight is a great advantage for melee characters as it causes a weak version of your shield to automatically trigger every time you use a melee attack. Most experiments put LK’s damage resistance bonus at around 30%, which is well worth the 10% damage penalty you take for using it.

Spark Storm (Rank 2)– At some point, I realized that I wanted a better way to deal with loads of henchmen besides charging around the battlefield trying to get a whack at them with the laser sword. I looked for a PBAoE that would fit the “Android Galactic Bounty Hunter” vibe that I had with the character and Spark Storm fit the bill. It is a little clunky because it targets randomly and often knocks enemies away, but it works well enough especially when used in tandem with…

Sonic Device (Rank 1)– Sonic Device is an awesome crowd control power when piggy-backed off of an AoE attack. This power followed by Spark Storm is a typical opening move that kills most of the henchmen, leaving only the villains to face the wrath of my laser sword.

Unbreakable (Rank 1) & Resurgence (Rank 1) – When things start getting hairy, these powers gives me time to heal and reassess the situation. Between her invulnerability and these two emergency powers, Paragon is hard to kill even when facing hordes of enemies.

Arcane Vitality (Rank 3) — I think of this power as my healing nanobots. As you can see, Paragon is pretty serious about her defense. AV provides a nice maintenance heal if necessary, though I don’t have the presence to pull off any emergency healing with this power. It is also a nice teaming tool as it can heal in a cone and generate aggro.

Demolish (Rank 1 + Below the Belt) — Demolish is a great power that reduces the damage resistance of the target by up to 21% when fully charged. When fighting tough villains, this is a great opener. Followed by…

Force Eruption (Rank 1 + Gravitational Polarity) — FE + GP makes for a great power. For a low-energy, almost instantaneous tap, you create a small buffing cloud that increases your (base) damage by 20%.

Defensive Combo (Rank 1)– This power is a crappy attack that generates some threat and provides a single stack of the Defiance buff (which I think is about 6% damage resistance?). Of course, at one time this power provided multiple stacks of Defiance, which made it pretty darn overpowered. Now, with only a single stack, it is mostly a throwaway power which I keep for the odd occassion where I have to generate more aggro than my fire-wielding duoing partner.

Stats

Paragon has a 3-stat build with CON and END super-statted and STR built through talents and items. Constitution is important because of Invulnerability (and the hit points don’t hurt either). Endurance gives me enough energy to get 5-7 taps of the Laser Sword after some energy building. Strength enhances the Invulnerability and allows me to open fights by throwing vehicles… which is just plain fun.

Tactics

For most combats, I toss something large and heavy at a random opponent, doing some damage and knocking one or more enemies down. Then, I charge in with Wrist Bolters blazing, waiting to get some energy. Once I have enough of an energy bar, I turn off the Bolters, click Sonic Device and then hold Spark Storm which nukes and stuns the crowd. By now, most of the henchmen are dead, or knocked away, leaving a villain or two who are no match for my Laser Sword.

Tougher combats have a similar start (henchmen do quite a bit of damage in CO and so getting them dead is often a priority), but I usually follow up with Demolish and/or Force Eruption (just a tap to create the Polarity buff) and then go to town. It is a pretty simple attack sequence, but it is very effective.

When things go bad, I can use Unbreakable and Arcane Vitality to halt the incoming damage and heal, or I can use Resurgence to “reset” the battle. I can also use a fully-charged Force Eruption to knock everyone away, or tap Sonic Device and then tap Force Eruption for a stun. Hopefully, one of these two tactics will give me time to back off, break line of sight and then use Arcane Vitality to heal and get me back into fighting shape.

I almost never block-turtle with Paragon, since I find that tactic boring, and it is largely ineffective unless you are have Regen. However, when facing ludicrous odds, I will sometimes aggro a spawn and block while flying backwards, looking for a corner or obstacle to break line of sight. The spawn will then spread itself out some as the enemies charge me, allowing me to pick off a few before the main crowd arrives.

Thoughts

I think Paragon’s build shows the crazy stuff you can do with Champions Online’s character system. I have powers from no less than seven sets in her build and still she comes out as a well-themed character (with the tiny cheat of the “Healing Nanobots”). She is also effective and fun to play. Ultimately, I would like to get her a Munitions power so that I have a reasons for the holstered pistols in the costume.

That’s it for now. I hope you like the build. I will fire off another in a day or so. Happy Hunting!

From the news section of the Alganon forums:

After taking time to process player feedback, work with our strategic partners, and present options to our investment team, we have decided to move the release date for Alganon from October 31st to December 1st.

