Lord of the Rings Online

This space would be occupied by Guild Wars 1, except for the fact that when I went to try the free trial, I had no problems whatsoever (other than the usual 'wtf NCSoft master account? I don't remember my password for that asdf' that I usually get) ... but Myk and Dez both had lots of problems.

Like, Dez picked up the free trial and got stuck on a loading screen. He decided to leave his computer on overnight to see if it got past the loading screen.

He comes back to find he is out of free trial time, so sad.

Myk had problems with long load times as well, so ultimately he never tried it either.

Ah well.

So, LOTRO. My opinion has always been kinda 'meh' about LOTR. That's part of why I hadn't gotten into LOTRO in its prime - I just didn't care, and besides, I had certain other games that won't be mentioned here to occupy my free time (for the last five years). The movies were fantabulous. I got through 2 1/2 of the books before I gave up on them due to massive ending fatigue (IT JUST WON'T END WHY WON'T IT END). Over all, I appreciate what Tolkein has done for us (creating the entire modern fantasy genre as we know it) more than I appreciate his actual works.

The game is ... not bad. The graphics haven't aged well, but hell, certain other games which we won't mention here (with over 11 million subscribers) graphics haven't aged well either. Besides, LOTRO's landscape is quite pretty. The character models are where it falls squarely into the 'meh' department. They'll do, anyway.

Since it didn't start as a free to play game, it has a lot going for it that most free to play games don't - it has a lot of content, for one. Like, a lot. And it's all free to play, for various degrees and quantities of 'free.'

Since the best features of the game require at least some interaction with it, I'd like to take a moment to discuss the store. Ah, the store.

The store is well-integrated with the game. Sure, it's just a system of menus and it's nothing fancy, but it does the job it needs to do well, and for the first time ever, the company isn't based out of Cali so I can actually buy shit without any hassle. You don't have to leave the game to purchase things - it's just a pop-up window. So that's nice.

I would like to now address something that bothers me.

Why, in the name of every God to ever walk the earth, do we allow ActiBlizzard to get away with such a flagrant disregard for what the players want when every other game on the market took a clue or ten and caught up ages ago?

I'm speaking here about Player Housing and Cosmetic Gear.

Player housing has its upsides and its downsides. On the upside, it's the ultimate expression of player creativity. Hell, 99.999% of the fun I've had, continue to have, and will have in the future with Minecraft involves customizing my own space which I have carved out of the living stone of a billion-foot-tall mountain. Entire games have been made from the concept of 'let's allow you to shape the world.' Why can't more games implement something as simple as player housing? Like, even how Conquer Online - something I haven't played in literally years - handled it, where there's an NPC, and you talk to them, and they teleport you to an instance where your house 'is' - not even a real place in the world!

Hell, if I could have a house to decorate in WoW, I'd probably even consider buying the damn thing with real money ... if I still played.

Which brings me to another thing that WoW  is just now - just now - catching on to, which is 'cosmetic gear.' It isn't hard to implement - just allowing one to appear to wear an outfit, y'know, cosmetically, that you aren't wearing stat-wise.

Sure, it's exploitable in PvP.

Does anyone really give a shit? I mean, do people really look and see 'oh that person is in x clownsuit, therefore they have just rammed a bulldozer up my ass so far I can see metal protruding from my forehead'? I can appreciate that there's a psychological factor to consider, but if it's that much an issue, give the PvP crowd the ability to turn it off - or better yet, allow everyone to do so.

Problem solved.

Both of those things, they are available in this free-to-play offering.

Why not other games?

Rant time off.

Anyway. I'm enjoying LOTRO, when I get to play it, it isn't hard, it's pretty standard MMO gameplay fare, I shelled out $20 on it to remove a gold cap and get two extra bags for all my characters. Do I see myself playing it ten years from now? Well, no, not really.

Is it amusing right now?

Sure.

Do I see the game itself persisting for a year or two at least?

Sure, why not?

Rift Character Generation

Or: Look at the Shiny!

Long post. TL;DR: Gushing about/describing Rift. You should probably buy that. Or you can try it free. Y'know, whichever.

