Bookahneer’s Geekwatch (January 17, 2013)

Welcome to today’s Bookahneer’s Geekwatch! The place about miscellaneous interesting news related to Guild Wars 2 – and on occasion, other games.

This is our first post this year. I hadn’t even realized that I had taken such a long break. Although it’s only a break for you as readers because I actually do have several drafts that I may finish within the next few weeks. ;)

As you have probably already seen, ArenaNet told us about their future plans for Guild Wars 2. There’s some interesting stuff in there. Guesting finally arrives! The good news was that it’s coming on January 28. I, personally, am very happy about that because it means that I’ll finally get to play with my German guild with whom I’d already played Warhammer Online. So in about 2 weeks, you’ll see Flummi bouncing around between Aurora Glade and Drakkar Lake. I am fortunate that both my gaming communities are settled on European servers as you will not be able to guest between EU and US servers.

There’s a more detailed explanation why we cannot guest between regions on the official forums. To me, it sounds as if they’re not planning to give us global guesting at all. With the emphasis they put on “community”, I find it very disappointing to not have this feature. But as I said, I was mainly waiting to guest on Drakkar Lake, so in the end, it works out for me. Still, I understand that others are upset and disappointed. Still, it sounds like ArenaNet has great plans for the game and I’m curious to see what we will get next.

Additionally, there are some more songs uploaded to their SoundCloud account. One of our favourite songs is “The Great Toymaker”. Oh, and check out the German and French versions of “The Tale of the Mad King Thorn”. I don’t always understand his German, but it’s still very fun to listen to!

But that’s not all that happened in the gaming world. Path of Exile is getting closer to its open beta launch (on January 23, 2013!). If you love Diablo 2 for its atmosphere and love games like the Diablo franchise in general or Torchlight, then Path of Exile is definitely worth checking out! It is free to play with a cash shop that lets you buy cosmetic/fluff items and character slots. I played during closed beta. Not much, but enough to recommend it to a friend and I will certainly play it again after launch. The atmosphere alone is very much worth it. The classes are fun and the passive skill tree is definitely something special. It lets you customize according to your playstyle and that’s what I really enjoyed.

Vanguard is a game that I’d only tried for a short time when I was looking for an MMO to call my home. It did not make it back then for one reason only: It didn’t seem to have any developers left and I didn’t feel like investing money into a game with no further support as that usually means that it’s bleeding players until only the “hardcore base” is left. Now it’s gone free to play and apparently, they – or the players – found their f2p offering too restrictive. The producer’s letter came with the announcement that all races, classes, levels AND housing are unlocked for non-subbed players!

I am currently playing Guild Wars 2 (no surprise here, right? ^^), World of Warcraft (yeah… nostalgia got me and I bought a gametime card to check back into the game. Once that time runs out, I won’t renew) and The Secret World. With those changes above, I will add Vanguard to the list. World of Warcraft’s game time will expire in about two weeks anyway and three games are all I can handle with the way I play. But eh, all three “future” games are without a sub, so that’s okay. ;)

Last but not least, another trip to nostalgia lane: GoG.com now offers Cultures 1 & 2! I squealed when I saw that. I own Cultures 1 (incl. addon), Cultures 2 and all the other games in the Cultures 2 universe (same characters/game but different settings/stories). Cultures 1 was the first game I ever played through till the end. It also accompanied me through the first half of university as some of the game is so slow that you can read while playing. This may sound bad for some people, but for me it was perfect. I don’t like strategy games where you need to react fast and Cultures just has a much slower pace. It’s also micro-management in the way that you can direct each Viking. You choose a profession for each of them, train them, etc. I like the graphics of the first Cultures game more than the one from the second game. But all in all, I still think it’s not bad to look at. I am considering buying it but in order to take this screenshot, I just installed Cultures 1 again and it’s still working on Windows 7. Soooo… probably not necessary? Not yet, at least. ;) I’ll have to test Cultures 2, of course. And it’s a bit sad that they’re not offering “Cultures – Northland” or “8th Wonder of the World”, but maybe it’s in the works. If you know German, the Wiki entry gives you more information about the games. There is also Cultures Online, a browser game that uses the graphics of Cultures 1. But I actually can’t really recommend it as it’s pushing you too much to the cash shop for my taste.

