Guess what? If you expect Allods to be completely free….it’s not.

After reading this post on KTC and hearing others talk about Allods and it’s free to play model, I wanted to clarify something:

If you expect to play Allods Online and never spend a dime, you are incorrect. Period.

And, really, why should you feel that way?  Astrum Nival has to make money, ya know?  They have bills to pay, mouths to feed and mortgages to meet.  Just like you.  While I am sure they enjoy making the game, it’s not a hobby for them and they expect to collect a paycheck at the end of the week for the work they do.

I see many people asking if they will be able to play the game, never use the cash shop and still compete with those who do.  The answer is:  Why should you be able to?

Why should you, never spending a dime to support Astrum Nival, be able to play with the same advantages as someone who does support them?  Simple answer: you shouldn’t.

I think the correct question, the one that everyone should be asking, is:  Does someone who spends $100 dollars a month have a substantial advantage over someone who spends $15 dollars a month?

I mean, that is the important question is it not?  I don’t expect to get the same game play experience if I play for free as I would if I paid some money but, at the same time, I do not want the amount of money I spend to determine my success in game.

That is the real trick, that is what Astrum Nival is going to have to carefully balance.  Making the cash shop enticing enough to use but not overpowering enough to abuse for in-game advantage.

I have every intention of supporting Astrum Nival with my money.  I will budget $15-$30 dollars a month to play Allods Online.  I figure, since I did not have to pay for the game, I could budget a little higher than the standard $15 dollars a month subscription cost.  At least initially.  That is about the limit for me.  It is a fun game so I have no problem paying for it.

However, if I see that I am going to have to spend even more to compete, then you will see me leave the game.  That is the tightrope Astrum Nival is going to have to walk.  But that is up to them.

I just tire of seeing people gripe about the cash shop, tired of hearing them say “Well it’s supposed to be free but now they expect us to pay a dollar for this and thirty cents for that!”.  Well, of course they expect you to pay something!

Balance it so that I want to pay but the more I pay doesn’t equate to in-game success, THAT is the key.

So, this is the company you ST:O players want to support?

Bad Games, Horrid Company

I had a good laugh after reading this article over at Massively talking about Champions Online’s latest patch and upcoming expansion.  Let’s recap that article a bit:

• Cryptic releases a massive patch, according to them over two months worth of fixes.
• Patch was supposed to fix the massive lag, especially in Lemuria.
• Instead patches causes even more lag.
• Not only did it not fix the lag in Lemuria, many players who were in Lemuria can not even log into the game.
• Crafting is now useless, as crafting something takes the materials but doesn’t give you the crafted item in return.
• Now the pièce de résistance: Cryptic announces a new mini-expansion that adds a single new zone to the game and then announces that it is a PAID mini-expansion.

Yeah, this is a great company.  This is one I know that I want to support. You know, I can handle the patch bugs, though I would think a patch two-months in the making would actually work a bit better, but expecting your subscribers to pay for a mini-expansion?!?!

Even the lifetime subscribers are going to be expected to pay for this.  What the f#&k?!?!

Despite all the mistakes Mythic made, Land of the Dead was free.

Despite all the mistakes Aventurine made, Conquer the Seas was free.

Yet Cryptic, a company that has made as many or more major mistakes, expects everyone to pay for a mini-expansion?  This is totally ridiculous.  The game is losing subs at a rapid pace and this is what Cryptic thinks will keep them coming back for more?

Yeah, great customer relations Cryptic.  Good for you.

You folks planning on buying Star Trek: Online should be ashamed of yourselves.

Allods Psionicist: The strangest, craziest, most insanely weirdest class I have ever played….but possibly also the coolest.

A couple of nights ago I made a Psionicist in Allods.  I have heard that they are, without a doubt, the least played class in the game.  I am a curious guy, so I decided to find out why.  Thus was born Vyshinsky.

Vyshinsky, named after Andrey Vyshinsky, a diplomat and propagandist of the Soviet Union. Appropriate, no?

