One of the few classic 'themepark' MMORPGs I still would like to play and enjoy to it's fullest is Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. There is one small problem with this MMORPG: the playerbase... As I've written a couple of times before, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a MMORPG with a lot of potential and it offers a lot to do. Just look at the 3 spheres of leveling provided (character, diplomatic and crafting), the huge world it offers (one of the biggest on-line virtual worlds around) and the lack of instances (dungeons are in the world for all to access, much like the old Lineage II dungeons used to be). The graphics are nice - dated but nice, while the animations might feel a bit clunky. These are all thing that would potentially make Vanguard: Saga of Heroes one of the best MMORPGs around. Sadly though, it's also one of the least populated MMORPGs around as well In the past population was a problem. Most players logging on to play Vanguard: Saga of Heroes used to have a Station Pass and spent some of their paid time there. Other players that were on the Isle of Dawn (starter area) used to be 2-week trial players and never left the isle or they'd have to purchase the game. This caused a HUGE gap between the few players who actually decided to leave the Isle of Dawn and those that have been around for quite some time already. And because of it those (new) players mostly quited after one or 2 months. When Vanguard: Saga of Heroes went Free2Play, there was hope of a revival of the game, but sadly it didn't pull the numbers SOE had hoped for. And to make things worse, the old EU server was merged into the US server because of it's performance (it was dead aside from a hand full of players ) A couple of days ago I've reinstalled Vanguard: Saga of Heroes in the hope that the server was alive after the merge. I've logged on during different times, both prime-time US and prime-time EU to see how populated the game is. Where the world-chat used to be extremely crowded, it's now quite dead. Almost no one chatting there and after half an hour there have been only a few things said there. Now I'm not sure if free players are limited in their use of the world-chat, so I can't really comment on that. Walking around in Kaya I also didn't really see many players. Normally I'd run into around 15-20 players there, but now I had to really search for them. The ones I found (5 in total) were all at the bank, of which half of them were just standing there doing totally nothing. I just can't help but think that Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is dieing or perhaps dead already. It looks like the Free2Play move that SOE made didn't boost the game's population at all and instead even lowered it. I'm wondering if I should keep it installed and play it more often, hoping for better days, or remove it and just move along. I mean, I do like the game, but not in the state it's right now...

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Some breaking news there... RIFT is going to be Free2Play per June 12th. I bet after the resent quarterly results of their competition (SWTOR / NCSoft) they finally figured out that going Free2Play means they make money from players than when to stick to the subscription system... All information can be on the RIFT website. I have copied the FAQ here... When is RIFT going free-to-play? June 12 with the arrival of Update 2.3: Empyreal Assault, which also brings a new zone, Chronicle, raid, and more!  Why is RIFT going free-to-play? Because players prefer free games! Trion has always been progressive with the way we've let people access RIFT, offering trials and referral offers since shortly after launch, Return to Telara events where we invited players to come back for free to see what they missed, partnerships with companies like Raptr, iGames, and others. Over the last two years, we've seen the online gaming market evolve and expand, with millions of new players in North America and Europe embracing free-to-play games. This is just the latest evolution of RIFT that will allow us to bring even more players into the world of Telara.  Why is RIFT going free-to-play now? Because we believe the game, the market, and players are ready for the transition.  Is there still a subscription? What does it offer? Yes! Subscribers will be known as Patrons and receive a host of special benefits and abilities:  +15% Currency (always on) +10% Mount Speed (always on) Daily Boost Set: Each day you can activate bonuses to the Experience, Notoriety, Favor, Prestige and Tokens you earn while playing. Daily Summons: Instant access to your banker, guild banker, and trainer. You'll receive access to these convenience features on a set cooldown. I'm currently a subscriber, what will this mean for me? You'll receive all Patron benefits shown above and experience all the epic fun in RIFT you've come to expect across every character you create.  What do I get with Patron Pass? Patron Passes give you access to the benefits of a subscription for a set amount of time. They are available for purchase via the in-game RIFT Store in 3, 15, and 30 day durations.  What do I get for purchasing the original RIFT box and the Storm Legion expansion? Both the RIFT and Storm Legion products grant permanent unlocks to your account. Owning the base game will open extra character and bag slots, while Storm Legion will unlock the expansion Souls (Harbinger, Tempest, Tactician, and Defiler). Check out the table above for details.  How is the game going to be different after the change? It's not! You can play free or add subscription benefits, but the game itself hasn't changed. Constant development and updates will continue. We're only changing the business model, not the heart of the game or the philosophy behind the game design that makes it so much fun.  Will there be a cash shop? Yes – clicking the cart icon in the lower UI will open the RIFT Store! Many things will be available for both in-game gold and Credits.  What are Credits? Credits are a game currency purchased with real money via the RIFT Store or through the Trion Worlds Account Center. Credits can be used to buy many items in RIFT.  What will be available at the RIFT Store? Mounts, gear, boosts, companion pets, expansion Souls, services, and more.  Can I gift items to my friends? Yes! When purchasing an item, if it has a gift button next to it, you may choose to gift it to any other player.  How will the Loyalty program work? We'll be discussing the Loyalty program in detail over the coming weeks.  What is REX? REX is an item that can be purchased with real money, which can be traded and sold in-game amongst players, and can be exchanged for Credits and Loyalty. We'll be going into more detail about REX in the coming weeks.  What does REX stand for? RIFT Exchange.  Are you going to change the free-to-play offerings for RIFT in the future? As with all of the features we add to RIFT, we will continue to make changes to the game based on feedback from our players. It's an ongoing process! I'm also wondering if this Free2Play conversion has something to do with ArcheAge which TRION will also be hosting. In Korea ArcheAge is Free2Play and a lot of Western players who are interested were hoping it'd go Free2Play here as well...