Bookahneer’s Geekwatch: Arrrr thar other games?

Welcome t’ today’s Bookahneer’s Geekwatch! Th’ place about miscellaneous interestin’ news related t’ Guild Wars 2 – an’ on occasion, other games.

This time, we be havin’ a slightly different Bookahneer’s Geekwatch. ‘t does, fer once, nay focus on Guild Wars 2.

I have to admit that I have not been paying too much attention to the gaming world outside of Guild Wars 2 in the last few weeks as I usually do, but a few things did catch my attention and I did look at those games more closely. As much as I would love to be a one-game-woman, I am not. ;) I like getting into other games every now and then for a change of scenery. Right now, I am very much looking forward to Torchlight 2. It releases tomorrow! According to a forum post, they are aiming for a release at around 7pm CEST (Paris, Berlin time. 1pm East Coast USA). That fits perfectly to my schedule as I should be home 1 1/2 hours before that and then still need to do some exercise before I can sit down and play a game.

But this is not all that Runic Games has for us. They are giving us the soundtrack for free! You do not even need to have bought the game if you want to download the soundtrack. But, of course, it would be nice to give them something in return. ;) You may be interested in the current Humble Indie Bundle offer which gives you Torchlight 1, among other games. You set the price and support charity at the same time. This is quite a nice deal! Oh yeah, and Torchlight 1 will be playable on a PC and on Linux! Oh, and on a Mac as well. Speaking of which, so is Guild Wars 2 (I’m referring to the Mac, not Linux, unfortunately ^^).

Aventurine has finally announced Darkfall Unholy Wars. I did know that they are kind of, maybe, reworking Darkfall Online and that something will happen and players may have to start all over again because all data will be wiped… maybe. As you can tell, Darkfall Online is not my kind of game, so I haven’t been following it too closely. I like PvP, but I prefer other PvP modes than “open world everybody vs. everybody” like team-based PvP matches. I did recommend the game to bookahnerk’s cousin, though, because this really is the kind of game that he loves playing.

So why is this game even mentioned here then? Because I think they’re doing something very bold and that’s worth mentioning! They are not just upgrading their current game or redesigning things here and there. They apparently developed a new game. I am curious how far they took it and how different this new game will be. The game will be released on November 20, 2012. They have written a blog post with some more information if you’re interested, although I don’t think it has enough information in it. The game’s website seems to have a bit more information, at least.

It’s been postponed but the new date for the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Riders of Rohan, is getting closer: October 15. That’s four weeks from now. Lotro is one of those games that will see me again sooner or later. My main character, a hobbit warden, never saw the max level that got introduced with Rise of Isengard, but even though I don’t like playing that class too much anymore, I really don’t want to level another character. Lotro is the only game so far where I never liked playing alts too much. I am not a big fan of how the characters look (link to previous entry – aesthetics!) and I do not like the combat feeling too much either. The world design, on the other hand, is still gorgeous and I do hope to get around to seeing the new parts of the world one day.

And, of course, there is World of Warcraft. The infamous panda expansion is really close now. The expansion will come out next week (September 25 – look here for exact launch times) and I am really curious how many people will still be complaining about pandas afterwards. To be honest, I still don’t get why people are upset at Blizzard for including them. Why are two-legged cows with humanoid breasts okay, but pandas aren’t? I know that the space goats weren’t taken too seriously, but people didn’t complain about them that much either. And it can’t be because of the film “Kung Fu Panda”, because Blizzard’s pandaren are much older than that. But maybe it’s because people are scared that their favourite MMO will now be called “a game for kids” even more often than it already is. To this I say: Who cares? Play what you want to play because you like it.

Oh well, my time in World of Warcraft is definitely over. I like reading up on what’s been happening in the game, what’s being added or changed, etc. but nothing makes me want to renew my subscription and log on again. I am curious how the expansion will effect Guild Wars 2 and its servers. Will we notice a drop in active players?