Now, I am not one for cloth-type casters.  Matter of fact, I have never played one as a main.  I prefer a more “in-your-face” style and/or physical DPS.  I have played a couple of healers but that is as close as I get to the standard “mage” archetype.

The Psionicist is no standard “mage”.

They are unlike anything I have ever played in a MMO before.  They can put out a decent amount of DPS, though no match for a mage or scout in Allods.  But, DPS is not what they are there for, they are there to, simply put, give a mass headache to the opposing force.

Psionicists provide a metric ton of CC.  Stuns, paralyze, Pulls, roots….it’s all there.  At level cap and if specced for it, a Psionicists CC abilities outnumber their DPS abilities by nearly two to one!

Let’s go over an early fight with a Psionicist in PvE.

The first cast a Psion will use is “Mental-Link”.  This is a six second cast and establishes a mental-link with the target, opening up more abilities to be used and causing spells that are cast against this target to regenerate mana.  Once the target is mental-linked, there are three abilities that open up for use.  One is a paralyze effect, which is a ten second stun, the next is a DoT and the last is a large direct damage spell.  These abilities can be used once on the target, they go away after the first use of any of them.

After the mental-link is in place, you can start to DPS the target using Mental Shock, which is a channeled ability that does a small amount of damage with each pulse.  Now, of course, by this time the mob is very angry and heading straight for you.  Considering the fact you are wearing cloth, this is not a good thing, so what to do?

How about a bit of Mental-Twin?

This is an instant cast that allows you to place a “twin” of yourself down anywhere close by.  This does two things.  First, it makes you invisible to your target, though other targets can see you just fine.  Second, it causes the mob to aggro your twin and beat on him.  All the while you are DPS’ing to your heart’s content.

At low-level, it does not take long to get the target near death, at which point you can break your mental-link, which causes massive amounts of damage and finishes your opponent off.

Normally, during the fight or on the killing blow, you will get a buff that makes your next mental-link an instant cast.  This makes grinding mobs and killing stuff quickly an easier task to carry out.

I made a quick video showing the Psion at low levels.  Take a look:

All of this is low-level, so what do you get at higher levels?  Take a look at these abilities:

• Hypnotize: hypnotize the target and makes them incapable of action for up to one minute.
• Mental Pulse: AoE that throws back all enemies in range and stuns them for two seconds.
• Cloud Vision: Blinds target for one minute if out of combat and ten seconds if in combat.
• Telekinetic Pull: Draws all enemies in a twenty yard radius, knocks them down and has a 10% chance to stun them for three seconds.
• Wall of Blades: Creates a magnetic field which disarms all opponents, places a DoT on them and makes you immune to physical damage for the duration of the ability.
• Spectral Assassin: Creates a mirror image of the target, which then attacks the target.  Can only be damaged by the target and the assassin gets stronger every second it remains alive.
• Loop of Time: Sends you back in time ten seconds and puts you in the state you were in at that time.

Those abilities make for a pretty unique class.  It also make the Psion, potentially, one of the most irritating classes to fight in a PvP situation.  They really remind me of the early DAoC days, when a well-timed CC could decide the victor of many PvP group fights.

I really look forward to going further with this class and seeing how they mature.  Just another on my list of “possible mains” in Allods Online.

Let’s compare and contrast, shall we?

Today I downloaded the trial for Alganon.  I have heard some really bad things about it but decided to give it a try and see if it offered anything to the genre.  Rather than do a normal impressions post, I am going to compare Alganon to Allods and see how that turns out.

Both Allods and Alganon can be termed “WoW-clones”, at least at first glance. Both use the tried and true quest leveling system, similar U.I.s and the standard “holy-trinity” of Dps, tank, healer.   Do either of them offer anything new at all?

Alganon’s character creation is identical to WoW and when I say identical, I mean identical. Take a look:

Now, take a look at the WoW creation screen:

Notice anything similar?  Maybe exactly alike?  All information is presented in the exact same sequence.  Faction, race and class on the right, all other stuff on the left.  Alganon has a family choice, which seems to have no effect on game play that I could tell.

Now, here is Allods Online:

All the same information is displayed but there is a big difference in the way it is presented.  Allods Online has a different presentation from WoW, while Alganon just looks like a cheap rip-off.

