Come to Gaze Upon Me, Have You?

The "Pre-Launch" for Station Exchange started yesterday. I went ahead and put up a couple things for auction. Very easy and convenient, although it is a lot more expensive than similar services. I think that if they lower the prices a little, the competition will soon be out of the EQII items business. Supposedly, the number of people wanting to move to the Exchange servers has been very high, so I expect to see more than 2 Exchange-enabled servers when the service launches for real.

There was a Producer's Letter put out not too long ago. The summary: "Hey...all that stuff you asked for in Beta...well, we don't think it's stupid and unnecessary anymore. Now give us money for our next adventure pack."

Scheduled for September.

Here's the link: http://everquest.station.sony.com/dod/

And the marketing copy:

On the surface, as the battle between Firionia Vie and Lanys T’Vyl continues to rage throughout the lands of Nektulos, an expedition of Qeynosian miners breached the barrier of Darkhollow. Only then was the first werewolf seen and the first human bitten. Now a new evil begins to emerge from the underground; far beneath the surface of Norrath. Join EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow and journey into a world of immorality and devastation, a world that has existed purely as a vast wilderness filled with intelligent predators, destruction and disease. Go forth with courage as the terror that lies deep within these grounds must not be allowed to spread to the surface – to Norrath.

EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow will have you adventuring in raw, bleak caverns and facing the most formidable monsters yet! Featuring 5 new feral predators, spectacular new underground environments and countless new missions, raids and events!

Monster Missions: Play EverQuest as you never have before and see Norrath through the eyes of some of its fearsome and powerful creatures as you step into their form to do battle against their ancient foes! Change into a creature with different abilities from your own to experience. Experience EverQuest lore first hand through the eyes of another character in Monster Missions and unlock the ability to use more powerful monsters!

Spirit Shrouds: Adventure with your friends of any levels. Spirit Shrouds will allow
you to play as a creature at any level below your own. So don the form of a lower level creature and join your friends in battle while earning experience for your normal character!

Evolving Items: Earn new items that advance as you use them, becoming more powerful over time and unlocking hidden abilities and wield intelligent items with a personality of their own!

New Missions: Battle your way through over 60 new missions.

New Creatures, New Environments and New Encounters: Over 30 unique creatures and 7 Zones, 15 Small Instances, with a re-envisioned Nektulos Forest.

New Crafting, Spells, Items and More: New items and tradeskill recipes! Also new spells and alternate advancement abilities

Spirit shrouds are obviously a variation on the EQ2 mentor system, and the monster missions sound very similar to the arena combat planned for the EQ2 expansion (changing into creatures).

The evolving items feature sounds interesting to me for two reasons. One, the "personality" aspect means that items have something to offer besides stats; if this is done right, it will decrease the incentive for users to play the number-crunching game and will increase immersion. Two, it relieves users of the burden of having to play in un-fun ways to upgrade their items. By that, I mean that EQ normally requires you to repeat actions (raids, camping, grinding, etc.) dozens or hundreds of times for you to upgrade a particular item. Often, these actions are fun the first few times but grow tedious after a while. If items grow more powerful as you play in whatever way you find enjoyable, then you can have fun and advance at the same time, which is a combination all too rare in MMOs.

Aggro Me has a good summary of the info oozing out of the Fan Faire. It sounds like the days of the "Kill n monsters" quests may be numbered (heh...groan). That is definitely a good thing.

I'm moving a character to the new Station Exchange pre-release server. I'm not going to be doing any buying or selling, but it will give me a chance to get a hands-on look at the system early on.

I've seen people talking a lot about Fate recently. It's a Diablo-like game, decent-looking, and a good deal at $20. You can play the free demo until level 6 or dungeon level 3, which is about an hour. It's single-player only. Check it out.

The other game I've played a bit of recently is Mount & Blade, which I read about on Dubious Quality. This game is unfinished, and in game development terms it is little more than a "proof of concept." What makes it appealing is that battles on horseback have never been this fun. If you end up playing the game, be sure to get into some battles with a decent-size party on your side before you put it down for good. I especially enjoyed the throwing weapons, archery, and "jousting" (using a lance while on horseback). Be sure to look in the forum for the unofficial manual, as it will make it much easier to jump into the game and get the most out of it.

Supposedly this is a fun MMORPG-style 3rd person shooter. I haven't had time to check it out yet, but I definitely will soon.

http://www.gunzonline.com/

I've seen lately that SOE has been advertising the number of quests, spells, etc. that have been added to the game since it launched. Almost all the ones I've seen are of the "kill X monsters" variety. I'm becoming increasingly pessimistic about EQ2 ever turning into a fun game.

I went to the IGN Insider home page and saw a "note from the editor" that begins thusly:

"So E3 has come and gone, now the hell what?"

Maybe saying "hell" and "damn" (as IGN often does in its reviews and previews) is hip and appeals to the pimpled demographic, but it's certainly not professional. Kind of like MMO writers who editorialize with the occasional "woot!". It reminds me of the lowest-common-denominator stuff found on MTV and laddie magazines.

Update: here's some marvelous copy from the front page of Fileplanet:

Do Wookies like Cookies?
I couldn't tell you honestly, but if one wanted a cookie I'd sure as hell give him a cookie. Welcome to FilePlanet's Star Wars Weekend, were we bring you all our best and brightest Star Wars content! From incredible mods like Galactic Conquest to demos of games like Star Wars: Republic Commando - it's time to grab your lightsaber and kick some ass. We were going to post some of those golden oldies like classic X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but sadly they wouldn't install! But there is plenty to enjoy, so get at it - and remember. Let the Wookie win.
-- ToughCookie