A Strangely Guilty Pleasure – Earth Eternal.

Okay, so I used to play an old Iron Realms MUD back in my early college days. It was fun, deep, engaging and typical of any well-run MUD with a standing community. (Even came with factions, hah!) The company mentions that they’re making a MMO in the future. I get excited again. I play it. Dropped it as fast as I could and ran.

If you don’t know about Earth Eternal, the main beef with the game is its character creation. It is effectively a furry game, anthropomorphic to the point of being titled “the next Furcadia” by some. Strangely enough, that wasn’t what scared me off. (If you’re honest with yourself, the only way they could create a reasonably viable diversity with their extremely low polygon count was to go the distinguishable animal/bird/reptile route.) Really, the game played slow and the client chugs at sub-optimal speeds on rigs that play more graphically intensive titles at a constant 60.

Regardless, I picked it up again on the grounds that I wanted to think positively for once. It’s been taking a lot of that stuff. The fact is, I’m not used to browser MMOs and the general lack of quality that is caused by working within a browser. That being said, Earth Eternal, at times, felt like I was playing a real MMO. Really, the only thing hampering Earth Eternal is the fact that it is a browser MMO, because most of its design components just plain work.

The class system is solid. Four classes, warrior-rogue-mage-druid, each having their own skill charts. Skill charts are divided into primary and secondary. Your specified class gets access to the entirety of its own chart plus the secondaries of all other classes. Awesome. You can be a mage with a small suite of melee skills. You can be a rogue with heals. You can be a warrior with rogue interrupts. You can be a druid that, err, well is like every other druid in every other setting.

Range is insane in Earth Eternal. It really is. I can’t explain it to you better than the game client can. You shoot roughly as far as you can see, well outside the range of aggro. Humorous to the max. Consequently, melee is clunky and strange, mostly because of a small delay post-skill usage and the sense that your abilities come later than your inputs.  As far as tactile feel is concerned, the game doesn’t feel polished like most good MMOs are, but it’s forgivable because, once again, it’s a browser MMO.

The big question I ask myself when playing EE is “Am I playing a kid’s game?” The answer, unfortunately, still remains yes. The theme is soft and cute, the world hasn’t really revealed anything particularly moving and it is very clear that these ‘flaws’ are intentioned to keep them within a certain age range. If you’re going into EE and you’re looking for a fight, you’ll probably find yourself in the desperate loser category.

Still, after all this, the community does not suck. As much as I really dislike the game’s lack of depth and subpar presentation, the presence of a friendly region chat is so dangerously alluring that it is keeping me in the game. I wish that this kind of community existed in better games, but it’s fairly clear that games with a competitive streak tend to attract the worst crowd as far as MMOs are concerned. You really cannot have your cake and eat it too with MMOs.

EE is a good browser MMO. I reserve full judgement on the technical aspects based on its current existence as an open beta game. On paper, it has some really solid ideas and executes them successfully, but the theme might deter people, especially boys with an ego. Less gimicky than Free Realms and more polished than Runescape. I don’t know if I will play it, since I thrive in places that allow me to be mean, but part of me really does want to participate in the game for purposes of relaxation.

Aika Online – The Paradox of Seriousness.

The paradox of seriousness is a simple concept that every MMO player comes to grips with.  I haven’t quite put it to a real formula just yet, but here goes. The more serious you are in storytelling and motivating the individual, the more plotholes appear. More seriousness ultimately leads to less immersion. Suspending disbelief is difficult in a world that doesn’t give-a-crap about your endeavors against the great phantom lord thing. You’re the chosen one? Yeah, you and everyone else on the server. That sort of deal.

Aika Online, on the other hand, doesn’t take itself seriously at all, which makes it good, fun and engaging. Granted, ‘you’ are played by some clown in armor that probably expected a journey, but finds yourself in a whimsical world filled with menial tasks and strange humor. I didn’t think I would bond with my Pran, who is a little girl with a huge gob, but I have, and I want her to grow so she can amuse me in the future.

Basically, Aika is one of those games that, for once, understands who it is in the big-bad-world of other games. It’s a bit like Dungeon Runners, actually. Part of me expected it, because shipped-overseas games generally have a lot of weird filler that usually sucks. Aika’s isn’t deep, but it is funny at times. Again, I came into this game expecting the worst, and so far, it’s been decidedly mediocre in all regions except a lack of looting tedium and the NPC dialogue.