Alganon has two races, which compromise two factions, so not many choices there.  Alganon also has very standard classes, with four choices; soldier, ranger, healer and magus.  Again, not much to choose from in the game.  Allods, by comparison, offers 6 races, compromising 2 factions and allows for eight different class options.  Quite a bit more variety in Allods Online.

Once you actually get into the game, Alganon continues with the WoW imitation.  Take a look at the U.I.:

Ok, this is bordering on plagiarism.  The U.I. is identical.  Look at the training U.I., it is exactly like WoW.  Identical. The other thing that gives me a chuckle is the fact that Alganon uses an Arial font for everything.  What?!?  They couldn’t even be bothered to be a little bit creative with the font?  This is lazy design at its worst.

Take a look at Allods Online:

Now, the U.I. is my least favorite part of Allods Online right now, it needs some work.  But, it still out does Alganon because it is not 100% recycled from WoW.  It has all the pertinent information but presents it in an interface that looks different.  Can you say creativity?  Quest Online (Alganon’s creator) obviously can not.

Graphically it is night and day.  Alganon has horrible, horrible character graphics and animations.  The textures are fuzzy and the game looks just plain bad.  Allods Online, while not a graphical powerhouse like Age of Conan, looks really good.  Animations are really well done and the textures look good up close or from afar.  The discrepancy is impossible to ignore.  Alganon looks worse than WoW, while Allods looks like a crisper, sharper version of WoW.  All three use a similar artistic style but Alganon does a very poor imitation.  You can certainly see the lack of creativity of Quest Online as they recycle the old WoW style, while Astrum Nival (Allods Online devs) take that artistic style and make it their own.

So, do either offer anything beyond a “WoW-clone” experience?

Alganon has a tacked on off-line study system that allows you to learn skills while logged off but that is about it from what I can tell.  Nothing else separates the two and the study system does not seem well implemented anyway.  Other than that, I can see nothing that would make anyone want to play Alganon over WoW.  It is simply a rough, buggy and terribly implemented version of WoW.

Allods Online, on the other hand, has game play similar to WoW.  The normal quests, instances and rep grinds exist in Allods that are in WoW but at the end Allods offers Astral ships and more World PvP.  Astral ships separate Allods from WoW and every other MMO out there.  It seems to be completely new for the genre.  In addition, everything in Allods seems well implemented and well done.

The funny thing is Alganon costs $50 and requires a $15 monthly fee, whereas Allods Online is free to play.  If you loaded up both these games and played each for a couple of hours you would think the opposite.  Alganon is so bad, so underwhelming and so bad in its implementation, you think it should be free to play.

By the way, if I were Blizzard I would seriously consider a copyright lawsuit.  I have never seen a game that so totally rips off content from another like this, art assets are taken verbatim from WoW.  It is a sad thing to see.

Who could use an Allods Online Beta invite?

I seem to find myself with a  couple few Allods Online beta invites.  Rather than let them go unused, I figured I would hand them out here.

First two folks Anyone who replies until I run out gets them!  Reply away folks!  Please leave an email address so I can send ‘em out!

For once I can sit back and watch…..and laugh.

I went through it with so many MMOs.  I went through it with Anarchy Online.  I went through it with Age of Conan and Star Wars Galaxies and Warhammer and many more besides.  Now, for once, I can sit back and watch other poor saps go through it.  Go through what, you ask?

MMO dreams being crushed.

In this case, I am talking about Star Trek: Online and all the incoming fail we are sure to see when it releases next month.  All the fans are about to be knocked senseless with the massive failure that will be Star Trek: Online at its release.  It will approach epic proportions and I get to sit back and watch.  For once, I have nothing invested in an incoming MMO failure.  This time, it is all fun and games for me.

All the warning signs of total failure are there.  Every last one.  Yet, few will admit it, just like they didn’t admit it before Warhammer released, or Age of Conan or every other MMO that released and failed.  Let’s examine some of these warning signs, shall we?

