Steady's Gaming Blog

Issue 17 hit the live servers yesterday, and I have to admit that I am really impressed. Here is a nice link to the Paragon Wiki with all the details.

Issue 17 information on Paragon Wiki

I can play the game in ultra mode. I am not one of those people that play a game for the graphics. I don’t need shadows, or graphic details to enjoy a game. If you do, then ultra mode is a good thing.

Two things really stick out for me in this Issue. Finally after six years you can send money, and items to other characters. Even better, you can send these items globally, across different servers. All I can say is that it is about time.

The second thing is the change to the Vigilance Buff for Defenders. You now get a buff to you damage when the defender is on a team of three or less. Defenders were always a pain to level because they could not kill anything. This should be a solution to the problem. It is a nice fix for a class that is needed in the game, but hard to level. I know it is an MMO, and people should team together. Honestly, I do not PUG much anymore in City of Heroes because of the AE baby effect; it makes for a lot of useless players. I am not an elitist but you can no longer run a mission on a difficultly of +1 or +2, and survive. Tanking, sniping, and pulling are a thing of the past in City of Heroes. People do not have a good understanding anymore of the basic skills needed to survive. So my level 40ish defender, who has been that level forever, has a chance to make it to level 50 finally.

Badges were added to the game as well, 72 for heroes, and 36 for villains. I am not a fan of badges, but you now give five merits for each zone you collect up all the explorations badges in. That is a total 60 merits on the blue side. I do like merits, so I will be hopping around to get those.

I have to say, this looks to me like one of the best issues for City of Heroes in a long time. With Going Rogue just around the corner, and some type of end game content coming soon as well, City of Heroes is looking pretty good right now.

Warhammer online is now the most expensive MMO on the market. I was charged $224.00 this morning in monthly fees. I have received a few e-mails, this week about this problem, but had not seen any charges on my account until this morning, and I was pissed. This is my business account, so it is a very fluid account, lots of money in and out. It is now negative, with a bunch of overdraft charges. Basically I cannot conduct any business today because my account is screwed up.

I find the e-mails from Mythic, it says, call your financial institution first. So I did, the usual song and dance, not our problem, call Mythic. I do put some fault on my bank. About a year ago, I entered my credit card info in the Warhammer site twice in a row, in a five minute span. I got some funky error message the first time, so did it again. The bank flagged my card for fraud, and put a freeze on it. So my main question to my bank was how did it not get frozen this time after two charges were made, and all fifteen charges were processed. Fifteen charges for the same thing did not set off some type of fraud alert. It should be noted they wasted no time in applying those overdraft charges. Did they not find it strange that for the first time in ten years of having this account, it has an overdraft. I just did not feel like they are protecting my account like they should, they are just after the fees.

So I call Mythic, and they claim the charges have been reversed. I am not so sure, they just showed up today, you send out an e-mail yesterday saying they are all credited. They claim a delay in some financials institutions posting methods. Again sets off an alarm, in ten years of having this account, a charge normally will be pending for two days, all of these charges just showed up today, they were never pending. So I am really pissed. I am in a 36 hour holding pattern, to see if these charges are in fact reversed. I have another personal account, so I transferred some money, and will be able to weather the storm.

Here is my main rant. This is so unacceptable. Mythic should have never let this happen. They need to make sure it never happens again, and they need to start giving out some free time to anyone that this has happened too, RIGHT NOW. Something that had a $450.00 effect on my bank account, is not acceptable, EVER.

Cryptic is no better. Last month they charged my $29.99 for my $14.99 monthly fee. So I sent in a ticket, you charged me too much. First off it took them five working days to respond. Oh, we are sorry our credit card vendor made a mistake (sounds familiar). So I am credited $29.99, and charged $14.99. So it takes about 8 or 9 business days to sort out the problem.

