Neverwinter, a Mean Spirited Review

Cryptic loves to re-skin their games.

When you use the name of a popular RPG franchise with a well established set of parameters, it's typically a very good idea to dumb everything down to the most forgettable and pointless metric possible. BioWare did this with Knights of the Old Republic, and now Cryptic has "released" Neverwinter. The main difference here is that Neverwinter Nights is a completely unrelated franchise. The cake is a lie.

Misleading premises alone are not a good reason to hate a game, but luckily there are a wide range of inadequacies to select from in this cocktail of failure. I try not to make a habit of reviewing games in beta, but they're accepting people's money, so it's as good as released in my eyes. As usual, let's start with the bad.

F2P Ensures that MMO is Subjective

Like nearly every other F2P "MMO", you will be in instances from start-to-finish and never actually get to play with hundreds of other players. This is a penny-pinching symptom, so while not entirely unexpected, it does get annoying to be in the same zone as a friend, but have to face load-times to hop into their instance. This brings me to issue number two...

Loading....................

Most likely due to resource saving from the Foundry quest model, load times are going to sting. While playing generic and terrible CRYPTIC content, your load times could be a few minutes, but if you're loading a player-made quest you could be in for longer waits. I'm not sure if this is a bug with the engine, or just an accepted result of lazy development, but we're now in an era of bandwidth/computing/rendering that these types of load times shouldn't exist. I could forgive all of this if playing the game was fun, but...

Combat is Abysmal

I blame TERA for the surge of faux-tab-targeting MMORPG offerings that hit the shelves in 2012 and beyond. Neverwinter subscribes to the methodology that strategy and action are not as fun as holding down the left mouse button, so they ensured that you could defeat nearly all encounters by doing exactly that. You acquire skills and abilities to help you kill the droves of profoundly inept trash-mobs, but they're really only there if you finish reading the newspaper before your dungeon crawl is complete and you get bored.

The PvP is Worse

Typically when I'm struggling to enjoy a MMO, I jump over to the competitive side of things and stomp some people out. What I found with Neverwinter is that the mere existence of PvP in its current capacity actually makes the game as a whole seem far worse.

It goes without saying that in a game where everything is instanced, the PvP would be no different. I don't consider this a shortcoming because it is fully anticipated. The problem with Neverwinter's system is the pace. PvP Combat's pacing is extremely slow, and even if you completely dominate your opponent, it could take minutes to actually kill them. This could be easily remedied, but after trolling the in-game chat, it seems like most people would rather have players be as slow and boring to kill as non-players. Call it cultural, but young people sicken me these days.

Shamefully Claiming Dungeons and Dragons

Those of you nerdy enough to have played either Dungeons and Dragons or any games with the D&D ruleset understand that D&D and in-depth character development walk hand-in-hand. To see what they whittled it all down to in order to create such a generic F2P hack/slash abortion is a mockery of the name itself and makes me question why they even chose to license it from Wizards of the Coast.

You have some stats and some generic trade-skills, but the breadth of potential that comes along with being charismatic or strong in a campaign is entirely overlooked. This is most likely do to the game being essentially a re-skin of Star Trek Online and Champions, however, one good thing came along with the ride that fits right into the D&D tradition...

The Foundry

The Foundry is a toolkit within the game client that allows you (once you've reached a certain level) to develop and refine your own content and adventures for yourself or others. I can only imagine that the creation of the tool for Star Trek Online is what got this entire project started. While lost on the relatively shallow canon of Star Trek, The Foundry is gushing wild potential for prospective Dungeon Master wannabes.

I found The Foundry to be extremely simple and even moderately flexible. If you have a quest in mind, you can usually get the job done (unless for some reason you would like your NPC actors to sit in chairs, then you're fucked). I designed a 15 minute comical adventure to break up the terrible and uninspired work my fellow players had turned out, and my reviews so far have been pretty positive. I've even earned tips that can be converted into cash-shop money, assuming I ever want to subject myself to the terrible game again. Sadly, I gained more enjoyment out of designing the first installment of a campaign I call, "Miguelito's Revenge".

