I was planning on writing a full review for SWTOR, but Pherephassa did such a great write-up on her SWTOR reivew, that I figured I’d skip mine and get straight to my likes and gripes. I’ll give you a hint, it’s going to be mostly gripes.

Undoubtedly the best part of game is the journey to endgame, after all this is what BioWare does best. Having said that, as a MMORPG player I found myself beginning to skip dialog as early as the mid teen levels and before I hit level 30 I was skipping it all with the exception of the main storyline. Even that I began to partial skip or you can say fast forward by the time I hit the early 40′s.  It’s not that I didn’t find it interesting, I just wanted to get on with things.

As a player who has never seriously crafted before, I actually enjoyed the crafting system in SWTOR. I didn’t have to waste my time grinding it out looking for resources or spending hours killing the same mobs, however while I enjoyed the mechanic of crafting, the entire system is broken since only a few professions can actually make any money.

For one, crafting is way to easy and fast. One of the main reasons I never pursue crafting is because of how much time it takes to master. In SWTOR I hit the max in all three of my crew skills within 3 weeks without really trying. Now nothing is wrong with the system itself, they just need to make the crafting time much much longer. While it took me 3 weeks to master all my crew skills, if you take the actual crafting time, it was probably only 3-4 days.  It should take at least 1 month of “crew skill time” to master a skill.

Secondly, they need to make craftable items better, not the best, but close. There should only be a handful of items that are better then the best crafted items and those items should be harder to get. Right now you can spend a few days in PvP or grinding flashpoints and obtain some of the best gear out there making crafted gear worthless.

Moving on to PvP which we all know is broken across the board, from open PvP to the PvP planet Illum to Warzones, it’s a mess. While Warzones recently got a lot better with the separation of level 50 characters, they still need to introduce at least one more bracket to divide 1-49. Open PvP and Illum need a full overhaul to become worth while since  currently there’s zero reason to participate in open PvP and nearly none on Illum as you can obtain the same rewards from warzones at an unmatched rate.

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It’s been a little over a month since the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I have multiple characters at level 50, have seen all 4 empire stories, and the string of colds and flu that have been kicking my ass since the holidays is finally on its last legs, so it’s time for me to blare my thoughts about this game. I had originally intended to leave it to Mike, since he’s already written up a few thoughts, and I wrote up a beta impression, but my views have changed slightly and are different than his, so I changed my mind. I’m a woman, I’m allowed to do that, right?

My overall impressions of this game do remain positive, although in many ways it’s a muddle. BioWare is new at the MMO genre, and it very much shows. I generally think ‘balanced classes’ is an MMO myth, but there is very little of it in SWTOR; classes just play unevenly in both skillsets and companion acquisition, crafting is… well, I’ll just say it’s bolluxed. Patches and updates aren’t staying long enough on the test server, BioWare isn’t listening to the testers’ feedback, and has now displayed a pattern of knee-jerk over-nerfs that have seriously hit my enthusiasm for playing. I really have to wonder if anyone at BioWare has ever played an MMO at endgame, or participated in serious pvp.

And yet, my overall impression remains positive. I’m treating this game like it’s single player, or rather, like it’s a LAN. As a single player or LAN, it is a great game.

But on to the specifics.

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The first time I played the original Realtime Worlds beta of All Points Bulletin I never really got past the first few tutorial missions due to a faulty graphics card. After spending some time with the free-to-play revival of this game, I’m starting to think I may have missed out on a fun experience.

Taking place in the fictional city of San Paro, APB pits criminals vs enforcers in a virtual game of cops & robbers. Featuring no classes, levels or stats, your skill with a gun will largely dictate your success, or failure in this game.

I say there are no classes but that’s not entirely true. Players can purchase equipment and character modifications that grant various buffs in the form of extra health, quicker health regen, ammo regeneration for team mates, and various other goodies I’ve not yet had the chance to play with. This enables players to specialise in various areas, perhaps equipping modifications beneficial to a sniper, or a close quarter shotgun wielder in effect creating your own custom class similar to the perks/specialisation features of modern FPS shooter titles.