This decision will allow us to refine the game, test on a larger scale, obtain additional visibility, and run some great contests (starting with the Immortal contest which should begin this upcoming week). We appreciate the patience and support of everyone who has been testing and pre-ordered Alganon.

Those who have pre-ordered Alganon before the 31st will receive a month of free play as compensation and also receive the in-game items awarded at launch sometime during the beta process.

The testers on the forums seem to be pretty pleased with this development and given the state of the game, and an MMO market that is unforgiving of a poor launch, this delay is probably a good idea. The NDA will not go back into effect, so expect more info on how the game develops as the weeks pass.

Introduction

Quest Online is releasing their new fantasy MMO, Alganon, at the end of this month. I have had the opportunity to get my hands on this game for a couple of weeks and below is my Alganon preview.

Character Creation

Character creation in Alganon is pretty straightforward. You are given the choice of either the Asharr or Kujix faction and that choice also determines your race. Humanity serves the Asharr and the Talrok (which look a heck of a lot like elves) serve the Kujix. Once your faction and race are settled, you have four pretty standard fantasy rpg classes to choose from: soldier, ranger, magus and healer. Next, you choose to which of the five families your character belongs. More on families later. Finally, there are a few customization sliders where you can tailor the look of your character.

Creating My Ranger

Classes, Abilities and Specializations

Alganon sports four character classes that fit closely to the main archetypes of fantasy gaming: soldier, ranger, magus and healer. Though this might seem to be painfully limiting, each class has four (core plus three more) ability specializations that serve to further differentiate characters. This allows two characters of the same class to play slightly differently and fill different roles in a group situation. Let’s take a look at two examples of classes and their specializations.

Soldiers are the tanks of Alganon and as such, their Core specialization is wearing heavy armor and taunting their opponents. However, soldiers can also specialize in Weaponry which will increase their offensive capabilities, particularly with two-handed weapons. A warrior who focuses on Tactics will gain crowd control and utility skills that will serve a group well. Finally, a Protection specced soldier will become master of the “sword-and-board”, sacrificing damage for the ability to tank and absorb hits like no other class.

Solder Tactics Tree

Rangers are a strange mix of bowmen, melee dps, healers and controllers that can serve many functions on a battlefield. A ranger’s Core abilities focus on managing threat, snares and party-buffs. Guardianship rangers gain additional defensive abilities which allow them to avoid damage and possibly be effective off-tanks. Rangers focused on Predation increase their damage-dealing skills while their counterparts who study Lifeblood gain considerable healing skills.

Every level, characters gain a point, which can be applied to one of the abilities under one of the four specializations for their class. Each point allocated improves one of the character’s actions, eking out a percentage more damage, giving a better chance to dodge, reducing the cooldown time, etc. If you’ve used WoW’s talents, or EQ2′s Acheivement  Points, this system will be familiar to you.

Studies

Alganon’s studies are an interesting addition to the fantasy rpg mix. Like abilities, studies provide an incremental increase in your character’s abilities. This could be a higher resistance to magic, or access to better crafting materials and recipes. However, unlike abilities, studies are not gained by leveling up. Studies are learned in real-time, points accumulating each second, even if you are offline. As long as any of your characters have studies queued up, you will continue to advance. Players of Eve Online will recognize that game’s skill system as the inspiration for Alganon’s studies.

Adding New Studies to My Queue

More on Families

One of the unique features of Alganon is that every character is part of a family. Though they have flowery, fantasy rpg names made up of randomly chosen syllables jammed together with the odd apostrophe, the families really represent your character’s motivation and look like the results of one of those “What Type of Player Are You” quizzes. Characters can be Achievers, Competitors, Crafters, Explorers or Socializers. Being part of a family is a way to get players with similar interests and motivations together from the start of the game.

Being a part of a family in Alganon is a great way to join with players that share similar interests. For example, power gamers can be in the same family and casual gamers can be in their own family… Every family has its own chat channel that all family members can freely participate in. This channel is automatically “made active” when you log into the game.

Your character’s family does not impact his abilities. However, each family will have merchants that sell “heirloom” items that affect his appearance. These include tabards, clothing and non-combat pets.

Pretty Pictures

Alganon has an art style that is reminiscent of World of Warcraft with its cartoony structures and characters. However as I played the game, one thing that struck me was just how pretty the landscape was. The colors and textures are great and the water effects really brought the world to life.

Another item of note are the excellent, hand-drawn world maps.