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True-action combat in MMORPGs was introduced already 7 years ago with the release of Dungeons & Dragons online, but was never really advertised as a true-action combat MMORPG... With the release of TERA, Vindictus and The Continent of tne Ninth (though the latter 2 are not really MMORPGs but more HUB games) around the turn of the decade the term true-action combat finally became set and players started to get interested in this feature. A feature that's been around for ages in many single player games (first-person shooters and a lot of action-adventure RPGs as well). This year three more titles are coming with their true-action combat. These are Neverwinter (to be released at the end of this month), Wildstar and Dragon's Prophet. And I'm not even sure what more titles are under development that will have true-action combat as well. I do hope Lineage III (unofficially already under development by NCSoft) will be a true-action combat MMORPG as well. But there are 2 negative things I can think off when it comes to true-action combat in MMORPGs...   1. Area of affect. Yes, that's right... When you can't TAB-target your target, your combat is going to be pretty less accurate. To compensate this, area of effect skills will become more and more important for the game and the player. I'm not only talking about damage, but also healing. TERA has solved that problem in a pretty neat way (2 actually). One is that the priest class has a self-centered AoE healing effect, while the other is that the mystic drops healing spheres for the players to pick up.   2. Pet classes. As a real pet loving player, I can't think of a good way to have a pet class in a true-action combat MMORPG. The TERA mystic class uses them, but I think they're not really working well. Mostly because the pets are still using a TAB-targeting system In a true-action combat MMORPG pets should have true-action combat as well, and use AoE skills too... I think with the current developments in true-action combat MMORPGs we can expect a lot of new features and innovations. These will be exciting times, and I can't wait for the next true-action MMORPG title to be announced and to be playing it! Personally, with the coming of the true-action combat MMORPGs, I feel kinda silly playing TAB-targeting MMORPGs. Star Wars - The Old Republic is the only one I still play at this moment, and when the time on my account is over I think I'll ditch it as well in favor of a (newly released) true-action combat MMORPG...

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Speaking about luxurious problems right now... Yesterday I was sad that the servers of Dragon's Prophet were to be wiped, and today there are 2 beta MMORPGs I can play, my regular MMORPG as well as two single-player games Yes, the Dragon's Prophet servers are up and running again since 7am (CEST), and I have already been playing it a lot. A fresh start with a new class to play and enjoy the content all over again. Not to mention, as expected, there are more players now in the game after all VIP beta invites have been sent out. Tonight at 9pm (3 hours from now) the 4th beta weekend of Neverwinter will start and there have been a large number of changes and additions to the game that I'd like to play. Most of all, crafting is available and I'll certainly take a closer look at that part of the game. Then there is Star Wars - The Old Republic, in which my character just has arrived on Nar Shaddaa and already is starting to make a name for herself. I certainly want to see how the story there will unfold, but it can also wait till after the Neverwinter beta weekend Then the two single-player games I also want to play... One is still SimCity, where my old towns are still growing and I'm trying to build a casino empire in one of them (and failing at it as well ) and the other one has to make large numbers of TVs for the arcology project. The other game I'm playing (but never have mentioned here ) is XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I have restarted my (iron man) game again because the previous 2 attempts ended up in a tragic disaster where I had almost no ranking officers anymore and had to face the toughest aliens with sergeants and lieutenants - yeah that's a #FAIL attempt indeed But like SWTOR, both these single-player games can certainly wait till after the Neverwinter beta weekend is over So it's clearly now off to Dragon's Prophet and later tonight most likely Neverwinter! Oh, there's no NDA on Neverwinter so I'll post about it tomorrow I think...