Character customisation features some of the most varied options and choices you will likely ever see in an MMO, and will probably suck up a large amount of time when creating your first character. I was able to knock up a hockey masked enforcer tribute to Casey Jones fairly easily. Another childhood fantasy achieved if only in video game form.

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Now that SWTOR has officially launched, I figured it would be a good time to give my first impression review for Star Wars: The Old Republic. While I had the opportunity to get into the last two beta weekends, I wasn’t able to due to other obligations, so my first real taste of the game was when the early access began.

Going into it I was expecting to dislike it; boarder-line hate it, so I’m actually quite surprised that I’m enjoying myself and even more surprised that I’m still listening to a good portion of the voice-overs.  Being one of the biggest selling points for BioWare, the billions of hours (ok, maybe not billions) of voice-over acting was going to be what separated it from all other MMORPGs and quite frankly has to be because so much of the gameplay features have been done before.

Currently my Sith Bounty Hunter is at level 21 and while I still listen to the main story-line, for just about every other quest I’m hitting the next button after a few words. The NPCs tend to ramble on and in most cases I really don’t care what they have to say, but that sort of fits my characters persona, so I don’t feel too bad. So in terms of the voice-over acting, I’m happy to report that it’s a big plus and being able to select the answers for yourself in conversations is also fun, or maybe it’s fun because I’m playing a Sith.

One of the new features that I haven’t seen before are the “personal zones” in the game that don’t revert back after you complete your mission. In many MMORPGs when completing a quest it resets back to normal for the next person to complete, but not so for SWTOR. Once you enter one of these zones, marked by a green force-field, you enter a zone that is personalized to your progress and the choices your make. Meaning if you leave that area and go back later, it doesn’t reset, which is nice as it feels you’re decisions in the game actually mean something.

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Welcome to MMOCrunch’s Gunshine review, where we review the newest MMO’ish game to hit Facebook. Like so many other MMO games these days, Gunshine isn’t a true MMOPRG since the vast majority of the game world is instanced. Although there are towns throughout the game that are not and people can meet up, trade or fight.

Gunshine begins with your character arriving on corporate built city island called Dawnbreak, which was sold the the public as the place where dreams would come true. Unfortunately almost immediately upon arrival you’re arrested and realize that it’s more of a nightmare than a dream. So with the help of some new friends, you end up busting out of jail and learning that the entire island is overrun by organized crime, violence and some monsters for good measure.

There are three classes to choose from, melee, ranged and medic, with the medics also being ranged as they need a primary attack. Skills are of course based on the class you select, but weapons and gear is not, meaning you’ll be able to use any weapons and gear in the game.

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Lately I’ve been reviewing a lot of theme-park MMORPGs, so for my next review I wanted to select a sandbox game and decided on Perpetuum. Also because it’s coming up on its one year anniversary in almost exactly a month, so I figured it was a good time for a review.

Perpetuum, which recently seems to have become the MMORPG of choice for disgruntled Eve Online players, like Eve has a player driven economy, open PvP zones, corporations and a steep learning curve. Although overwhelming at first, Perpetuum has some very useful tutorials and the first dozen or so assignments, which can be likened to quests, continue the tutorials if you need them.

The game begins with the character creation screen, which has a ton of customizable options, then moves onto faction selection, class selection and skill specializations, all before beginning the game. It’s a lot to take in all upfront, especially when you’re really not sure what type of player you want to become.

While it may be confusing at first, in actuality it all boils down to three main categories. Tactics and mechatronics, which means what weapons you can use and how strong your mech can become. Industry and research, which correlates to mining materials and crafting items/parts.  Then we have politics and economics for those who want to start up their own corporations and specialize in things like relations, management and finance.

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Gaming genres are a funny thing, they normally give potential players a quick idea of the type of game it is, however it seems that these days the MMORPG genre just doesn’t want to follow the rules. This no more apparent than with Nexon’s latest MMORPG, Dragon Nest.

Of course Dragon Nest has all the aspects of being a RPG game, you have leveling, gear, skill trees and of course quests to complete, but the funny thing is they forgot to add the “massive” part into the game.  You won’t find any persistent world here as every part of the game is instanced with the towns acting as social hubs for players to gather and form groups. What Dragon Nest really is is a single player game with multiple-player features as there’s nothing that ties the game together.

