Friday, January 26, 2007

Ebay Bans RMT?

Thanks to my daily scan of Lum the Mad's blog, we have word (albeit somewhat rumored yet) that Ebay is going to be banning RMT (or sales of MMO items/characters/money) wholesale, with the MMO in question being Ultima Online (which does allow RMT).

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, RMT is one of the hot button topics in MMOs. In fact, at the 2005 Austin Game Conference, it spawned its own panel, which I attended. Many people are against it, quite a few people (especially IGE) are for it, and some people just don't care.

Personally, my opinion is that if RMT is going to survive, it's going to have to be internal to the game, much as SOE has done with Everquest 2 and their Station Exchange program. And let's be honest. If anyone's going to be making money off of what's in the MMOs, it should be the MMO developers themselves. I mean, heck, I'd rather pay Blizzard $5 for a Sword of Glowy Smashings than pay some Chinese gold farmer for one. Same goes for any MMO, for that matter.

And let's be honest again, it's not like you're ever going to successfully ban the practice. When (and if) Ebay bans RMT (which won't be 100% successful, just look at their bans of bootleg music and other media), that'll just push people more towards IGE and various other gold and power leveling services. Historically, any time that you attempt to outlaw something, it just goes underground. RMT going underground will do nothing but make the possibility of fraud and other shady activities become much more common. If the MMO developers enfold RMT into their games, then at least then there's some accountability.


Thursday, January 25, 2007

Lord of the Rings Online Pre-Orders

Well, as we just posted over on Gaming Trend, Midway and Turbine have just announed their pre-order program. The press release is on the main site, but I wanted to talk about a few of the things I'm thinking on reading this.

First off, I'm in the beta (and have been since they went from alpha to beta), but haven't been in much lately due to other things. This'll change, and soon, especially when the NDA drops. Speaking of, also, I've got a key still for this weekend's stress test. No one's emailed. So...is no one reading, or does no one want it? :)

Anyway, here's the list of what you get for pre-ordering:

The Lord of the Rings Online Founder's Program(a) offers players two different membership options:

  • Only $9.99 per month subscription price!

    OR

  • Just $199 for a Lifetime Membership!

    In addition to these special pricing options, The Lord of the Rings Online Founders receive:

    • Open Beta: Guaranteed access provides Founders the first opportunity to create a character and enter Middle-earth currently planned for March 30, 2007
    • Character Roll-Over: Moves the character that you created during the Open Beta into the live service --along with the stats, levels, items, and experience that character earned prior to launch!
    • Bonus Items: Two special in-game items that are only available to those who pre-order:
              -- Enchanted Cloak of Regeneration
    -- Ring of Agility
  • So. The big thing here is the pricing. $14.99 (presumably) for subscription, or, if you pre-order, either $9.99 or a one-time fee of $199.99. There is a catch on the $9.99, which is if you cancel, presumably it knocks you to $14.99 or whatever. It's interesting to see a flat fee for a lifetime subscription. On one hand, it's aimed at getting as many boxes in the hands of players Day One as possible for that quick influx of money. On the other hand, the $200 lifetime membership gives the same message, but much, much more strongly.

    It really makes you wonder if either Turbine is having money issues, or if Midway is seriously pushing for this game to Hurry Up And Get Out. Not that the game looks bad (which is all I'm saying right now, understand), it's just what jumped into my head on reading the press release. Still, locking in a $10 subscription rate for what's aiming to be a AAA title....isn't a bad deal. And the $200, if LOTRO goes for 5-7 years, that's a sweet deal, but if it only lasts a year....ow.

    The Open Beta and Character Rollover really catch the attention. For those not paying attention, this means that if you pre-order and purchase the game (within 30 days of launch), you effectively get a month's head start. You can believe that the UBAR guilds will be all over this one, since it lets them grind grind grind to their hearts content and unlock as many things as possible before the game even launches. Look for a large number of strategy websites and such to hit pre-launch. Also, look for a crapload of patching and nerfing to happen Launch Day.

    Honestly, though, if you're even remotely interested in LOTRO, it's worth the pre-order (which many places is only like $5) just to get into the open beta, and then if you like what you see, buy the game and get the $10 subscription fee and keep your same character.

    More on LOTRO when the NDA drops, which will probably be within the next few weeks.

