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MMOG Expansions Incoming

Posted by Zonk on Wed May 04, 2005 10:13 PM
from the watch-for-adds dept.
Role Playing (Games)
Gamespot has news that Asheron's Call 2: Legions has hit the shelves, the newest expansion to the three year old title. At the same time, Sony Online has announced a new expansion for Everquest II, as well as the upcoming release of a new adventure pack. From the article: "First up is EverQuest II: Desert of Flames, the first full-priced EQII expansion pack. The pack will introduce the chaotic-but-colorful city of Maj'dul to the game. Players will be able to participate in gladiatorial contests inside the Middle Eastern-themed metropolis, either against some of the 40 new creatures included in the pack or against other EverQuesters in 'a new style of player versus player combat.'"
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  • City of Heroes (Score:3, Informative)

    by dleifelohcs (777508) * <jscholefield.gmail@com> on Wednesday May 04 2005, @10:37PM (#12438314) Homepage
    City of Heroes has also added a patch to their live servers today that includes Player vs. Player action, as well as even more character customization -- body scaling, and tons of new clothing / accessories.
    • It's too bad its taking so long to get City of Villians out. That has a lot of promise, I personally think.
      • Yes I was afraid of the same myself. What I found to be a big help is a SuperGroup that is always working on pushing their characters (and alternates) further. If you have a large active supergroup, you always have someone to team with.
      • You'll find that the arena is not all that it is cracked up to be. 1v1 has no balance, and therefor is no fun, SGvSG is a lot more fun but takes a lot of coordination.

        After the inital novelty wears off, things will go back to normal. I personally can't wait for SGvSG, because the tactics that these matches will entail...
        • I'm actually really pissed that they wasted a whole major update on PVP. One of the most basic points of appeal for CoH was the LACK of PVP, and the lack of the little twerps who go with it.

          I know PVP is entirely consentual, but last night, about 20 minutes after I logged on, I ran into my first "Sorry, I respecced this toon for PVP and now he sucks for everything else." message from a teammate.

          Not cool.
          People who want PVP can go dry-hump each other in WoW or Planetside or something. It's obvious to me th
  • Hmm why don't people just log onto a mud, instead of shelling out so much money for Everquest. I realize that it's graphic goodness and addictive, but there are dozens of quality muds out there, some of which I will assert are much better than Everquest. Plus the 11-13 year old guys who have nothing better than kick your ass and make fun of you tend to get weeded out on a well designed mud, and they usually are free so their parents won't be paying for their priviledge of kicking your ass! :) I don't rec
      • Speaking as an ex light weight mudder i found it to be a total pain in the ass to find my way around places. I don't want to have to download a special map program to play a game and I don't want to draw the thing out myself.
    • I'd play a MUD if the Crystal Shard were still around...great way to waste away the day at work...

  • SWG: Rage of the Wookiees (Score:3, Informative)

    by zamboni1138 (308944) on Wednesday May 04 2005, @11:54PM (#12438683)
    Let's not forget that expansion two of Star Wars Galaxies [sony.com] is going live tomorrow*.

    Right on top of that Combat Update everyone loves.

    * Tomorrow might be today where you are right now, realtive to me.

  • Matrix Expansion Coming ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rewinn (647614) on Thursday May 05 2005, @12:19AM (#12438778) Homepage

    ... I'm sure it's been said before, but isn't the end result of MMOG improvement, essentially, that we all take the red pill?

    If you could live in an imaginery universe while robots tended your body ... would you?

  • Been wondering with the graphics of World of Warcraft, its raised the bar on what people expect from an MMO to look like. The down side, WoW is missing many features of a popular MMO's, that EQ2, Dark Camelot, Ashron have. Even popular D&D elements are missing, but since its based on the Warcraft game history, some aspects might be expected.

    I'm currious, now that the level of graphical detail has been met, what game will come along and give the game play thats also needed to make an MMO better.

    After p
    • I'm curious to know what features you feel WoW is missing, especially the 'popular D&D' elements. That's not me being snide (snide, on /.? Naaaah), I'm seriously not sure what you're missing. WoW seems pretty complete to me.

      WoW graphics are a case study why 'graphics != technology' is so very very true. WoW's graphics engine is actually pretty technically simple. No bump-mapping, limited shader use, etc, etc. From a technical standpoint, EQ2 is way ahead of WoW. Except... Blizzard, they cheated.
      • They hired these people called 'artists' that have a 'sense of aesthetics'. Sony hired modelers with a background in Maya or Max or something.