I cancel my account for a bit. I am a MMO junkie. Champions lacks content so I allow the account to go doormat for a bit. I decide to start playing again. Go in and reactivate my account. I get an error message, cannot process at this time. Ok, the system is down, it happens. One minute later, I get an e-mail, thank you for reactivating your account. So now I am confused. Check my bank account, no charges from Champions, so I will wait a bit. No charges made over the next 24 hours, so I go in the next morning, same thing. Get an error message, and receive the same e-mail as the day before. No charge on my account, can’t log in. So I take the same wait and see approach. About two hours later, I get an alert from my bank (anytime anything is taken out of my account, e-mail alert), Champions charged me $14.99, and I can now log-in. Why did it take over 24 hours to let me back into the game? This is not a very good business practice, and I am sure it is costing them players.

So here is the main point of this rant. I will play your game if it lacks content, or if it’s not the best game out there. I will not play your game if you cannot do something as simple a bill me properly, or in a timely manner. End of story, have a nice day, off now to play World of Warcraft, and City of Heroes all day, because I am mad at Mythic and Cryptic for messing with my bank account and my game play. Figure it out people, both of your games are on the ropes, and crap like this is not helping your cause.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time playing Star Trek online. Star Trek is deeper then most MMO’s. You have to put points into your main officer, several bridge officers, and your ship. I choose as my main character, an engineer officer. Engineer officers are tanks, Tactical officers are damage, and Science officers are support. So I had earned a lot of points, but had not spent them. Currently you cannot respec your characters, so I wanted to make sure I was spending my points wisely. I was confused, if I spend points, what does it do for that power. So I when looking for information on the internet, using the good old Goggle search engine. I found a few useful sites that I wanted to share.

The first site I found was a very good site that really helped me understand how the game works.

The Engines Cannae’ Take It!

This blog is just awesome. Make sure to read the five articles, Character Basics, Ship Power Levels, Skills the Numbers, Starship Mechanics, Starship Weapon Overview, and Weapons Range. I spend a good deal of time reading these articles. They are just outstanding. The detail is amazing. BigBadB cleared up a lot of my confusion. If you are just starting out in Star Trek Online, this blog is a must read.

The second site I found was.

STO Intel

This site was more about information. I found the sections on ship equipment, away team gear, and starfleet ships very useful. Basically it helps you figure out what all that loot can do for you.

The third site is.

Star Trek Character Builder

This is a character builder. This works pretty well, I just have not figured out how to use the Bridge officers section. Not sure where or how to spend my bridge officers points, especially at lower levels.

So I just wanted to share these sites with anyone who was like me, and a bit confused about Star Trek online. I am working on a build, and will post it soon, I will be looking for some feedback.

I have become addicted to twitter. That is pretty surprising, considering I have resisted social networking for the longest. I have no friends on Facebook, and I like it that way. The only reason I have an account was so I could make a page for the Combat Engineers.

A few things on my twitter roll I found very interesting today, so I thought I would share.

First, they are making a Battlestar Galactica MMOG. My heart be still, yet another game for the sci-fi geeks. I hope this game gets off the ground, and does not make me suffer like Stargate Worlds has. Yes, I still check the Stargate page once a week in hope of news that the game is actually going to launch. It looks like Battlestar is going to be a free browser game, so it looks pretty good.

Battlestar Galactica MMOG

Second, Warwitch, Melissa Bianco, from City of Heroes is raising money for Susan G Komen. Looks like she is going to walk 60 miles over three days in October to raise money for finding a cure for breast cancer. I never like to past up a chance to promote a good causes. Below is a link to her donation page.

Donate to Susan G Komen

So that is it todays Twitter roll. I think from time to time, when I see something of interest on Twitter; I will start posting a few of them here.

There has been some news about City of Heroes, Going Rogue in the past few weeks. Of course they have let us know how much it is going to cost. It will cost $29.99 for the normal expansion and $39.99 for the collector’s addition. They released details about the next free expansion, Issue 17: Dark Mirrors and Going Rogue. The big news is the new ultra mode, a graphics update. Which honestly does not do much for me; I am not one of those graphics people that think my computer world has to look like the real world. Positron has posted a video card shopping guide on the COH forums, so check it out to see if you will be able to run ultra mode. In a nutshell, I do not play games for the graphics, but some people do, so this will be nice. Also looks like the normal expansion stuff, new powers sets, costumes, and of course new badges. What would a City of Heroes expansion be without a few new badges?