So, Rift. Holy crap, my Warcraft addiction has been completely displaced. If I ever feel the need to play an MMO, I reach for my Droid instead of my keychain (since I need one or the other to complete the two-factor authentication both games boast).

What is there to say?

What isn't there to say?

Rift is yet another popular MMO boasting the dubious reputation as "next potential WoW-killer." They even boast in their advertisements, "We're not in Azeroth anymore." Now, in my own humble opinion, no game is actually going to kill World of Warcraft. That honor rests squarely with Activision-Blizzard, whose various policies have elicited more than one rant that I'll save for another time. As it stands, however, if a game could kill off World of Warcraft, Rift would be it.

Let's start with the basics. Like Aion before it, Rift is simply beautiful, the graphics absolutely stunning, with almost as much control over 'how much death this will wreak on your graphics card' as the former. (The graphics have also, at least on one occasion, killed off one of my characters - I momentarily forgot I wasn't playing Aion and therefore didn't have wings to catch my fall.)

Rift has significantly more character customization options than World of Warcraft, but not quite as much variety as Aion, resulting in a marked absence of flea-people and deformed monsters with gigantism (and real-life celebrity copycats), yet still managing to offset the, "You ALL look alike!" feel of World of Warcraft.

There are ... four? ... ish? distinct races in this game, two of which are split into ethnic subcategories that totally don't evoke any unfortunate implications or anything.

Totally.

The humans (every game has humans, even Aion had humans - in fact, Aion only had humans, even if some of them did have talons and manes) of Rift are split into two nationalities. The light-skinned Mathosians appear to be setting themselves up as the idealistic, gods-fearing "good guys" of the piece, while the dark-skinned Eth are the last remnants of a technomagical empire, and will do whatever is necessary to save the world from itself. With SCIENCE.

The elves (most every game also has elves. Aion didn't, but the 'pointy-eared willowy thing' look was an option) are also split along faction lines. On the Guardian (Mathosian) side of things, we have the High Elves, pale, nature-loving, also gods-fearing folk who, inexplicably, developed the powers of flight upon ascension ... or something?

On the Defiant (Eth) side, there's the Kelari, dusky-skinned, branching-eared, Uncanny Valley-eyed technomagical prodigies, with a side of heathen spirit ... uh ... negotiating. The Kelari believe themselves equal to the gods, not subservient. They strike deals with the spirits they work with, not prayers. Instead of flight, the Kelari turn into foxes, which in turn makes all Kelari foxy ladies, excepting the men, anyway.

Finally, the spares. On the Guardian side, we have Dwarves. All dwarves are alike. You don't really have to describe dwarves. But I will, anyway: short, kind of broad, generally bearded, scary fanatics who accidentally destroyed their underground cities by using the chained souls of their deceased for gasoline. Wait, what?

Anyway, their Defiant counterparts are the Bahmi, taller, broader, descendants of wind spirits, who gain by this descent a racial super-jump. They're big into ancestor worship, which given their ancestry, wouldn't be terribly different from the Kelari's practice, except for the whole I AM ALSO A GOD thing the Kelari sport.

Ultimately, choice of race and faction boils down to 'do I want to come off as a conservative judgmental zealot, or do I want to come off as an egotistical mad scientist?' Followed by 'How exactly do I want to get around the world faster, on foot?' (Unless you're a dwarf. And then it's WHEE FALLING.) And after that, y'know, actual aesthetic concerns. The +resists would be more distinguishing except everybody fights everybody else, especially all kinds of rift invasions, with more life and fire invasions in the Guardian starting zone, and more death and water invasions in the Defiant starting zone. (Although everybody always hates the death plane slightly more, so +death resist might be for the best, except for the recent influx of fire and earth, and ... yeah, it's basically irrelevant.)

So that's getting past the intro screens. From here on, either Arthas - er, the ... new leader of Mathosia ... guy ... is very, very proud that YOU. ARE. A. GUARDIAN! or Asha Catari is calling you Obi-Wan Kenobi, because you're everybody's only hope.

More on actual gameplay at an unspecified point in the future. Whee, non-permanently fatal gladiatorial deathmatches!