    Wednesday, January 24, 2007

    Lord of the Rings Online Stress Test

    I have word through various sources that a stress test scheduled this weekend for Lord of the Rings Online .

    Me, I have a key for said stress test. (Not anymore!)

    First person to email me at ballew@gamingtrend.com can have it with one condition: post impressions in a comment to this thread next week, please.

    Enjoy!

    Monday, January 22, 2007

    Everquest II: Echoes of Faydwer or How I Learned to Love The Fae

    So, the impetus for us creating this blog was the fact that SOE sent me a copy of Everquest II: Echoes of Faydwer for review. I haven't played Everquest II since just after it launched. I wasn't all that happy with the game, mainly because of the confusion factor and the sheer amount of grind that was involved, especially in trade skills.

    However, I knew that SOE had put a lot of work into changing and updating the game (30 updates and counting!) and that it was worth a second look, and a official GT review.

    The first thing that pleasantly surprised me when I opened the package was that the game ships on 2 DVDs (pay attention here, Blizzard). The install was ten gigs and I wasn't sure how much patching I was going to have to do. Luckily, over a 3 megabit connection it only took about two hours to update, although I can imagine how excruciatingly painful a dialup connection would be with this.

    Since I'm focusing on the new expansion, I decided to roll up a fae. The interesting thing here is that you create your character before you choose your server. It's a bit different, but it gives you a little bit of freedom here, since you don't have to spend an hour (or more) making up your character just to find out that you didn't choose the same server your friends did.

    And yes, I said an hour or more in chargen earlier. The reason I said it is because there's a solid amount of detail in the character generation system. It's no CoX, but it still gives you a solid amount of options as far as coloration, facial features (and wings for the fae!) and even hairstyles (one of which, for the fae, is known as the Faerie Courtesean).

    About thirty to forty minutes later (since I went a bit quickly through it), my little faerie monk looks like this:




    Once I got into the game, I discovered pretty quickly that they aren't lying anymore when they call the game Everquest II. In my first six levels (which took only an hour or two), I only killed a random monster once or twice. Everything else was quest-related. I also spent a fair amount of time harvesting the numerous Tier I resource nodes that littered the newbie area in Greater Faydark.

    While the NPC voices were nice, and some people will probably want to listen to them, I grew tired of waiting on the quest information, and found myself clicking 'next' each time just to get the information needed to go on my next quest. Then again, that's just my personal playstyle.

    One interesting thing about the controls is that everything defaults to a left click. You can right click, and then choose from a number of options for something, but a left-click is the default for looting a corpse, talking, buying/selling...and your icon will show you which action corresponds to the left click. While I spent the first twenty to thirty minutes right-clicking, I soon found that left-clicking was easier and faster.

    What did I immediately miss from other MMOs (namely WoW) that isn't in EQ2? A minimap, or a scalable map. The default map is small, and it's really hard to pick a particular spot on the map with any accuracy. The UI is completely skinnable and there are a number of mods out there, but it doesn't seem that EQ2's ui has as much depth to the modability that WoW does, or if it is, I just haven't found the right mod...yet.

    So far, I'm enjoying myself, but we'll see how things go when I get higher level, and see what else really annoys me about the game.

    Welcome to the Gaming Trend MMO Blog

    Good afternoon, and I would like to take this opportunity to welcome everyone to the Gaming Trend MMO blog. Why a blog, you might ask? The point of this blog is more to talk about what MMOs we're playing, and our thought processes while playing them. We'll be talking about the games that we're reviewing as well as games in beta (when they're not under NDA, of course).

    Mainly, it's to give us another outlet to bring you information that may not necessarily fit on the front page of Gaming Trend or something that we may not want to get lost in the forums.

    For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jason Ballew or Zarkon in the forums. I've been playing MMOs off and on since right around the time Asheron's Call came out. I've either played or beta tested every major MMO that's come out (and many of the minor ones). I've also written previews for two for GT (for RF Online and Dark and Light) and two reviews (Archlord and RYL: Path of the Emperor). I've been doing gaming in general since about 1982 (Atari 2600) and PC gaming since 1985 (Pool of Radiance), and internet gaming since 1991 (LPMuds and Mushes).

    With all of that said, sit back and relax, and let the games begin!