Quests

Quests in Alganon are nothing new: You travel to a quest hub, pick up all the relevant quests at the hub, then travel into the wilderness with instructions to kill 20 foozles, or collect 10 motley hides. Once done, you return to the hub, get your rewards, rinse and repeat until ultimately, one of the NPCs gives you a task that involves walking to the next hub. It’s not a bad system… it is just the same system. Unfortunately, in my brief time in Alganon, I didn’t see any quests besides kill and fetch quests — no escorts or scripted events. As it stands the quest system is serviceable, but nothing special.

However, the developers are close to finalizing a system for “dynamic quests” that

check for multiple different character attributes (or even account or world-wide attributes) and change a player’s available quests based on these criteria. This allows for us to design quests that, based on player choices and the state of the world, are different for each player. This system allows us to not only setup simple quest chains, but also to create a system where custom quests are available based on player choice.

I did not see evidence of dynamic quests when I was playing, but mmocrunch has been told that the system is in place, but the developers are trying to determine the best way to use the system without gating players from certain quests and rewards. (Personally, if you have an innovative technology such as this one, I say “Gate Away!!”)

Crafting

I have to admit to just scratching the surface of crafting in Alganon. On the surface, it is pretty similar to World of Warcraft. You can choose a gathering skill such as mining, or skinning and take a crafting skill to go with it. I picked skinning and leather working on my ranger. As you find nodes, or kill creatures, you can gather raw materials from them which increases your skill level, which in turn allows you to gather from higher grade nodes. Each gathering skill comes with some basic refining recipes you can use on the raw materials to create items that are used by the crafting professions and also raises your skill level without the hassle of finding nodes. Once you have some materials, you open your crafting skill window and see the recipes there. If you have the materials, just press a button and you will create the desired item — no crafting station required.

The Crafting Is Familiar

Unfortunately, I don’t have more insight into how crafting fits into the overall economy, or how useful the gear is compared to quest rewards and drops. It seems to be similar, but more involved than WoW’s system, with a lot more interim combines, and more crossover between crafting professions (you need to buy widgets from a tailor to create something with leatherworking). Higher level crafters on the beta chat seemed to be happy with the system, indicating that the gear was at least moderately useful compared to what you could find adventuring.

Deities and Crusades

At some point during your character’s career, he will be asked to throw in with a deity. Deities form another type of faction in Alganon and each provides its followers with additional quests, items and abilities. In addition, deities will lead their followers into battle to conquer territory and further their agendas. All that sounds cool, but no more so than any other quest giver and PvP premise. What makes Alganon’s idea interesting is that the deities in question won’t be abstract constructs, but actual characters you can interact with in-game. Even more astounding is that Quest Online plans to have the deities controlled by live GMs.

In ALGANON, gods won’t just be legends, they will walk the lands. Many players will be able to see and interact with their Deity directly, as they are controlled by in-house staff hired specifically to role-play within the world. When the Crusades are added, players will be able to fight along side their deities in these massive battles between the two factions, and receive powers, teachings and knowledge from their chosen deity.

If they can pull that off and make this kind of epic interaction a regular occurrence, that would go a long way to setting Alganon apart from the crowded pack of fantasy MMOs on the market today.

Is It Ready for Release?

Alganon releases the end of October, less than a week away. I played through the early levels and can tell you that the game is playable and I did not have trouble with extreme lag, or any crashes. There are bugs, like in pretty much every MMO at release, but nothing that will get in the way of you playing the game.

On beta chat, I did hear that some of the classes were getting reworked and I know that my ranger’s ability tree had many places where the abilities offered either weren’t that inspiring, or made little sense. For instance, through level 12, I still had abilities that gave bonuses to powers I didn’t have yet. Other abilities gave 1% cost reductions to powers that cost about 30 focus. Expect the ability trees to be reworked either before release, or soon afterwards.

Just Another WoW Clone?

A lot has been made on various gaming forums and even in beta chat that Alganon is nothing more than an unabashed WoW clone. You have two factions, with exclusive races (including elves with Popeye forearms) doing battle. You have a skill system, a combat system and a crafting system that could have been lifted straight from WoW. Hey, the “bad guy” starting area is even arid and blindingly orange!

Not the Barrens Again!

Here’s the thing, I don’t think anyone who had played it will argue with the fact that at first glance, Alganon looks a heck of a lot like “just another WoW clone.”  In fact, I am not sure the developers would argue that fact either. Alganon’s design philosophy seems to be to shamelessly borrow aspects of other successful games, mix them together in proper proportion and then add a dash of “don’t fix what ain’t broke.”  Toss in a desire to listen to their players, focus on what is fun about MMOs and maybe add a couple of neat ideas into the formula and you end up with Quest Online’s upcoming release.