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Yeah, that's right. It's no use to play the closed technical beta of Dragon's Prophet at this very moment, and it wouldn't surprise me if there's almost no one playing at this very moment. Why..? Simple... Tonight at 9pm PDT (6am CEST) the servers will be completely wiped and the closed beta will get a new start with all VIP players invited. I am kinda sad that I have to wait till tomorrow morning before I can start playing Dragon's Prophet again. But on the other hand, with all VIP players invited I guess that the servers will be well populated, making the testing of the game more efficient and (more importantly) more fun. Well, that was all I can and had to report on Dragon's Prophet. No spoilers, no breaking of the NDA. Want to give it a try yourself? Buy a VIP pack (starting at 20 bucks) or apply for beta and hope to be lucky

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With my rather high level when I left Dromund Kaas in my own ship (and a very nice one too), I finally had time to start on the space missions. My first mission however was a big failure for the first couple of tries. If I wasn't blown up before the end of the mission, the time would have ran out with not even half of the objectives completed When I finally managed to get that first mission done (barely with only 5% of my hull left), I was rewarded a 2K armor piece. Damn, I wish I would have been given that one BEFORE I started on that mission. That single armor piece made made the 2nd run of that same mission so much easier already. When I was on Balmorra I finally found a NPC that was selling ship parts (guess there's one on Dromund Kaas as well...). I went completely loose on the parts and upgraded my ship BIG TIME. Well, big time..? I managed to get a lot of tier 1 gear and only one that was tier 3. Not much of an upgrade I thought, but in reality it was an actual HUGE upgrade. When I gave that first mission an other try, I went through it without any real damage (shield regenerators rock )   From there on the sky was the limit *pun intended* and I've been doing a lot of those space missions. Though they seem like the old 80's arcade games (for those who're too young to have played any of them, don't worry and don't google them, this looks a lot better ), the games are fun to play. Not so challenging though, but fun! I even dare to say that these space missions are the best (mini)games I've encountered in any MMORPG so far (unless you really love bejeweled in Lineage II ). I'll be playing these space missions a lot more as well the coming days (weeks?). Not only because they are so much fun, but also because I need the space commendation coins they provide. And I need them in LARGE quantities. I have only 30 by now and that's not giving me anything From what I've seen I need at least a couple of hundred of them to get anything worth while to add to my ship...

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I remember when I started playing Lineage II back in 2005 (as my first MMORPG) and I thought it was hard like hell. You really had to use 'shots' to boost the damage you'd do (and get bankrupt on doing so) or have a 5 minutes rest after every couple of monsters because you'd be dead otherwise. And then the death penalty: loose 4% XP (and that's really a lot, even when you're only 40 ). But these days MMORPGs are not about this kind of difficulty anymore. Heck, most in modern MMORPGs it's an accomplishment to die in a battle with a monster a couple of levels higher than you are. And when you finally manage to die in these games, there's almost no penalty implied, other than a bit of gear damage . Gear damage you can pay easily with the loads of money most MMORPGs provide from only doing the quests... Of all MMORPGs I've recently played, Star Wars: The Old Republic is most likely the easiest one around. Even if you manage to die (I'm level 24 now and died only a couple of times and mostly because of my own stupid mistake) you can resurrect on the spot, be invisible for 10 seconds and try again... On the other side of the spectrum is Wizardry online. This MMORPG even has a chance for permanent dead, which will make your character totally unplayable from that moment on if that happens. Not to mention, Wizardry online is based on the old Wizardry games (real old games BTW ) where monsters give you a real hard time and respawn extremely fast From these two extremes, I think both have something good about them. I keep playing SWTOR for now solely for the story, which is actually quite good. Though I think it's 'replay value' is quite low. It wouldn't surprise me that when I hit the maximum level (55 with the new expansion), I might roll one additional character only for it's personal story. All other quests have been done already once.. Wizardry online I haven't touched lately (because of SWTOR and Dragon's Prophet beta), but I really intend to play it more when I have the time. It's the challenge that's calling for sure.

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This weekend is the last double-XP weekend for Star Wars - The Old Republic. Though a lot of players are happy with it and using it to level up fast, I'm not one of them. I actually am not really playing SWTOR this weekend a lot at all... Reason I'm not enjoying the double-XP weekend is that I'm leveling too fast. Imagine, Arriving on Dromund Kaas on level 10 (which is quite normal) during last week's double-XP weekend, and the leaving the planet for Balmorra when I was close to level 19. That's not right! One should leave Dromund Kaas around level 15... Now walking around on Balmorra I'm already level 23 and am still busy with the quests there. Though I have already done my personal story, there is still one large quest ahead. If I'll be doing that one during the double-XP weekend, I fear I'll be level 27 or so when I'm done (instead of close to 25). From there I have to go to Nar Sharra (not sure if I've spelled it correctly) for the next part of my personal story and end up who knows at what high level when I'm done there... I'd rather wait a couple of days before I play again (which will be tomorrow by now) to prevent me from gaining too much XP and not enjoy the rest of the content because there's no challenge at all. Or to prevent myself from skipping a lot of quests not to be too high for the personal story. On both Dromund Kaas and Balmorra I have already skipped most heroic quests because of this reason, and I don't want to skip more of the (overall good) content...