Here's a sneak peek at the quest entitled, "Miguelito's Wedding" (MINOR SPOILERS!!!).


Assuming they add a few things, like project collaboration, active Dungeon Mastery, and Chair Sitting, there is no reason why this game wouldn't be worth playing for The Foundry alone.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, most player created content is BEYOND TERRIBLE. This is combatted by a review system that helps the good stuff float to the top. Despite everything I said before this section, The Foundry is worth a shot, but I doubt most of you will get to level 15 so you can use it. If you do end up playing, check out Miguelito's Wedding for a couple of cheap laughs and an easy grind.

Breakdown:

• Graphics:(5) Average
• Gameplay:(-5) Diablo on Downers
• Originality:(5) Not even the Title is unique.
• WoW Clone:(5) Some Wowish Things
• PvP Type:(0) Horrid Instancing
• PvP Risk:(-5) Risk of falling asleep
• Pandering:(-15,000) Dungeons and Lies.

Final Score: Poop.

Yes, I re-skinned my site.

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Posted in: Difficulty:Noob,Neverwinter,Reviews

Podcast Appearance - Valentines, UO, and BS

I've been at it again...

Ryan at MMOSmackTalk had me on the VPR Cast again to educate him about Ultima Online, 1800Flowers, and general nonsense. Although it was recorded on Valentines day, it took approximately 34 years for him to post the episode. I suspect it has something to do with my crude demeanor. Deal with it, world.


Download Link

If you're a caveman or your browser doesn't support html5, you can listen to it at Ryan's blog here.

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Posted in: Difficulty:PowerGamer,Podcast,Ultima Online

Darkfall Unholy Wars is Crap

All MMORPGs are Bad.

I feel like it's important for my readers to fully understand that my hatred for MMORPGs is no longer tinged with any shred of irony. They're all shitty, and I wish people would quit asking me which one they should play. You will be disappointed by all comers because they're all bad and getting worse. Darkfall Unholy Wars epitomizes the faceless garbage-machine that mass produces sub-par games that nobody asked for.

Like the Original Darkfall?

The Aventurine staff made it very clear that they weren't interested in their former niche audience by 'Carebearing Up' the sequel. If you enjoyed what small freedom the pseudo-sandbox provided before, prepare to be let down hard. Darkfall UW has become Planetside with safe-zones. The only thing that is the same as the predecessor is AV's horrible (non-existent) support who didn't dignify any of my support requests with a response.

The simplest way to review this game is by addressing problems with the original Darkfall, then describing how they fucked up the solutions for these problems. This could get ugly, folks.

What AV Needed to Fix

User Interface

The main complaint that most people who actually played Darkfall had was the shallow and mostly unresponsive UI. Most production quality MMORPGs have some form of UI customization or scripting options. Darkfall's UI was so bad that players were forced to create their own scripts with external programs in order to play the game competitively. Regardless of if options exist to improve the game, when your clients have to reach out to Rube Goldbergian solutions to solve simple issues like looting monsters, you've failed.

To fix this problem, the Darkfall team designed what could be the least intuitive and complicated UI system in the history of gaming. This is an example of the most common type of UI element in Darkfall Unholy Wars:



Seriously, what the fuck does that even mean? If you're going to use imagery in your UI, you better make fucking damn sure that it is recognizable imagery. It looks like a mongoloid with swirrels around it. Is it the button that provides access to the smush-face menu? You'll have to hover your cursor over it for seconds to get the tool-tip and find out! Fucking pointless.

There are also numerous radial menus and Skyrim style bar-menus because everyone fucking loves those. I didn't ever believe that a menu-system more convoluted and ridiculous than EvE Online could ever exist, and yet here we are.

Progression System

This is where things get controversial because I know there are numerous people who really like Darkfall's original skill system. I, however, do not. I believe that character planning is a fun part of games, so the original system where everyone can be everything simultaneously both increased an already massive grind and diminished roles. Because I'm a fan of specialization, this system wasn't good for me. I would have imposed a hard cap on skill-points much like Mortal and Ultima Online in order to allow players to focus less on grinding and more on thinking.