        Those mostly overlap, the difference is solely what management okays in the end. Would you think that EA has quite a lot of capable artists on board? When management says you're making a bland, generic fantasy world to their liking then you better make a bland generic fantasy world to their liking. Management wants shaders, realism and buzzwords.
      • The stylization and the scalability really impressed me on WoW. The game runs smoothly on my old beater athlon 1.2 with a geforce2mx , and it looks acceptable, cartoony, but better than a quasi-realistic resource hog slideshow. Can't say the same about FFXI, which looked like lurching, pixelated crap.

        The nicest thing about WoW, like the Elder Scrolls, is that it has enough background material to make it stand apart. It doesn't feel generic. It appeals to the casual gamer as well as the grinder, and the

      • actually i'm pretty sure they hired the animators from Dora....

        becasue the graphics in WoW are so substandard even EQ looks better...it amazing how many people are such fanbois that they will take the worst part about a game and say its the best...

        lets see...EQ2 models = 10,000 polys, WoW models = 10 polys

        sure...i agree that their use of color is better than EQ2, if what your looking for is fighting goblins in an Norman Rockwell painting...

        I personally would rather be fighting orcs in a Slavidor Dali p
  • I guess you can call it a "shelf queen". My friends and I are still trying to figure this one out. Here is a game where the PEAK player count on its most highly populated server is less than 500 people and it usually hovers in the mid 300s.

    I know Turbine cut a deal with Sony Station to distribute the expansions, did SS also take the risk of selling the boxes?

    While the graphically superior of the two AC games AC2 was such a change in game play mechanics that it did not attract many of the original AC players. Laden with bugs, exploits, and a poorly implemented crafting system at launch it failed to hold the interest of new players. AC2 was a game that told a story, through the vault quests, but forgot that players wanted to make the story or be part of it too. It also had some of the most boneheaded design decisions I have seen to date. The big two were no NPCs and having cities where the buildings could not be entered or used! The cities themselves were nothing more than monuments to the developers. A beautiful game with all the interactivity of a Hollywood western set.

    The AC1 expansion is set for July and Turbine is very much risking that franchise by taking so long to deliver the box. To top it off they recently came up with a new account migration system, having left the Microsoft Gameing zone, that essentially allows people to steal inactive accounts. The "exploiters" already jumped and found it allowed for the reactivation of banned accounts but Turbine is "fixing" that. The system only requires a person to know the zone name, a character name, and which game world the character was on, to take possession of an inactive account. That is not weak security it is NO security.

    Turbine has placed their bets with D&D Online and LOTR Online. I can only figure that they are keeping the AC franchises alive simply because it is totally theirs. AC was a great game when it came out, taking the big risk of not following the standard D&D setup that other games used. It had one of the most advanced combat systems that provides to this day some of the best PvP action. We can only hope that after making money with D&D and LOTR that Turbine takes some of those profits and brings AC up to date in graphics and usuability. AC is one game where the biggest improvement would be graphics as they have more lore than most other games combined. They just need a better look to attract newer players. New servers with Guild War level of graphics and a few game tweaks could make for a real relaunch. It won't happen but many of us old timers love to dream.
      • Actually I have played the game lately. That is why I am familar with the next to nothing population counts. Also I made note that the game I described was "as released". MMORPGs rarely have a few months beyond their release to make their impression on the community; good or bad. AC2 came out of the gate facing the wrong direction not even knowing their was a race to be had.

        Yes the game has evolved. It still has many of the quirks it did upon release and the bulk of buildings in cities cannot be enter
  • Who are they kidding? Gladiator combats are new? Consensual PVP areas aren't new even in EQ. And they're old, old hat anywhere else. Seems like their marketing folks got a little overexcited. Too much /pizza maybe?

    I read TFA, but no details there. Any links to a description of this 'new' PvP?
  • WoW has continued to add content for free, though I'm sure not at the rate everyone wants. WoW however is the most enjoyable MMORPG I have played to date and plan to continue to play it long into the future. It will be interesting to see what Blizzard does come up with when they finally do an expansion!
    • It isn't at the rate they ADVERTIZE. Their website said/says that they will add new content monthy but they are way behind in doing so.

      I guess moving entire level 60 guilds to new servers then threating to ban people who talk about it is more important.
  • Has anyone tried Asheron's Call 2 recently? It is now a very different experience, and actually a solid, mostly bug free game. There are a lot more quests and NPCs now. I'll agree that AC2 was in bad shape early in its life, but man this expansion is a massive improvement. You can't keep judging the game by how it was when it released.

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