Star Trek Online first expansion is live

Well for two days now. And yet another expansion that I will probably barely look at... I say, it's getting way out of hand the number of MMO games out there and expansions and such. Rift going f2p, to join my huge list of games I already have an account, and now this new expansion, I better just call it and quit...

Anyways, this new expansion brings a new entire faction to the game, Romulans. Also, it improves the Klingon faction, I think to make it more PVE friendly. There are other features, most noticeable the increase on voice overs, new and far better tutorials, better UI. This was what I've been told about, by a friend. Eventually there will be new ships based on the new faction, and also new reputations to work out.

In any case you can always read more about the expansion here.

I assume I will be creating a Romulan character, and hopefully it will level up even if I use only the Duty Officer system (free experience with no work - if they didn't nerf it). Dunno if I'm gonna bother doing much quests. Quests are getting old developers... 

Rift going F2P!

Well I said something about Rift going have some huge changes by summer on this post and guess what here comes the Trion announcement: RIFT GOES F2P!

To be honest, this was more than expected to me. Pay to play either we like it or not, is dying. One because there are way too many MMO's on the market, that subbing a MMO is becoming more of a second hand option. Multiple offers means different games to try out, and paying a sub for different MMO's is something that most don't want to or can't afford. Secondly, world financial crisis means people will probably try to cut on something, MMO's come first. But I think the amount of MMO's at the moment in the market, is more than enough to warrant the end of P2P. I assume World of Warcraft will be the last true P2P MMO in the market. Even EVE Online while being P2P eventually one can turn it F2P due to the Plex system.

Well that being said, I think it's welcomed the change to F2P for Rift, and I will probably get back there when it goes live. 

I haven't looked much about the features for Rift's F2P model. Will look later.

D&D Neverwinter first impressions

Truthfully when I first saw images and videos I got some bad opinions about the game. I know it's wrong to judge something by the appearance, but watching those combat movies, very arcade like to me, made me a feel a bit unease with the game.

Anyways, and partly due to some friends convincing me to try it out, I decided to give it a look.

First thing, character creation. There are 7 races at the moment and 4 classes. Races are Human, Elf, Dwarf, Half-Orc, Half-Elf, Tiefling and Halfling. Classes, we have Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard (typical for a D&D game). Character customization is a quite big array of options. Long ago are the times where, like in World of Warcraft, we had a couple of differences faces and hair and be done with it. Here you can customize quite a lot of features on your character. Then you customize your stats and re-roll them until you feel you like them. I guess for minmax player this can be an important step.

That being done, we are then taken to the game tutorial. The combat proves to be what I thought. Action type oriented more to arcade. But somehow the videos, in my opinion hurt more what I first thought of the game then actually helped. Seeing the game on videos somehow made me have a wrong idea about the combat. Playing it actually feels fun and interesting. Also, the game doesn't use the typical combat bar with over 9000 skills or spells, like again World of Warcraft or even SWTOR. You have left and right click (in my case left click is main hand sword attack, and right click attack with off hand which is shield). Then Q, E, R have 3 most used skills. Key 1 is related to the daily skill (actually it's not daily but somehow it's called that way), which is sort of a strong ability usable only after certain time. Then there is for me, keys 3 and 4 which are potions related. Although, I still have locked keys. I assume this is all customizable also.

So far, all the activities I did in game were quest related, but this is somewhat expected since it works like a introduction to the game. From what I've seen there several different activities to do in the game. This springs to my mind Star Trek Online. Since I play(ed) STO for a while now, I remember some features of it. The first, and for me one of the most important aspect, is the ability to get in-game currency for the shop in trade with games currency, Astral Diamonds. Like with STO dilithium, you get Astral Diamonds (or Rough Astral Diamonds) while doing quests, or other activities in game. You get them as reward and then refine them (you can only refine 24000 units a day). Then you log into the Astral Diamond Exchange and trade your diamonds for Zen currency.

Basically this gives the player a certain liberty of playing the game without worrying too much on putting real money on it. Of course this requires some time before reaping some "profit", but it's a very welcome system, in my opinion.

There are dungeons and skirmish activities (I think the skirmish is similar to LOTRO skirmish system, fight against wave of enemies). There's also PVP, of course. And there is the Foundry, which is the user created content much like the one we can find again on STO. 

Afterall the game is from Perfect World and Cryptic Studio, it's expected they use these ideas on their games. And I like it. Isn't it better when leveling to be able to do different sort of activities, instead of the usual run of the mill quest grind?

Also there is always a sort of event running at each hour. For example, during certain times of day there's an event that whenever a player runs a dungeon will receive an extra loot box, or another event when you do a Foundry quest you get more experience out of it. This works to incite players to do difference things during their playtime.

Graphically the game is quite satisfying. It doesn't boost the quality level of either GW2 or even TSW (which I really like the graphics) but it's quite good nevertheless. But usually graphics come second, when you are enjoying something.

As it's well known the game is Free to Play, and as with STO, at least at first sight the game really seems free. Of course there will be things that will need some investment, but with the system I mentioned before about Astral Diamond Exchange, players can get what they need with ingame currency if that's their option.

For first impressions the game seems quite good. I would encourage those that have interest over it to give it a try. At least I was sceptic at first but after what I saw today, I end up enjoying it.

Where's the Dragon?

Like two month ago I've posted something about my newest TSW character, this time a Dragon born. I also mentioned I would be posting something while playing with it, but after that, and past over this two month I didn't post anything. I did play with it but wasn't as much as expected. He is still on the first area of Solomon Island, but nearly done there.