• Unstable servers in beta, with the standard excuse of “Well, we did not expect the turnout we ended up getting.”.
• Laggy performance and low FPS.
• Massive patch shortly before release, with little to no testing.
• An announcement that content was going to be pared down or cut entirely a few months before release.  With WAR it was the capital cities, with ST:O it was the Klingon faction and its PvP limitations.
• Many of the players who profess to actually like the game always seem to throw in the caveat “There is a lot I don’t like about the game.  But, hey, it’s STAR TREK!!! Exact same thing happened in WAR.

All the warning signs are there, but most just choose to ignore them and plunk down their $50, just like a good MMO player.  I mean, isn’t that what we have done for years?  With every MMO that has released since WoW?  Nearly every MMO that has released has been buggy at release and an unfinished game.  Every time it happens you find yourself wondering why they continue to release half-finished and a quarter tested.  Why do the MMO devs keep doing this?

Then you see the thousands of players who buy the game on release day, only to find another buggy mess and you realize that the real question is:  Why do WE keep allowing it to happen?

But, for once, I can sit back and watch and I will laugh.  Oh, how I will laugh.

How I would have designed Allods Online.

Allods is a fantastic game as it is, great combat, great questing…the whole nine yards.  The best part of it, in my mind, is the distinct and unique atmosphere.  The mix of space and fantasy, the Empire’s Soviet propaganda posters, all of that sets it apart.

I wish they would have taken it further.  Made it even more unique and interesting.  I was sitting at lunch today and thinking how I would do it and this is what I came up with.

First of all, three factions.  It worked very well in DAoC.  It helps balance everything and makes for a more interesting world.  So, three factions.  But what three factions?  Well, let’s continue a bit with the Soviet motif.  Let’s take it a bit further and fill out the factions along those lines.  Furthermore, let’s set it in a familiar setting:  World War II.  Let’s take the current fantasy setting, expand the Soviet influence on the Empire side and then go from there.  Here is what I came up with:

• Legion:  Same races in this one.  Elf, Gibberling and Human
  

  Pretend this was a Gibberling

  Pretend this was a Gibberling.  This will represent our “Allied” side of the equation.  This faction will have a British/American/French feel to it.  Stick with the normal fantasy feel but interspersed with War Bond posters, Allied propaganda and a Female Gibberling Flexing.  NPCs would have French, British or American accents.  Black-out notices would be posted on walls.

• The Empire: This factions changes up a bit.  Remove Orcs but keep humans and Arisen.  Replace the Orcs with Dwarves.  Go really heavy on the Soviet feel.  Soviet propaganda, a fatalistic “no retreat” feel.  Talk of the Motherland, Russian accents.  Dwarves will fit right in.

• The Reich: The new faction.  For this one we are gonna move Orcs over as the “seed” of the faction.  In addition, humans will also make up part of the faction.  Humans in every faction will help to balance things out.  For the final piece, we introduce Werewolves.  Fits in nicely with the Nazi feel.  Again, German accents, heavily stylized propaganda posters.  Talk of the Fatherland.  A sense of elitism and entitlement.  Of course, we are going to leave out the Holocaust, which has no place in the game and go for a straight up parody of Nazi Germany.

The more I think about it, the more I think this could work.  Each faction has humans, which are always very popular.  Each faction had one really cool race; Gibberling, Arisen and Werewolf.  This will also balance things out.  It would be a truly unique MMO and could lead to some amazing game play.  The quests alone could be pretty amazing and the instance possibilities huge.

What do ya think?  Sound like a game you would want to play?

Why adding a third factions to WAR won’t work and why “fleshing” out Klingons is doomed to fail as well.

DAoC was a better game because of the three factions.  Each helped to balance the others.  If one faction got too powerful, the other two would work together to bring them down a notch.  The cycle repeated itself time and again.  It was a powerful inherent equalizer, that worked wonderfully.

In two faction combat, the only way to balance is with artificial and, ultimately, superficial balancers.  Increased XP, better loot and other “perks” to the unbalanced side.  This does not work for a myriad of reasons, chiefly because no one wants to re-roll just because the other faction is now getting advantages.