X-Trap have the best salesmen ever.

3rd party cheat protection programs in MMOs are terrifying for the end-user. Process hooks, extra input devices failing, firstborn being captured and so on occur simply due to the presence of anti-cheat software that usually doesn’t do its job after 3 months. It made me think why any company would consider using 3rd party cheat protection in the first place, given its track record in so many other games as an anemic answer to the unrelenting stream of malcontent that is the playerbase.

Salesmen.

I say salesmen because I don’t feel the industry has a consortium on cheat protection, and if they did, it would stand to reason that they would not recommend X-trap or Gameguard simply due to being more work in the long run. When it comes down to it, neither work to the extent that would be considered adequate protection against the issues that plague any commercial endeavor that involves rendering boobs.

X-Trap must have really good salesmen that carry a briefcase of boogie-men to young developers. There are probably a billion threats spread in gobbledygook in these masterful pitches, so dire and compromising to the success of a MMO that they’re willing to side with the lesser of two evils. If you don’t buy this product, you’re opening yourself up to a billion archaic techniques of data-theft. Besides, game companies would never be as bold as to hook processes on their own volition. Let X-trap do the dirty work in computing safety.

Still, it’s fun to be in favor of the following argument: “You’re a pussy if you can’t handle ‘insert cheat protection’!” The allure of being contrarian just to be a complete douche compels me to remain oblivious to the insanity that is X-trap. And yeah, Aika uses X-trap just like GE.

Aika Online – Granado Aion Espada Online Wut.

I hate Massively sometimes (Allods did not impress my friends nor myself), but sometimes I love them. They introduced me to Aika Online, which is Aion + Granado Espada meshed together to create a dated loli-fest on first blush. Granted, I haven’t played it yet, but I’ve spent the last hour or so looking up images and laughing hysterically.

It really looks like Granado Espada. The same hair textures, gun models and some very familiar animations leave me to conclude that Aika is not only using GE’s engine, but they salvaged it and created something monstrously hilarious from the wreckage. There must be a reason this Japanese blogger is playing both at the moment. On a serious note, browse that blog to get an easy side-by-side view of both games and confirm your diagnosis of double-vision. It’s humorous at least.

Petulant Pioneering is back to exploring the new world, literally. Unlike Allods, which I went into with some brighter outlooks, I am going into Aika expecting the worst game ever with nothing but nostalgia to hold it up. Of course, I’m not sure whether or not the game currently has a Non-disclosure Agreement, which would prohibit ranting, or in PP’s case, borderline libel. I’ll have to go look for it at some point, mostly because ignorance is no excuse for disobeying the law.

Regardless, the experience will be fun and possibly exciting. Who knows, maybe Aika won’t be as crappy as it looks, but I won’t hold my breath.

P.S. Go get Mass Effect 2 if you played the first installation. It is definitely worth your money. 24 hours on normal without rushing, but I do recommend veteran to outline the characteristics of your opposition in a genuine manner. They’ll feel more like a menace rather than what normal-fodder, overall conveying the intention of the designers with greater clarity. For instance, normal doesn’t really let you grasp Vorcha regeneration because they die too quickly to everything in your arsenal. Krogan aren’t really terrifying monsters in combat. The list of negative attributes to normal difficulty goes on. Make your first run through epic and fitting for your return to the universe, instead of (unintentionally) watering it down by making it easy.

The fine line: Allods 1-17 vs Aion 40-50.

I never, ever thought I would meet my match in the grind. I certainly wouldn’t have said, “I will get my ass kicked in the first couple levels.” Somebody warned me about the 1-17 push, but I disregarded it. Ugh.

There are elements of sluggishness that game developers would avoid. Aion suffered from sluggishness because you killed mobs but they didn’t afford that much XP, but depending on your class, you’d blaze through hundreds per hour. Allods is the same thing, except you kill at a sluggish rate. Hopefully they’ll fix this, because the problem with introducing a sense of cement shoes so early involves people, like myself, jumping to conclusions without any sort of logical backing from the developer. There are no tricks I should be learning while wielding a maximum of four skills, none of them having a particularly deep interaction with one another.

I’ll probably get through this grind, but it will be nigh impossible for me to get my current list of friends to play this game with me because of this  unusually slow progression. Definitely a design anomaly I never expected to see.

Law School v. Aion.