The Unholy Wars solution to this problem is a traditional roles system. This ensures that minimal creativity can be used to spice up PvP. You're a warrior, rogue, mage, or priest. Period. You can also freely switch between roles so that you never have to think out any decisions you make.

To solve the skill-grind issue, they implemented a system where you could assign generic points to various skills that you acquire by using any unrelated skill. Apparetly they didn't have any foresight whatsoever because literally everyone instantly started chopping trees and assigning the points to combat abilities because it's much safer than actually killing monsters or players. Great job guys! You did it!

Racial Balance

Power gamers are always going to look for an edge, and Darkfall was no different. Because different races had different hit-boxes, players could wrangle a minor advantage by playing a smaller race. This wasn't anything that couldn't have been solved with some minor tweaking because racial diversity make character planning more interesting and fun.

Instead of accepting that certain races could be used creatively, and tweaking swing radius and hit-boxes for better balance, all races were redesigned to be the same exact size and shape. If you're not following how funny this statement is, look at this picture:



This image has not been edited, and no, I can't imagine how high someone must be to think you can slap a fur-face on your human model and call it production ready. This image is the wolf-race, and the other races got the same treatment. Orcs are green humans, and Dwarves are hairy humans. This may just be cosmetic, but I believe it speaks to a much deeper issue.

Asshole Culture

Risky MMORPGs like EVE and Darkfall have a tendency to create a culture of assholes, but unlike casual games such as DayZ, MMORPGs require a legitimate community to thrive. In an attempt to improve the newbie experience in Darkfall, they used a typical karma system to prevent rampant murder. The problem is that the penalty for griefing is much less for a long-term player than it is for a new player so if a new player does find pvp, it was always one sided and curb-stompy. The penalty of not being able to enter NPC cities due to your murderer status doesn't matter when you're in a well-established clan with their own cities. Ultima Online used stat-loss to curb this behavior, but I'm not entirely sold on that for a game with a near infinite grind.

Unholy Wars decided to instead make the karma system purely cosmetic and add safe zones to newbie-heavy regions. The rules for the safe zones don't include loot rights, so a new form of griefing was born in the form of penalty free ninja-looting. Most people don't stay in safe zones for too long because they're basically the worst invention of Unholy Wars and serve almost no benefit to anyone.

The Grind

Nobody likes grinding, but the original Darkfall had it in spades. The typical quest in Darkfall required you to kill literally hundreds of monsters before completion, and the amount of time it could take to achieve a competitive skill level was ridiculous. This was mostly due to the aforementioned requirement for players to master every style of combat, use third party programs, and have optimal equipment to be useful. If it were up to me, i'd focus way less on "epic gear" and more on "fun" because equipment is just another meaningless grind, and you're probably going to be victimized by the zerg and lose it anyhow.

Unholy Wars uses the generic points system I mentioned earlier, but the dependency on equipment is still alive and well. If you're new and extremely good at the game but have average equipment, you will either lose or get so bored fighting that you'll give up because you do no damage at all. First person shooters are supposed to be fast paced, but the Darkfall team manages to slow everything down to a fast paced crawl. It's simply awful and I would never wish it on anyone.

Graphics

This is the least important part in my opinion because a game can be fun without having any graphics at all (see: rap battles), but Darkfall was pretty ugly even by indie standards. I always had assumed that this was because they spent around a decade in development with a small team. With Unholy Wars, they really had time to spend making the game look and feel more authentic and interesting. The graphics should be much better than the original, right? WRONG!!!!!

The Good

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Breakdown:

• Graphics:(-12) WHY!?
• Gameplay:(1) Clunky and Meh
• Originality:(5) Pretty Original... For a sequel...
• WoW Clone:(10) Nope
• PvP Type:(5) Open(ish) with Safe-Zones
• PvP Risk:(10) Risky Business
• Tall Dwarves:(-1,000) This seems really lazy.