Bookahneer’s Geekwatch (“What to play until GW2 releases”-edition)

Before we start with today’s Geekwatch, there’s some news about ArenaNet’s community managers: We apparently now have community managers tweeting during EU time and Rubi Bayer has joined as new community manager (she was previously working for Massively). It’s great to see them “expanding” and hopefully this means that Guild Wars 2 is closer than we dare to hope at the moment! ;) The funny thing is that I haven’t really noticed not having CMs tweet or report during EU times because Seattle is conveniently located timezone-wise. Or they just waited for all their big announcement until us EU folks were up anyway. Because so far, announcements came at some point during our afternoon or evening. Still, now we get to hear from them during our morning hours as well, maybe? ;)

But let’s continue with the actual posting. Today’s Geekwatch is about “free” games. And with “free”, I mean games that used to cost a monthly fee and which don’t anymore… to a certain extent at least. More and more seem to be converting nowadays which is great if you just want to check out game or two or if you want to bridge the time until Guild Wars 2 comes out.

Let’s start with MMOs that went f2p some time ago. You can just go to their official website, download the client and start playing:

Lord of the Rings Online went f2p quite some time ago. I’d recommend this if you’re a Tolkien fan (or just liked the films ^^). You get the starting areas plus a few after that for free (I know Lone-Lands are free now but I’m not sure about others). All other areas won’t have quests for you unless you buy those quest packs. You can still grind your way up to max level, though. The game’s “real money shop” now also offers armour with stats which is one of several reasons why I’ve fallen out of love with the game recently. Still, it is a pretty game and I love looking at the game’s screenshots. They also have interesting classes with good and fun mechanics. And I love the cosmetic system which lets you dress your character in one way while the character wears ugly armor with good stats on it. ;) If you want to read more about the game, go to this entry where I’ve previously compared Rift, WoW and Lotro.

Everquest II is a game I’ve just recently discovered for myself. And I was probably one of the last people to do so. ;) It’s definitely an “old game”. It was released in 2004 and it’s showing its age. Then again, the amount of stuff you get for free is great. The downside is that you can’t play all races or all classes for free. That’s kind of sad and made me actually spend money so I could play my cute little rat. But the housing in the game makes up for it. So much freedom (compared to Lotro which is the only other MMO I’ve ever really played that had housing) when it comes to how you want to decorate your house. Also, all quests are free. You just don’t get the last expansions – but you need to buy those in Lotro as well. ;)

Star Trek Online joined the f2p group this week. You get less character slots than subscribers (as in Lotro and EQ2 as well). STO is outstanding when it comes to the character creation (compared to Lotro an EQ2). Also, they have space combat which the other two, obviously, don’t have. As I said above with Lotro and Tolkien: If you’re a Star Trek fan, it’s worth checking out! The restrictions you get compared to subscribers also aren’t bad at all.

Champions Online, DCUO and City of Heroes: I’ll just throw those in because they’re all superhero MMOs and it seems they’re such a niche, they all go f2p one day. ;) City of Heroes is the oldest one, DCUO the newest. I liked the character creation in Champions Online the most (one thing Cryptic – the developers behind STO and Champions Online – can do very well is character customization, apparently ^^).

Aion EU will go free to play soonish. There’s no definite date yet as far as I know but it was said to become free to play in February. Once that happens, the game will not be published by NCSoft anymore. They will hand over the game to Gameforge. Important to note is that this is only the European version of Aion. The US American one stays with NCSoft (at least, as far as we know) and will still require a monthly sub. Still, if you’re interested in the game, why not check out the EU version once you can do so? As it’s not switched over to f2p, we can’t say much about the real money shop yet.

Guild Wars – Oh come on, you know I had to throw this in here now, didn’t you? ;) This is NOT a real free-to-play game. You actually have to buy the game first. But once you own it, you can play without any monthly subs. And I’ve seen all three campaigns plus the addon for 30€. So that’s not too bad. If you want to start playing the game and you don’t want to buy the complete edition (with all three campaigns – and either with or without the addon, depends on the version), I’d recommend “Nightfall” as I found this tutorial the best to follow. If you’re just interested in the world 250 years before Guild Wars 2, then you want to check out “Prophecies” (and later the addon “Eye of the North”). Stay away from Factions at the beginning because it’s not newbie-friendly (I felt lost in there and that was after I’d started a character in Nightfall and knew the basics ^^). It’s also not a real MMO. I guess “cooperative RPG” might fit better. Still, if you haven’t played it yet and are waiting for Guild Wars 2, why not check out its past? :)