So in order to give Dragon Nest a fair review, I will not be reviewing it as a MMORPG, because it’s simply not. Instead I will review it as a multiplayer online RPG.

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Usually when I start playing a game, whether it be for a review or because I simply want to, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I’m in for. However with Dragon Nest, aside from some of the news and updates about it, I never really bothered learning anything about the actual game or gameplay mechanics.

The reason being is that I’m just not a fan of the art style of Dragon Nest. The characters look like a bunch of children which just makes me feel like I’m playing a kids game and a little dirty to be honest. That’s not to say the graphics are bad, they are actually quite good and make great use out of the blur effect to enhance depth-of-field, I just don’t like the way the characters look.

As I began my journey I was expecting something more along the lines of, oh I don’t know, a WoW clone. Sorry, but with so many others out there, I just assumed. Rest assure, Dragon Nest is no clone, but it is also definitely not what you would think of as a traditional MMORPG. Think if Fable was a MMO and add combat combos.

Everything in Dragon Nest is instanced and connected by portals. There’s no open world to explore and really the only open zones are the towns, everything else puts you on a linear track. While I don’t necessarily mind instances (I liked Rusty Hearts which was all instanced as well), I don’t like it in Dragon Nest because there are far too many of them. Every zone is tiny, even the big zones are small when comparing it to any other MMO game out there, so you’re constantly staring at loading screens. Even if I loved everything else about the game, the loading screens alone would be enough for me to stop playing.

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A few weeks ago I gave my first impressions review of Rusty Hearts when it launched into open beta and for the most part it was a positive review. Now that I’ve had some more time to get to know Rusty Hearts, it’s time for a more indepth look.

To get started, for those of you not familiar with Rusty Hearts and who don’t want to ready my first impressions article, Rusty Hearts is a side-scrolling multi-player online RPG (MORPG). It is no more of a MMO game than Diablo or Call of Duty is, regardless of how Perfect World categories it, but that isn’t necessary a bad thing.

What Rusty Hearts does right is realize what type of game it is, a fasted paced action beat-em-up. With that in mind you won’t find any real world to explore, other than the towns you travel to as you progress through the game. All the quests and missions are accessed through Dungeon portals which are scattered throughout the towns, from which you will choose what dungeon you want to go to. While this means everything in the game is instanced, it also means you can jump right into the action without having to follow some quest marker.

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Episode 2: Species War is the latest content update to hit Black Prophecy and introduced PvP Warzones. Over the last week or so I strapped myself back into my fighters pilot seat to see just how much Black Prophecy has changed since the launch of Episode 2.

Getting right to it, the biggest issue I found with the Warzones is that they’re always empty. The largest group of players I’ve seen in the last week was four, including myself, which is pretty sad. I’m not sure if this is due to a lack of players, interest in warzones or incentive to participate, but it’s clear it’s a problem.

I don’t believe it’s a lack of interest, one of Black Prophecy’s early issues was a lack of content and the new Warzones greatly help to fix that issue, so I really think it’s a problem with player incentives. Currently players have two incentives to fly into a warzone, Honor Points and faction rewards.

Each of the six warzones has it’s own reward, something like an XP boost, cheaper items from vendors, things of that nature and everyone in the controlling faction receives it. This gives players an general incentive to take over a zone so everyone in their faction receives the reward, but lets be honest, people are greedy and want personal rewards.

This is where Honor Points come in. Each time you kill an enemy pilot or take over a sector in a warzone, you receive honor points. However the problem is that Honer Vendors have astronomical prices, some items costing 500,000 points.  Even the lowest level items cost a minimum of 50,000 points. Couple that with the fact that you’re restricted to only one warzone at a time because of level restrictiosn and you can see that the process becomes even slower.

The currently rewards system leads to honor points grinding. What Black Prophecy needs to do is offer better personal rewards so players have additional incentive other than to grind honor points. Something as simple as a kill board would fit the bill. I think once the incentives have been readjusted and players get a real reason to participate, the Warzones will become a hot spot.

Aside from the emptiness of it, the Warzones are actually really fun even with a few people in them. They just need to figure out how to get them filled.

Below is a brief video intro to Warzones as I try to take one over solo. Enjoy.

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