I enjoyed playing Star Trek Online and think giving a Free-To-Play option is a good move.  Along with many fans, Eric and I played Star trek Online when it first came out.  It's huge fun for fans of Star Trek and those who like getting into the story of the game.  They did a great job with ongoing story and an evolving galaxy.

As an MMO player my hardest choice is picking which MMO to pay a monthly subscription for to play.  I find with more offering free play options I can go back and forth between them and then paying for the one that I am mainly playing at that point in time.  After all there are those times when one wants to swing a sword and cast spells and other times when the mood strikes and piloting a Prometheus class ship into combat against a Klingon bird of prey sounds like a blast.  This option also allows those unsure about getting into the game a way to try it out and make an informed choice, aka get hooked.

Cryptic will not restrict the play for the free-to-play options which is smart.  In other words both options will get to level up to maximum level, explore the whole galaxy, join fleets (aka guilds), enter into pvp which is a lot of fun in STO, and have access to all of the classes. 

The main difference between the free-to-play option and the subscribers is the conviences and perks that does not have main game play impact.  For instance subscribers will get more storage slots for items and credits, create fleets, have more character slots and additional bridge officer slots, and vet rewards.

I hope this move will allow Star Trek Online to continue and to bring back some of those players who had to make the hard choice and left.

This is something I have wanted to see for a long time (sort of).

I have advocated for a decade now that franchise owners should run their MMO plots in tandem with their franchise fiction.  It would provide:

• a better immersion into the setting


• more content for the game


• cross-promotional opportunities to pull players into the franchise, and readers into the game.

This is not what I had in mind though...

Worse idea since the Christmas Special?

Death Troopers is probably the stupidest idea to hit a franchise since Star Trek Voyager.  Simply, it is zombies in Star Wars, and not even an original or setting consistent attempt to capitalize on the zombie Crazy.

To make matters worse, they are implementing it in Star Wars Galaxies, the game Sony Online Entertainment is seeing how many time they can ruin it before it just dies.

I miss Galaxies

It is no secret that I am a huge Star Wars fan.  In fact, I have the posters for Episodes 4, 5, and 6 hanging in my living room over my coach.  I used to play Star Wars Galaxies... a lot.

I left the game twice after major recodes of the game that made it simply unplayable in any fashion that could be described as fun.  They have offered me several free trials to try to lure me back, and I always update my client (which I still haven't uninstalled).  The hope returns that the game will be fun again, but that is quickly crushed.

Is there hope?

In the lead up to the release of Death Troopers SOE has plans to overhaul some of the core systems again.

• Update 13 will add in Star Wars Chronicles.  A system for players to make their own missions (PvE and PvP)


• Update 15 will overhaul the Galactic Civil War system

Updates 14 and 15 will be the Death Troopers additions.

O, the pain of it all

Yet again, I am torn whether or not to dust off my old account and give Galaxies another try.  If you are still playing, let me know how the gameplay is now

(via Club Jade.)

The Star Trek Online Official Site posted 3 gorgeous new screenshots.  This is the one MMO, I cannot wait to play, and with every new image, my desire grows.

These new screens prove 2 things about this game:

1. They have figured out how to make space look compelling.


2. They are breaking new ground for planet-side graphics in an MMO.

I am excited to share the news that City of Heroes is going Rogue!

In the Going Rogue expansion, hero and villain characters will become immersed in the new parallel universe known as Praetoria, which is governed by Tyrant™, the evil incarnation of the game's main protagonist, Statesman™. As gamers search for Tyrant and the rest of his Praetorian guard, implacable foes and fierce resistance will arise to face them from all sides, causing heroes and villains alike to question their loyalties.

City of Heroes Going Rogue will introduce a new alignment system that helps players explore the shades of gray that lie between good and evil. For the first time, hero characters can become villains and vice versa, enabling hero archetypes to cross over to the Rogue Isles™ and villain archetypes to experience Paragon City™. Clearly marked missions, in addition to behaviors and decisions made by the player, will move a hero's or villain's moral compass, which could eventually change the hero's or villain's alignment. Going Rogue will also introduce two primary new fictional characters representative of this alignment shift in the game's lore: Maelstrom, a pistol-wielding hero gone rogue, and Desdemona, a demon-summoning villain who has been redeemed (NCsoft).

I can't wait to play a mastermind in Paragon City.  There are a lot of things we don't know:

• When the expansion will be released


• How much it will cost


• How the are implementing the alignment system


• Will there be 2 Paragon Cities and 2 Rogue Islands.


• Will a rogue hero or villain at 50 unlock their respective epic classes or will they count toward their alignment?


• Will rogues be locked in the parallel world or will they be able to cross over?

I hope to have annswers to those questions soon, but it sounds interesting.

This City of Heroes video is just too funny, but side kicks are one of the things that makes City of Heroes work so well.  It allows a low level character to run around with higher level character who by making the side kick one level lower than their mentor so long as they stay close to your mentor.  A brilliant idea every MMO should have.

