EQ2

The Month of Gaming Stuff #EQ2 #EQ #VGD #TS3 #Riftgame

Not only is NaNoWriMo going on this month (which I have been failing at, horribly), I’ve opened registration for this years Gamers Secret Santa, Rift released Storm Legion, Sims 3 released Seasons, EQ2 released Chains of Eternity, EQ1 is releasing Rain of Fear, Vanguard is releasing City of Brass, Planetside 2 is releasing, and that doesn’t even begin to touch on the other console games that came out this month like Halo 4.

What a month to be a gamer, hmm?

Important News re: ProSiebenSat.1 #EQ2 #EverQuest2

Taken from the official EQ2 forums

As many of you may have seen this morning on John Smedley’s Twitter, we have been working together with ProSiebenSat.1 Games to come up with solutions to some issues that have been brought up by our customers since the announcement of our publishing agreement with ProSiebenSat.1 Games in the EU Region. Together we have worked out a deal where existing customers will be able to choose whether they remain with Sony Online Entertainment or transfer to ProSiebenSat.1 Games.

Here are the tweets from Smed:

“I wanted to thank our players for continuing feedback. We’ve been listening along with our European partners at Prosieben. We’ve found a way to let existing players of our current games that are migrating over to Prosieben (EQ, EQ II, Planetside 2) keep their SOE accounts and stay with SOE. Down the road we may offer an option to move over to Prosieben. Just to be clear after these games launch on Prosieben’s service new accounts will be created on their sites. However all US and EU players can still play together no matter which service they are on.

I want to be clear that Prosieben will have better European CS and payment options IMO. That’s why we went with them in the first place. Also Prosieben has done a great job of listening and is working on changing some of their CS policies. More to come on that soon. Just going back and forth with our partners at Prosieben. I can confirm that we WILL offer the ability to migrate to Prosieben. No word on timeframe just yet, but shouldn’t take too long.”

Both SOE and ProSiebenSat.1 Games remain committed to making this transition as easy and beneficial as possible for players; more news will come in coming weeks, especially after we return from SOE Live.

Thank you for your patience.

Lets Talk ProSiebenSat.1 #EQ2 #SOE

(Comic is curtsy of @CheesePirate, and was censored from the EQ2 forums) I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to speak up on my blog about this situation, because I dislike posting negativity, and it’s rare that I do. However. I’m also not one to just sit down and let things pass by when I feel that there is something that can be done. For those who are unaware, here is the situation:

– SOE announced a deal with a company called ProSiebenSat.1 that would affect eight Europe-based SOE games. With this deal comes region locking. US players will no longer be able to access EU servers and those EU players who currently have US characters will be grandfathered in, but not future EU players. This deal carries over into future SOE titles, like EQNext, and PlanetSide 2 (for me personally, it means I can no longer access my Splitpaw characters. There’s a huge list of other consequences here).

– ProSiebenSat.1 are known for their shoddy customer service, and they’re also known for publishing the personal details of customers which is in violation of EU and German privacy laws.

– MANY people spoke up on the forums about this situation, and were banned for “excessive negativity”.

Feedback was requested, but the deal has already gone through (6 weeks ago).

A player even called ProSiebenSat.1 to try to get some answers since SOE has been very reluctant to say anything on the matter. They (ProSiebenSat.1) said “EU Customers will regret being considered US customers” because of all the events and marketplace items they have planned for the EU servers. In fact, it looks like the EU servers will have absolutely nothing in common with the US servers once this deal is implemented in full.

 

Perhaps things are not all doom and gloom, and this deal really is a GOOD thing. I fail to see it, personally. Region locks are NEVER a good thing, especially from my perspective where I play EU hours and live in Canada. In a day where games like Rift are trying so hard to allow players to stay together (free weekly server transfers, no region locking) it seems outrageous. It’s especially bad for games that have already been established. Put yourself in the position of the US military personnel who has been gaming on a EU server and now that they’re finally home, are unable to play with their friends because they must move to a US server, no longer having access. One of the major reasons any of us play these games are to be able to play with our friends, no matter where they’re from. To be able to meet people from all over the world, form bonds and learn from one another. Restrictions such as these do nothing but separate players, and having (what sounds like) completely different rule sets on US/EU servers makes me wonder  for the future of our EU friends.

It has been said time and time again – companies listen to nothing but MONEY. If you disagree with this and the future of SOE games, PLEASE consider cancelling your accounts. SPEAK with your wallets. That is the ONE sure way to get your opinion across in a way that will make the higher ups listen.

(As a side note, I hold no blame to the community team of SOE nor the developers, I know this decision was not something that they personally made, but came from higher ups). 

Thoughts on Staying Power #MMORPG #EQ2 #SWTOR #WoW

 

This post may come off a little negative, but that’s not how it’s intended. I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to why SWTOR didn’t grab me, or rather, it did, but couldn’t keep me. One of the major issues I had wasn’t really an issue at all, but is just how gamers perceive things. There are a lot of ‘things’ that I’m used to having in games, thanks to those who have been around for 5+ years. I realize it’s incredibly unfair to judge a game that releases today against a game that has been around for many years because after all that game has had time to grow – but – as a gamer, we are not interested in how things were 5 years ago, or how they will be 5 years from now. What we are interested in (and I use the term ‘we’ loosely here before someone throws a fit) is what is available NOW. At this exact moment that we are playing. If I can play a game that offers me 5 things that I really want from my video game, as opposed to a game that offers me 9 things that I really want from my video game, which game do you think I’m going to play? It doesn’t matter how old or how new a game is – in order to KEEP me playing, it’s going to have to appeal to those things on my list, and lets face it, the older games have had more time to work out what those ‘things’ are and to add them.