World of Warcraft (European version), Warhammer Online and Rift Lite are still subscription-based. But all three games offer “unlimited trials”. Which means that you can play a portion of the game for free and don’t have a time limit. WoW and Rift both give you 20 levels of gameplay. Once you’ve reached level 20 with your character, you can’t advance it any further unless you pay. In WAR, it’s the first 10 levels, I think.

11 games to choose from. Even if each of those only entertained you for a month, this could last until the very end of 2012. And we know that GW2 will be released this year… ;)

Edit: I was just reminded that there’s also Fallen Earth. Now I know that I can’t list every single game that exists but this list should’ve been one of games that I at least tried out (and liked ^^) and I even played Fallen Earth for a few weeks (which is… well… a bit more than just trying it out)! The crafting is what makes this game stand out as the best items are craftable. Also, it’s set in a kind of post-apocalyptic USA (or very tiny parts of it). There also weren’t any bad restrictions. I just found the combat itself a bit clunky. Still, it’s nice to have a non-standard settings for once.

Pandaren belong to WoW as much as orcs do!

As I’ve previously written here, I was sure that pandaren are a possibility in WoW because they are NOT forbidden in China.

So yesterday, Blizzard announced their next expansion Mists of Pandaria and that’s when the shit hit the fan… apparently. I’ve seen it, heard it, read it in so many places. How dare Blizzard turn an April Fool’s Day Joke into “reality” (in the game world, at least)? How dare they butcher their lore even further? And yes, while butchering of the lore has certainly happened, I don’t really see them doing it here.

Pandaren have been in Warcraft’s lore since Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (released 2003). Together with the nagas (a race nobody has complained about so far ^^), the pandaren made their entry. Granted, it was only one – the brewmaster. But he was there. And he brought beer! Why is there so much hatred for this poor little soul now?

A quick look at WoWWiki’s Pandaren page* led me to a link about the “Manual of Monsters”, “source book for Warcraft The Roleplaying Game” which was published in 2003. Said book already had pandaren in it and bits of their world and their culture have been known for years.

Now, dislike the addition of pandaren and their world as much as you like. Fair enough and all that. But get your facts straight! There’s no lore butchering because it is part of the Warcraft lore.

* An interesting read if you want to know what Pandaren are about – they’re originally from Kalimdor, by the way, as opposed to the orcs which stem from Draenor.

No virtual pandas in China?

According to a post on MMO Champions, the next WoW expansion could be called “Mists of Pandaria”.

For those who don’t know, there’s the Pandaren Brewmaster in Warcraft III. So players have been curious about their possible implementation in WoW. I’d read different reasons for why they cannot be implemented and decided to hunt them down now.

1) Pandaren are Chinese but wear Japanese armour which insults China.
- There’s some truth there. WoWWiki has a detailed entry about Pandaren which also mentions the confused armour: “[...] in WC3 beta, pandaren wore samurai armor, but this was soon fixed.” You can see the two versions here.

2) China doesn’t allow the depiction (and killing) of virtual pandas.
- I don’t think that’s true. Somebody on MMO Champion mentioned “Perfect World” which apparently has Pandas. I tried to verify that but failed – until I realised that “Perfect World” as we know it in Europe and the USA is apparently “Perfect World II” in Asian countries. I looked for “Perfect World” in China then and was more successful: Here is a picture (the website is Japanese but still… panda!). Or look at this video of a panda race. Since the developers are Chinese, I doubt there’s a law that prohibits Blizzard from implementing Pandaren.

So all in all: Why not? The WoWWiki page also mentions that they have previously hinted at maybe implementing them – or at least, they didn’t say they wouldn’t. ;) On the other hand, they have also said that there are legal issues with China.

I’m curious now but doubt that we’ll hear anything about it until Blizzcon which will take place in October. Although we might get some rumours that turn out to be true just like we did before they showed us the Cataclysm expansion. ;)