I love the City of Heroes day jobs system.  The ability to gain bonuses while offline is a great thing.  I only wish they incorporated day jobs into the storylines more.  The video is great though.

City of Heroes is my favorite MMO right now, and this ad for their new Mac version of the game is well done and funny.  I really makes you wonder how the heroes get through the day.

City of Heroes has started getting us excited about Issue 14, the Mission Architect which will allow players to create missions and storylines of their own and earn rewards based on the participation of other players.

You can read the early details here.  I cannot wait to play around with the Mission Architect.  I already have a bunch of ideas.

One of my absolute favorite aspects of fandom is the costuming and roleplaying, and I would have to say they are the two most maligned and stigmatized things that we do.  Let's start with the most accepted by the popular culture and proceed to the least understood.

Computer Roleplaying Games

Mass appeal of video games have normalized RPGs on the computer, and why not.  Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, and Knights of the Old Republic were all such brilliant games, it is hard to see how they couldn't have had a mass market appeal, but in the one place where Roleplaying should flourish, it is all but extinct.

There was once a type of game known as the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG).  The problem is that these too entered the popular culture, and they spawned a new bane: badge collectors.  A sizable number of the MMORPG players became obsessed with their statistics, what badges they earned, and what loot they could get.  The software companies saw these players as their core audience and in some cases, there only audience.

The games were increasingly designed for these players and not for the fans of story.  Coinidentally, the acronym was shortened from MMORPG to simply MMO.  Players have done what they can to keep roleplaying alive, but they are generally isolated to a specific server or guild, and they are not aided by the software designers who more and more are crafting games that challenge your prowess with a keyboard and mouse and don't require any thought whatsoever.

This is one of the reasons I am so excited about Star Wars: The Old Republic and Stargate Worlds.  They are trying to bring story into the games and make it front and center.  I wish them the best of luck.

Table Top Role Playing Games

 

Table top RPG fans are the geeks that geeks love to hate.  Don't believe me?  Listen carefully to a lot of the podcasts out there.  It won't take you too long to find people having a geeky conversation about their favorite tech and occationally mocking TTRPG players.

Table Top games are not  as easy to play as their computerized bretheren, but they are a lot more fun.  There are more requirements to play:

• The Rule Books


• Friends who have free time to come over


• Dice


• Creativity


• Imagination

I didn't stutter at the end, and no, I am not padding the list.  Creativity is the ability to think originally, and imagination is the ability to see with the minds eye events as they are described to you.

I think those last two more than anything else makes people not like tabel top games.  Personally, I love them.  I run an Earthdawn game at the house every Sunday.  Nothing brings friends together for a good time like a shared adventure built from the collective imaginations of everyone there.

Live Action Role Playing

 

Live Action Role Playing (LARPing) is penultimate expression of role playing.  There are numerous systems for LARPing and they all generally involve renting a location, playing in a park, or the storyteller's home.  Most LARPers dress up in elaborate costumes and carry props to aid in game play.

I used to play Vampire: The Masquerade both as a table top game and as a LARP, and I have to say, the LARPs were always more fun.  We played at local conventions and I ran a chronicle that spanned various players homes, parks, and a few businesses who allowed us to use their establishment.

Who doesn't enjoy getting dressed up and spending a night as someone else?

One aspect of the LARPs I've played that made them so fun was that they were locked to the locations they took place.  The story was handled through notes given to the players to explain what happened between sessions, and a couple players who agreed to play according to the scripted motives I provided for them.  To this day, some of my favorite memories took place at LARPs.

We were a part of a LARP network where storytellers coordinated large scale events between cities, and at conventions our players would play through pivitol stories.  The largest LARP event we threw had 500 players in attendence.  3,00o players made up the network.  We coordinated through a email list.

LARPs are emense fun, and I miss them terribly.  I had hoped that MMOs would provide a platform for virtual LARPs, but so far, they haven't.

Costuming

Some people just love dressing up.  They don't roleplay at all, they just wear the costume for enjoyment.  For some, it is an uniform.  For others, it is an expression of their identification with the character or race they are recreating.  And others do it for the challenge of recreating the costume.

Steampunk is an entire movement built around costuming for the sheer fun of it.

Fans who Play together Stay together

Most of the deep, personal relationships I have developed with fans over the years has been between fans I have roleplayed with.  We share an experience that is truly unique to the players who were there.  Memories of events that are not replecatable in real life.

All these years later, I still run into people at the conventions who remeber the night my Taleison should have seen his reflection in the mirror and went mad.  We talk about it like a moment from a movie or series that we loved, but our connection to the event is so much more personal because we were there when it happened.

So if you haven't before.  I hightly recommend to gather up your friends and play a game with them.  Feel free to choose the type, but make sure it is one that will build those memories that will last a lifetime.

Despite the dreaded “Micropayments,” videos like this make me fall in love with Star Wars: The Old Republic before I have played it.  I know that is wrong, but since the Sony Online Entertainment destroyed Star Wars Galaxies, I have dreamed of a day when I would have a replacement.  This could be the one.

The video looks really good.  I hope I can get into the beta when it launches.