Now everyone that plays WAR wants a third faction.  I agree that a third faction would help game balance tremendously and get rid of the artificial measures, such as the Underdog system, that they are using.

Unfortunately, at this stage, it will not work.  Adding a third faction, at first glance, sounds fantastic, but let’s think about it for a bit.  If you add a new faction, the guilds and community will be torn apart.  Imagine that half of your guild wants to join the new faction and half does not, what do you do?  Alliances will take a huge hit and break apart.  The entire community will go through upheaval.  In addition, at least initially, a huge chunk of the server will choose to go to the new faction.  The “newness” of the faction will cause it to be “flavor-of-the-month” thus inhibiting balance even more.

Consider that WAR has already had tremendous community upheaval already, having to merge servers at a rapid pace tends to do that.  I know when I re-upped my WAR account a couple of months ago, I had again been assigned a new server.  I have had friends who have had to move servers upwards of seven times and each time killed their guild and friend list a little bit more.

The same can be said for the Klingons in ST:O.  Originally, the Klingons were supposed to be a complete second faction, with PvE and PvP available to them.  Just like the Federation.  As release drew near, Cryptic realized that they could not do this on time and, instead, made Klingons a PvP only faction, similar  to Monster Play in LotRO.  Promises were made that they would flesh out Klingons and make them a true Faction in the future.

So, now they expect everyone to play Federation mostly and jump unto Klingon every so often for PvP.  As the Klingons get “fleshed” out, they then expect Guilds to make the decision of whether to stay Federation or make the move to Klingons.

What?

You want us to decide whether to abandon our hard work on Federation and go Klingon?  Thus uprooting the guild and causing

And so will ST:O with its release state.

havoc in the community?  Now to be fair, ST:O is a one server game, so you may indeed be able to play both on the same account and server, but still.  That is just ridiculous.

Cryptic should have bit the bullet, pushed the release date and finished the Klingons.  While they were at it, they should have fixed the horrible lag, endless bugs and terrible gameplay.  But, no, it is just the latest example of a horribly rushed MMO from Cryptic.

I guess I should not be surprised.

By the way, there is a great post from Angry Gamer about the latest “State of the Game” address from Cryptic, located right here. He sums up my feelings about Cryptic and the messes they continually create pretty well.  Take a look and enjoy!

Allods Online Guild

Having decided that I am in Allods for the long haul, it being a fantastic game and all, I have struggled about what to do about a guild.  I thought of joining Keen’s guild but I just do not want to be Legion.  I hate elves, especially those with fairy wings, I think Gibberlings would be fun until the novelty wore off and so that would leave only human for me.  The Empire side, however, offers humans, Orcs and robotic undead.  Really now, how can you beat that?

After thinking long and hard about what I wanted to do, I decided that I am doing what I haven’t done since TBC-era WoW: Create my own Guild.  I have a several friends from my old Guild who will be joining me in Allods, real life friends, relatives and former Guild mates that have played MMOs with me for a number of years, so we have a nice core of members already.

Tonight I set up our guild site on Guild Launch and started preliminary organization of the Guild.  A few of us ran through possible Guild names and settled on one that may be controversial for stupid reasons: Reich-n-Roll.  Why that name, with its possible bad connotations to the Third Reich?  Well, we wanted to make something original, that kept to the Russian/German WWII-era feel of the Empire side.  The name sounded interesting and somewhat unique, so we went with it.

Our first Guild Banner

To attempt to head off any possible prejudgment, I put a disclaimer on the main Guild site that reads as follows:

***IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER*** Despite the usage of the word Reich in our Guild name, we are not, nor do we intend to be, a “Nazi” guild. We use the name simply because of the Russian/German era World War II “feel” of the Empire side. We do not condone racist or “neo-nazi” actions in game or out, nor do we want those kinds of people in our Guild. Our members are composed of all races and religions and we respect each and every one. If you are one of the aforementioned “neo-nazi” or racist people and were attracted by the Guild name, please do not bother to apply. You are not wanted and will not last long in our Guild. Thank you.