Final Score: Mortal Online is back in the race!

Follow me on twitter @mmorpgssuck to see pictures of my week old baby! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE MY BABY, YOU ASSHOLES! FUCK YOU!

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Posted in: Articles,Darkfall,Difficulty:PowerGamer,Reviews

Shroud of the Avatar Rumors

When Richard Garriott Says, "jump"...

We in the veteran MMORPG community ask how high he is. The genius behind the legendary Ultima series, as well as the father of MMORPGs recently announced that his company Portalarium would be releasing his "Ultimate RPG". It's called Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, and it will most likely be amazing. I hit the rumor mill to see what I could find out about this much anticipated title!

The Rumors

• For the first time in a RPG, your character can eat grass if he wants to... but he won't want to... ever.
• Most objects in SotA can be fully interacted with, but will instantly kill you if you try the wrong thing.
• Your character will have a beard.
• Morgan Freeman will play the voice of your enchanted coffee mug companion and narrator.
• Lord British will make multiple appearances in the game, taking credit for quests you complete. His Charisma score is always 10 points higher than yours.
• Chuckles crosses over from the Ultima series to sell you a broken down Ford Bronco. It can be smelted into 100 ingots that can be crafted into anything you want... if what you want is a typical longsword.
• All voiced dialogue will focus on how going into space is ultimate measure of a man.
• The Avatar in the game isn't you, but instead a fully functional surrogate Navi from the movie Avatar. His shroud is quite revealing because it was made for human-sized people.
• You will be allowed to purchase one duck, but he is a real asshole.
• The majority of the game will take place underground... on the Moon.
• Borrowing from current successful titles, the game will be released without quests, enemies, customization, multiplayer, shrouds, avatars, music, and graphics. These things can be purchased as needed via DLC. ONLY PAY FOR WHAT YOU WANT!!!
• All characters will be based on people on the development team. Most quests will involve insulin retrieval.
• Staying true to naming conventions, each subsequent Portalarium game will include at least one colon to give the impression that they're all part of a series.
• The story is a loose adaptation of the novel "Push", by Sapphire.

But it will still probably be great.

In the game industry, there are trend-setters and copycats. I suspect that Lord British will once again prove that he holds a membership in the former, despite how lackluster preliminary videos and screenshots are. I guess we'll see. If you're interested in supporting the game, it's being published for a paltry sum of 1,000,000 USD on Kickstarter.

Check it out.

If you're unfamiliar with the Ultima series, check out Spoony's Ultima Retrospective. This guy cracks me up like 70% of the time.

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Posted in: Articles,Difficulty:PowerGamer,Rumors

Ultima Online Redux : UO Forever

Revisionist history is my strong suit.

Everyone has their first love, and It's pretty obvious to anyone who reads IHM that mine was a whore named Sandy... and Ultima Online. Sadly, like Sandy, the UO I once knew is now riddled with disgusting problems. As beautiful as my memories of late-90's UO were, that game had some glaring problems. Flash forward in time, and people are still grasping to threads of what UO once meant to them. Unlike modern MMORPGs, this could have been hundreds of different things, and thus hundreds of Private Shards were born.

Private UO Shards

Emulation of UO server architecture isn't any new concept. In fact, I recall hosting TUS (the precurser to SphereServer) shards over a decade ago, but I lacked the capacity at that time to really understand how huge emulation could be. Even if I had, I would have created a very narrow and specific shard that only people like me would fully appreciate, and that would result in all 3 of us being very bored. Games are made for an audience, and restraint is extremely important because making changes to a classic formula has infinitely larger potential to cause mass exodus than inaction and apathy do. That being said, it's very hard to gain any traction without some sort of a gimmick. Enter UOForever...

UOForever does a lot, but not too much.