As you can imagine, law school is not the easiest thing in the world. As a result, I needed to drop Aion for peace of mind. While money isn’t the object, the sensation of spending unused money does bother the living crap out of me. Knowing that I could be grinding coins simply made it difficult to brief cases.

While Aion is a great game, making six figures in the future is even greater, duh.

Massively’s only uncontested 2009 category.

What did Aion win this year according to Massively, including staff and readers? Biggest Dissapointment of 2009.

That’s cool. Aion had a good marketing department. Too good in this case. Granted, they lied through their teeth, but that’s a sin that you get used to when you encounter developer interviews. Overall, however, Aion still feels supreme in the “General” MMO region. It’s not something new, but it is the basic formula refined enough to hold substance and attention.

As someone who plays and, frankly, enjoys Aion, I didn’t find the announcement disconcerting. The fact is, MMO players in general hate grind. They really do. If you want a MMO to be unpopular, introduce a battle of wits that challenges your devotion to success. Granted, the approach is not fully entertaining until you finish, but nevertheless, that’s what Aion did and the western market had a predictable hissy fit. It was pretty clear to me when Aion launched that it would not have enough quest content and/or exploration value to satiate the hordes of self-designated game designers who either want a MMO to be a leisurely prance through the XP bar. Understand that the MMO genre is inherently flawed due to a compromise between content quality and content length. If you do not have a long grind, even if it is amazing, your end-game is criticized for being insufficient. If you have a long grind, well, people just give up on the game and post their expert opinion on the forums. I suppose with that in mind, Aion’s developers made an error in judgement, but it’s a tolerable error.

People also don’t enjoy a lack of innovation in MMOs. That’s fine, but having playing a ton of gimmick-launch games, I can’t say Aion is bad for playing it safe, albeit too safe for a warm welcome in the western world. While yes, I love innovation, I do not love it at the cost of the basic foundations of a MMO like relevant PvP rewards and whatnot. I also feel Runes of Magic is a MMO that carries the WoW torch for its own benefit. Some people do base their decisions on “Anything but WoW”, and given that RoM’s mages were completely and utterly broken when I was playing, I found the lack of attention towards balance to be mortifying. Aion, being akin to Lineage 2, had the allure of being one of those games where simply existing there would be a badge of superficial-badassery without having a dissatisfying rift in class balance.

What does this mean? Well, the silly business about all of this is that NCsoft can fix it and probably will whether I like it or not. I don’t mind an influx of fresh blood, and as MMOs do get older, it stands to reason that you want to get new members up to relevant content instead of pulling a Granado Espadan content curve. (Read: Straight up, then plateau at 110.) If Aion’s only flaws are being too hard and generic, then the game isn’t permanently screwed.

Still, if you want to try to bring friends into Aion, good luck. Aion’s reputation is, without a doubt, bad.

50/50

The grind was relatively tough, but doable in three months with considerable slacking in-between spurts of gooey leveling.

Would I do it again? Probably not as inefficiently. Level is a golden goose for some content, but there’s plenty to do in the 47-50 gap.

As far as comics are concerned, I’m probably not capable of writing a comic. My aspirations are more along the lines of commentary with images, or maybe just images. Developing a coherent cast of characters, however, is an endeavor I don’t have time for. My hands hurt from sucking at Super Smash Brothers Brawl+, so I don’t really have any great insight at the moment. I did, throughout the pain, draw something fun.

I'M GONNA' NYERK YOU UP GOOD

Blearghbleargh.

My hands are cold. I was going to do some sort of botched Petulant Pioneering Xmas special, but I scribbled in MSpaint to describe my undying affection towards the 2000 Platinum coin grind.

Love, sorta.

http://news.quelsolaar.com/#post59

Aion is essentially the experience outlined although Eskil is very pessimistic about it. Rightfully so, the guy is single-handedly building a MMO that, at its core, is vastly superior to any other MMO on the market in terms of flexibility. I’ll be forking out the 5 dollars soon.

It’s a decent read from an exceptional individual. I don’t necessarily agree with him on the grounds that his definition of con could be reversed into catering, and that the con is a necessary evil with you have hundreds-of-thousands of players bashing your infrastructure while your development costs continually nag at your heels. Still, perspective is nice, albeit uncomfortable.

Also, the answer to the last question is “Respect, not love, is what is often desired in MMOs.”