I am hoping that will keep people from seeing the name and assuming the worst of us.  We are truly a good group of folks and our membership counts many races and religions among our ranks.

So, what do you think?  Are we just asking for trouble or can the name stand?  We have backups if necessary but we really do not want to use them, if possible.

By the way, if you have any interest in a good community of folks on the Empire side, please do not hesitate to apply.  We need all the mature, skilled and fun loving members we can get to realize our Guild goals!  Our website can be found here, just put in an application on the forums and I will get back to you!

Star Trek:Instanced….I mean Online….no I mean instanced.

With the Allods Online beta down, I was a pretty sad MMO’er.  I have kept a fairly constant diet of Darkfall the last few days but I also like having a “themepark” MMO to play occasionally and Allods has filled those shoes admirably.  So, after it went down I started searching for something to tide me over.

1. WAR.  Meh.  I gave it a real shot but I just don’t think I can ever return for the 10th or so time.

2. WoW.  Dead to me.  DEAD.

3. AoC.  I almost reupped this, until I realized that I had uninstalled it and I really did not want to have to download and install it again.  It would take too long.  In retrospect, I should have just redownloaded it but I had no idea what I was about to get in to, with ST:O.

So after scanning my options for a bit, I remembered that the ST:O beta was now open.  Actually I did not remember it, a little birdy reminded me.  As I have said in a previous post, I am not a huge Star Trek fan but I do like sci/fi and a good sci/fi MMO would be great.  So, I grabbed a key, created an account and started the download.

At 125-250 kbps.  Seriously, this was the slowest download ever.  I jumped on to File Planet but the speeds there were no better and I refuse to pay a subscription to File Planet so that I can download a “free” Open beta at faster speeds.  So, I went to bed and let it finish.

After I got home from work yesterday, it had finished, so I got ready for some sci/fi action and logged in.  Here are my first (and most likely last) impressions from Star Trek: Instanced.

Character creation is what you would expect from a Cryptic made game and this is to say pretty impressive.  Tons of options.  You can create a known species, like Vulcan, Human or Trill or you can make your own.  Thousands of different looks are available.  Different skin tones, facial ridges, strange horns and other crazy features are all available for your character’s face.  If you want a hideous female monstrosity

Aforementioned ugly monstrosity with gigantic boobs.

with gigantic boobs then ST:I will be right up your alley.

After you pick the looks for your character you can then start setting up traits, such as “accurate”, “techie” or “elusive.  Each trait gives a bonus in-game.

Picking a uniform is next and is almost as extensive as designing your face and body type.  After finishing that up you name your character (First, middle and last) and name your ship.

And you are off.

You are immediately put into a standard tutorial instance.  The first covers ground combat and is very underwhelming.  The ground combat is slow, even for low level combat and has no “pizazz” to it.  It probably gets better at later levels but its pretty underwhelming as a first impression.

After finishing the ground combat tutorial you head to space.  Space seems to be a bit better and the graphics are good.  Combat is more involved with shield management and the like being featured.

One thing noticed immediately, is how poorly the game runs.  It is bad.  Bad framerate.  Bad lag.  Crashes constantly.  The whole nine yards.  I have a fast connection and a monster machine and it still chugs constantly.  It never feels fluid.  I know the normal caveat; “its a beta!”, but even for beta (open beta for that matter!) it runs poorly.  Expect the game to be a nightmare for the first few weeks after release.  This game needs optimization badly, it is way worse than Champions Online which also ran poorly.

As you can tell by the headline on this post, the game is instanced.  Heavily.  So instanced that it feels claustrophobic.  It never felt like space, it is just too confined.  The need to change instances constantly, combined with the bad performance makes for a very poor experience.  Frustratingly so at times.

Not being a huge Star Trek fan, this game had to be pretty damn good to impress me into playing it.  This did not.  Not even close.  It feels tacked together and rushed.  Short of the character creator there is nothing that grabs you.  You can certainly see the fact that it had a short dev time.

Given a bit more time, it may become a decent game but it is entirely too instanced for me.  It never feels like a world, just a collection of scenarios.

I pass.