I had a chance to level a couple characters through the first 12 levels of Alganon. For the first four or five levels, I was bored. My ranger played a lot like an early paladin in WoW — auto-attack and hit my seal every so often. However, after that first dry period, I got my first good damaging skill, as well as a heal and I started to fight creature that could cut into my hit point bar. I made it to the first village, picked up my gathering and crafting skills and started to skin my kills. I found myself planning out some studies, loading up on the shorter combat studies and saving the 1-day “furs and skins” study (which improves the crafting materials I could work with) for when I was offline.

It grew on me…

Yes, Alganon is a WoW clone. It is also an Eve Online clone… and an Everquest clone… and I think there is a true desire among Alganon’s developers to be a responsive development team and add something new to the mix with their Dynamic Quests and Deity system. Can they pull any of that innovative stuff off? I don’t know. In today’s MMO market, and with the climate hostile to new games, I would say the odds are against them. But how can’t you root for the guy who promises to get you wading into a massive battle with your GM-controlled god at your side?

Should I Try Alganon?

I think you should give Alganon a shot if

• You like WoW, or EQ2, but have seen it all and would like a fresh start with all new content.
• You are thinking of returning to a fantasy MMO, but have played out all the classes and would like something new to see.
• You want to get in on the ground floor of a game.
• You want to be part of a small community with more direct contact with the dev team.
• You like WoW, but think the community stinks.
• You like WoW, or EQ2, but think the game has gone downhill in the past couple of years.

Alganon is not for you if

• You are looking for some massive innovation that will give you that “first game ever” feeling again.
• You are hooked on fast, flashy combat such as is found in CoX and Champs Online.
• You are happy with WoW, or EQ2… if so, there is nothing to see here (unless they implement some of their killer features).

Aside from MUDs, Shadowbane was the first PvP-centric game I had ever played. In spite of numerous bugs and performance issues, Shadowbane delivered some exciting PvP, but the one moment that stands out from all the others is “The Battlefield“.

My T5 confessor was in a random ARAC guild for most of its career. I don’t remember the name of the guild, or much about it aside from the fact that we had a city at the edge of a desert and we were continuously at odds with a guild of “desert folk”, semi-role-players. Why were we constantly at war? Primarily because it was Shadowbane, and in Shadowbane you fight, and they were there. (I always felt that one of the big flaws with most PvP-centric games is the lack of a reason for conflict… aside from just “something to do”, but that is a topic for another article.) Most nights consisted of logging on, finding some spawns to camp and level, and then getting ambushed, or getting a call from our guildmates that they were heading out to hunt our enemy, or were being hunted and needed some help.

One week, after several days of tit-for-tat raiding each other, I think we really pissed them off because there was a large posse of our hated enemy heading toward our city. Now, you can’t just sack a city in Shadowbane; there is a long convoluted process to wiping a town. But they obviously wanted a fight, and perhaps to camp us in for a while, so we had to respond. Our guildies arrived from their PvE camping, a few more logged in and we massed our warband and headed out to the field of battle. What followed was a great, running battle of about 30 on 30. It was glorious chaos. I remember running with a small group searching for the enemy, pursuing a scout and getting ambushed by invisible sorcerers… but getting bailed out when reinforcements came and rolled the mages. I remember all of the various skirmish groups ending up on a large hill, coming together for a gigantic furball with melee and spell effects flying all over the place.

At one point in the fight, I turned and saw one of our fighters battling two enemies at the periphery of the furball. I quickly healed the fighter and tossed a couple of nukes and one of the bad guys fell. The other ran, disappearing over the side of the hill. I think the fighter lost track of him, because he headed back into the main fray. I jumped down and followed the runner. He was hurt pretty badly and so it took only a spell and a couple stiff cracks with my mace to finish him. I quickly turned around, headed back up the hill, hoping to rejoin the battle.

But the battle had moved on…

In the ten seconds it took me to deal the killing blow to the runner and return, the hill that had been awash in fire, lightning and steel was now still and silent. I was alone in a field of corpses. I surveyed the scene for a bit, checking the names of the dead. When it comes to MMOs, I am in no way a role-player, but for that brief moment, I could picture my character stepping over the bodies, accompanied only by the howling wind and the buzzing of flies. It was eerie.

But then chat lit up again with our scouts’ reports. Another enemy group had been spotted south of our city. I was yanked from the moment and thrust back into the game… Time to kill some more desert rats!