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It's been a while since I learned about Dragon's Prophet, and I was almost immediately interested in this upcoming MMORPG. This was before there was even talk who would publish this game for the Western market. Eventually, we ended up with two publishers for the Western market. SOE for the Northern-American continent and Infernium for Europe. With me kinda hating the EU gaming community (mostly because the non-English speakers talk their gibberish Eastern-European language in main chat), the choice was pretty easy for me: SOE. Also because I have an active account with a Station Pass subscription What is is that lured me to Dragon's Prophet..? Well, I just LOVE dragons to start with, and the trailers did look very promising as well. Not to mention, Runewalker did a good job on Runes of Magic. It's just sad that their European developer (GameForge/Frogster) kinda fucked up their great game with their Pay2Win cash shop Anyways, back to the title of this post... Yes, I have beta access now. Not because I was picked from applying as beta tester (which I did), but because I bought a Dragon pack. I mean, those packs are dirt-cheap with their price being equal to the value of the SC you'll get, while all the extra's makes it an even better offer! But being a beta tester also has it's disadvantages... Though I was (and still am) very hyped about Dragon's Prophet, I can not tell you a thing about it due to the NDA. A NDA which I wonder why it is in place. Dragon's Prophet has been released for about half a year already in Taiwan (where Runewalker hails from), and from the looks of the movies on YouTube, Infernium is not having a NDA in place (or not enforcing it). But as you know me, I'll keep my mouth shut about Dragon's Prophet from now on. If you really want to play it yourself, all I can say is buy one of the Dragon packs, or wait till SOE has released game...

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I've been wondering lately why my MMORPG gaming experiences have been so shallow for the last year or so and why I'm liking Star Wars - The Old Republic so much now, eventhough that MMORPG really has a generic themepark gaming experience (for me). I also thought back of the two other MMORPGs I've played for a very long time (Lineage II and Lord of the Rings online) and why those MMORPG gaming experiences were so great for me as well and what changed to them. The answer is simple: a good guild. But what makes a good guild? I think for everyone that's different. A lot of players would love to be in the biggest and strongest guilds on the server, only to brag about their (guild's?) prowess, while other players rather stick to a close group of 5-10 players and role-play they way through the game. To me, a good guild is mostly medium sized (I don't like huge crowds of players chatting my ears off) that are willing to help each other, have some nice chats in the guild at times and most of all: no pressure to hit a certain level in a certain time. And when I look at my past, that has applied to all guilds I've been in so far. It started with Undomiel in Lineage II. Though that was a role-playing guild, there was no hurry to level up, and we helped each other out a lot. Not to mention, we did a lot of low-level raids just for the fun of it. The only 'problem' with Undomiel was that they didn't want to level past 61 (A-grade) and rather made a new character to enjoy the lower level content and role-play some more, while I wanted to play on and (more importantly for Lineage II) participate in the PvP. It's a good thing Undomiel had good ties with Co1 (a medium sized casual PvP clan) back then, and the application and acceptance to the clan with them was quickly done. I stayed with them for 3 years or so until Craylon (clean leader) kinda quited Lineage II and the clan changed a lot (me-me mentality). The same thing goes for Lord of the Rings online I guess. When I met Aeon Knights back in 2008, they were a good bunch of people with a very laid back mentality. When I joined them they were with around 75 members or so and I stayed with them for over a year. When I left LotRo (and returned to Lineage II) there was some sadness with me for leaving them. When I picked up LotRo again later on (and Star Wars - The Old Republic as well, where they made a guild too) a lot was changed. In LotRo there was a huge shift in leadership and the guild wasn't the same anymore. This was also the result of some 'random invites'. Not to mention, Aeon Knights was no longer a LotRo-only guild but they had already 3-4 other MMORPGs where they played, making the forums a huge chit-chat place where I just didn't feel at home For the same reason I think why EverQuest II, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and a couple more MMORPGs just don't make me feel 'at home'. I'm just not finding the right guilds there. EQ2 is way too old and my level 30-35 characters are more in solo-play than that there is any interaction with other players or guild members (just because of the huge level gap). While in VG the problem is (was?) that the game is way too old and the active players already have a maxed out character, preventing the interaction with lower level players, and the population is (was?) too small for new guilds of new players to have success. Right now in SWTOR I'm 'feeling home' again. Not because SWTOR has so much more to offer than, lets say, World of Warcraft or EverQuest II (the opposite is true ), but because I've found a guild where there is actual interaction under it's members. And that's worth more than anything else in a MMORPG to me - heck, it even made me subscribe to SWTOR!

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