I feel very strongly that in order to actually compete with games that are 5-10 years old, games that are being released today need to take that progress into account. Dusty made a very good point yesterday regarding SWTOR – if you are leveling alts you can’t simply say “well, I leveled in Balmorra last time, so this time I’ll go to planet X instead.” There’s no alternate rout for you to bring your characters, where as (as an example) in EQ2 if you leveled in Thundering steppes last time, you’re more than welcome to head to Nektulos Forest. Or Butcherblock Mountains. Or do dungeons. In WoW you also have the choice of where to spend your time. In Rift? Not so much. SWTOR? Also not so much. Again this is an unfair comparison and I know it is, because the two later games are much newer, and thus haven’t had the time to add new content – but that’s simply how it is. In order to compete with games that are 5-10 years old, you must think of yourself as one of those games. I realize that there’s only so much manpower a company can dedicate to a game, and I also realize that this is pretty much an impossible task – but for us selfish gamers, that’s how we’re thinking. We’re going to constantly compare any new game to those we have played previously. Those older games have already gotten their hands on us, we’ve already got ties to them – new games need a way to get those hands on us in a MUCH faster way, so that we’ll stay.

When it comes down to it, that’s why SWTOR didn’t have the staying power required for me to keep playing. Were the stories amazing? Sure they were, I loved them. I loved having choices for my characters to make. I experienced very few bugs (personally, I know others have a long list of bugs), and datacrons and exploration were fun. The problem is (aside from the story lines and character choices) I can get those things in any other game on my list, plus more sandbox features which is key to me sticking around in any game. I play alts, they need choices that will be different from my mains. Sure, I can choose a different *story* for them, but they’re basically doing the exact same things (as long as we’re the same factions) as my main, minus the class quests. They’re visiting the same zones, collecting the same datacrons, and when I dislike a zone like Balmorra (those lifts.. that map.. OUCH) I have no alternate rout. Now, maybe game companies have given up on trying to retain players and instead are working to build up their first-time sales, which is completely fine if that’s the way they’re trying to operate. Obviously that’s not how I’d prefer things done but hey I’m not a gaming company trying to make money, I’m just a player.

Anyhow, those were just some of my thoughts on player retention. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

Holiday Events In Our Games of Choice #MMORPG #EQ2 #WoW #Rift #W101 #GW

Hard to believe that today is already December 15th – where does the time go! My apologies for those who may have been trying to access MmoQuests these past few days. My host was hacked and so the site has been less-than-stable while they resolved issues. It looks like everything is a-go now, so I should be able to get back to posting here on a regular basis, so long as something shiny doesn’t come along and distract me along the way.

There are numerous holiday festivals taking place in MMOs this time of year, and I love hearing about them all. A few of my favorites happen in Guild Wars, Wizard 101, EverQuest 2, Rift, and of course World of Warcraft. That by no means lists all of the events out there though, so make sure you take a peek into your GoC (game of choice) and take part in the yearly events (if there are any, not all games have these).

Dragon Flight (my Argent Dawn alliance based guild) managed to take down a few more encounters in some Outlands raids last week. This was quite a feat for us because we’re still only three people (actually, now we’re five, but two of them are too small to participate in these raids). We’ve been doing them for appearance gear and my shaman won herself a pair of neat shoulders that have a graphic of glowing broken up molten infused rocks.

Aside from that I’ve been working on leveling both a DeathKnight and a Druid. The druid managed to grasp on to level 62 tonight, and the DK is 61. I do have a recruit a friend account, so they’ve only got a few hours played if that. While getting to ‘end game’ is not everything, I’ve taken my time and enjoyed the ride on a handful of alts and this time I just wanted to get to Cataclysm content.

In true nomadic gamer style I haven’t really settled on a ‘main’ although I tend to play my shaman more than my other characters. I also spent some time playing Plants vs. Zombie, and Skyrim. The majority of my friends are all playing SWTOR – and it’s been really hard to hold out and not just pre-order the game for myself. In fact, there is a copy in the house, belongs to my other half. He’ll be playing and I can make a character on his account and play while he’s at work to see if the story actually does suck me in as everyone says it will. A few friends have pointed out that Star Wars has very little to do with ‘space’ and has far more to do with fantasy and magic, which is a big point in its favor (for me at least). I even sat down to try to watch the Star Wars movies today, so who knows, give it some time and perhaps that will be my GoC.

In sadder news, Beckett MOG shut its doors today. For those who don’t know I’ve been writing MMO related articles for them for a number of years now, as well as moderating their forums and writing news articles for the web site. They just weren’t pulling in enough money (or so I assume) and in this age of digital media, it’s not a big surprise. I hope that everyone who is now searching for new work (I’m looking at you, Jason) finds the job of their dreams, and I personally am incredibly thankful for the experience I’ve gained while working there.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

 

Nomadic Gamer