Your typical UO Shard owner is a narcissistic twenty-something nerd with a god-complex, and this is extremely counter-productive when the "UO Community" is full of nay-sayers with very similar qualities. While appeasement isn't a good thing, having the humility to recognize, accept, and correct issues with your vision is as imperative as recognizing and squelching bad ideas. One look at interactions on the UOForever forum paints a clear picture that their development team is dedicated to improving and balancing the UOR era gameplay, without giving in to things that "sound like cool ideas", but in application would cause more harm than good. UO players, as you would imagine, are quite easily brought to blinding rage as they play (and die in) a free 15 year old game.

The Features

UOForever is based roughly on the UO:Renaissance era. For those of you who aren't familiar with the tragic history of Ultima Online, UO:R was the era that then stabbed all 'hardcore' players directly in their scrotal sacks by introducing the PvP-Free Trammel facet. Everything else they patched in to this era was pretty neat, but for many of us the game was completely ruined, never to be salvaged on official servers again.

UOForever Is FFA PVP

No Trammel here. I can not urge enough how important the constant fear of death is to make crafting and PvE exciting. The elegant balance of low-cost equipment tied to massive risk/reward combat hasn't been reproduced since. Why anyone thought removing this from the game was a good idea in the first place is beyond me.

UOForever has an Economy

Many private shards try and give things away so people will stay around, but this, like so many entitlements has the unintended consequence of making the game feel less risky. If you don't value your belongings, or rather, if your belongings have no value then you have no reason to use them wisely and improve. I've got a shop where I fence my ill-gotten gains, and my fellow brigands and I have made a gigantic amount of spending money. This wouldn't matter at all if the GM just handed out checks for free.

Crafting abilities (and stupid stupid taming) is an ultra long-term commitment. This limits the number of individuals that can flood the market with cheap wares, and increases their value. All standard gold-sinks are in place, such as boats, houses, and reagents to remove money from the system. It's like EVE... but not boring and terrible.

Easier Combat Skill-Gain

Because there isn't really a great reason to prevent people from playing the game, it's quite easy to get combat-ready. This is made even easier by skill-gain bonuses in dungeons, creating hot-spots for 'player interaction'. By the way, if you have something you don't want to lose... don't carry it around. You were warned. There are also skill-gain scrolls that drop on higher level mobs. The crafting-boost scrolls are quite valuable as you could imagine, so I urge everyone to walk around with them so I can continue to run my business.

Difficult Spawns

Champion spawns are in, as well as some new dungeon locations, but what makes PVE in UOF interesting to me is the massive difficulty adjustment to typically boring dungeons like Destard, Deceit, and others. There is nothing quite like running into a wall of dragons. Well, I guess having your face melted off by lava would be pretty similar.

Half-Decent Community

I can't urge how important this is enough. Ultima Online in its heyday had an excellent community of which the likes have never been seen since. It is extremely important to Ultima that the community is diverse and active. UOF passes this test. There is a nice balance of Power-Gamers, Carebears, and Roleplayers in equal parts and all of those groups add to the ambiance. If you're unfamiliar with the game, there are guilds that want to teach you.

Stolen Boat + Stolen Message = Booty

My Experiences

I've had an excellent time with my band of merry thieves and murderers. All styles of gameplay can turn a profit in Ultima Online, but stealing house deeds has become a personal favorite of mine. You can stalk people for hours, waiting for the right moment to grab something and bolt off into the shadows... but most of the time people aren't stupid, and they'll cover up their important items.

The PvP scene is VERY healthy, but there are some guys I simply refuse to fight because I haven't devoted the last 10 years to perfecting my abilities at a very old game. By that, I mean I'm jealous that they're so much better than me at murdering pixels.

Come Join Us IF YOU DAAARREEEEE!!!

I'll be playing for a while yet, so if you want to get involved, register on the uoforever.com forums and send a private message to ihatemmorpgs about how rad you think I am. Moral flexibility is required. If you've never played UO before, this is a great place to start, but bring your big boy pants because UOForever ain't foolin' around...

*drops the microphone*

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Posted in: Difficulty:PowerGamer,Reviews,Ultima Online