So resuming what I did with it. I picked the deck of skills Maverick that uses Pistol and Blade. This is a starter deck and is easy to complete. After that I picked another deck, Polarizer. Why did I do instead of just developing first the two original weapons (getting the advanced skills)? Because of the Ninja deck. So lets see, the Ninja uses Blade and Elementalist, so I pick the Blade from Maverick or Polarizer and the Elementalist from Polarizer. That way I can quickly get to that deck with the minimum of skill and abilities used. Obviously, I will still have to raise three weapon skills instead of one, but that I think won't be much of a problem.

So far I haven't noticed much difference from Illuminati side for the Dragon, except of course the conversation with NPCs from our faction, quest resume when you finish and a slightly adaptation for the class quest at rank 3. It's the same quest from Illuminati but has some differences.

I did played a bit of PVP too, but I think since I'm so low skill I probably hurt more my team then help them. I do get a boost at stats but I still have poor gear to play it properly. Need to get better quality level gear before venturing on it again.

I haven't looked much on crafting yet. I did that on my main recently, basically just to upgrade all the materials to the highest I could. I can say that is a daunting work... When I say upgrading, I mean, let's suppose I deconstruct a quality level 1 gear and get the base material out of it. To upgrade it I need 5 of that base material to make one of the superior rank. There are like 5 or 6 ranks, being Pure the last. And there are like 4 types of material (Fire, Water, Dust, Metal) and 7 runes (Yggdrasil, Wheel, Trinity, Denkyem, Pentagram, Wedjat, Lu). One can imagine the work it gives when there several of each type to transform...

As I said before I'm almost done on this first area, but it's taking a bit longer because as with my first character I'm considering doing every quest at least once. Otherwise I probably would be on the second zone by now.

Sometimes I wish I would spend more time on the game, because recently a friend took me to check some of the dungeons and the art graphic on some were quite nice, not to mention some of the fights were interesting to try out. And to be honest it's not hard to get to get where I want, just a little time.

LittleLamb Dragon will be back on this space again.

Rise of the Hutt Cartel, first opinions

I, as most that were actually interested on it, finally got into the first expansion of SWTOR, Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Since I didn't do the pre-order business I had to wait for more days for it. That wasn't a problem.

What so far I think of it? Well first off, and this is something I think Blizzard should apply on World of Warcraft, each time we buy an expansion they could give us a month subscription included. Bioware/EA did it with this expansion, why can't you too Blizzard? 

A side note about WoW. Doing the math on World of Warcraft right now, if for example, I don't buy the current expansion (which I haven't) and only decide to go play the game on the next one, I will always have to buy this expansion, plus the new one, plus the subscription, overall that will be more then 70 euros for an expansion access... One can pay 10 euros plus subscription (you have to be subscribed first before buying it) for the expansion and subscription for SWTOR. I would have to pay 40 or 50 euro to get WoW expansion plus subscription. A BIG difference... Also, either we like it or not, pay to play model is getting seriously outdated, with better free to play or buy to play models.

Back to the expansion. I haven't done much, maybe like 20% of it. I'm halfway to 55, but that's because I was nearly 51 before getting the expansion (players with no expansion can get exp until 99,99% of the bar). The gameplay doesn't change much from previously. Still it's a quest based game, where NPC's will handle you the quest and go to where you must do the quest. Main difference here, is there is a lot less side quests. There are still some, but I haven't got the journal full with like 10 side quests to do everywhere I go. It's mostly a planet story quests. Which is good, I think. 

The few other things I gave a look, was crafting, which can be raised pretty fast. Also, since they implemented reputation system in game, each quest here now gives an item to gain reputation, so this is new compared to old planets. Also since they changed the type of planet currency type, you be getting a lot of planet commendation while playing, and also the new basic commendation to get level 55 gear. 

The annoying parts of this expansion? Well, right off the bat, the currency weekly cap... It's so easy to get to the currency cap, that eventually you will be wasting tokens due to that cap. 

It's also not a BIG expansion. More of a DLC then a expansion. Sure it brings a big planet, and new operation, but that's about it. Oh and the seeker droid and macro binoculars, but I haven't seen those yet. The new flashpoints, are rehash of the normal version of those that didn't had a Hard Mode, and the highest level operation at 50 was pulled up to 55. I don't think it will put the world on fire, but it's always something new to give a go.

For what it's worth, and if for any reason, you are interested in the game, won't hurt much playing it. Otherwise if you didn't like the game before, you won't like it now.

Let's see what Bioware can pull out from now on.

SWTOR: Early access for Rise of the Hutt Cartel is now open

For any of those who pre-order in January (before 7th), the early access to the first SWTOR expansion (Rise of the Hutt Cartel) is now active. As was known, those that pre-order it by then, would have a 5 day access ahead compared to other players.

But for those, like me, who are waiting for the 14th of April, there is always new stuff to do. The update 2.0, Scum and Villainy is now up, and that will bring some changes to game mechanics, tokens consolidation, or many gear changes. However the most notorious change on this update, besides of course, the expansion itself, is the introduction of the Legacy Achievements, that besides the usual achievement hunt that it will bring, also features the ability to gain some cartel coins.

Anyways, one can read a bit more here.

Some curiosities from Rift

Yesterday I was browsing my folders and end up stumbling upon a video I made in Rift, of a bugged event on Storm Legion expansion, featuring Volan. Somehow the event just crashed and left an unmovable statue of Volan for everyone to see.

  

I also uploaded the video on Youtube.