War Witch has been making the rounds with people like Top Ten Hammer, and Becketts Massive Online Gamer. I am not seeing a lot of information here. Yes, there will be two more power sets, and a new zone, you can switch sides, all well and good, but not something I am sure I want to pay for. We just went through this with Champions, unless I am getting a level cap raise, or some killer end game content, why would I pay good more for a few new zones, and powers. Yes I can switch sides, but is that worth $29.99, what am I going to do once I switch, run stuff I have already ran? City of Heroes has always been one of my favorite games, and I hope they are going to give me more then I am seeing here, because if they don’t, I am not sure if I will be Going Rogue. I don’t want to be one of those grumpy gaming bloggers, but the MMO world is getting crowded, and I have to send my kids to college soon, so I am being a bit pickier about where I spend my gaming dollars.

Finally it is time for one of the best weekends of the year. Double XP weekend starts Thrusday, March 4th until Sunday, March 7th. Also if you have an inactive account, you can play free of charge all weekend. So if you are looking for someone to run with, check out the Combat Engineers, on the Freedom, Virtue and Justice servers, or the Dark Combat Engineers on the Freedom Server, if you are playing villains.

I have been playing Champions online for a few weeks not. So far the game is fine; it needs some work, but most MMO’s out of the box need a bit of work. I also think it lacks a bit of content, but again that is not usual for a new MMO. So here are some pointers that I think will help people playing Champions.

1. Download the champion’s builder. Plan your build. Try out all your powers in the powerhouse; find someone to duel with if you must. I think all the complaining about he costs of respecs is out of line. They should keep them high; I mean you get to try out the power before you leave the powerhouse. So plan ahead.

2. Do every quest you can find, skip nothing. If you skip anything, you will run out of quests. Use the Crime computer, check out all the contacts. I missed some level 8 quests, and now at level 12 I have to go back and pick them up.

3. Make some friends, join a Supergroup (combat engineers is looking, pst @steadyc). Some of the quests with super villains, just have to be done with a team. I like the public quests, but it seems that not many like to run them. They are a nice way to fill the gap, when you run out of missions to run.

Anyone else have any pointers, post away. Have a great gaming day.

I am really on the fence this week with Champions Online. I really want to play this game. I was a big fan of the pen and paper game. It will be really cool to see the game system being used in an MMO. A few things really have me pissed off to the point where it is going to make me mad.

It all started with my 24 hour download, to get the game working. Then my first 30 minutes in the game, I did not have a curser. Have you every tried to exit a game with out a curser, it sucks. I got over that, I figured; will it is a beta, so I can live with that.

So I moved on, but some things are really starting to make me wonder about this game.
First problem is the head start that begins on Friday. I ordered my game from Direct 2 Drive, so I do not get to start early. That is lame. I know someone out there reading this is going to say “that is your fault you should have paid more attention to who you ordered it from.” I say that is a load of crap. I am the king of Beta’s, I have been in every beta I can find since Meridian 59. I have preordered a ton of games. Never once have I lost out on the early start, until now. If you do not purchase the pre-order from Gamestop, or Best Buy, you are out of luck, no early start. That is a big, fat, stinky load of crap. This is wrong on so many levels that I do not even know were to start. Why on earth would you want to give me nerd rage before I have even logged into your game. So now I am pissed, mad, and on Friday it is just going to grow in to something that is going to make me not want to play Champions Online at all.

How in the world do you expect to attract people to this game, if you exclude them from the early start, just because they did not order the game from a certain company? Do you not understand how gaming nerds are? We want to play the darn game, and now we can’t, while some other gaming nerds is getting a three day jump on us. Man this is a marketing blunder. Gaming nerds troll forums, blog, jump on our gaming community vents, and we spread the word. Champions Online is telling us where to buy our games from. Does the person in your marketing department understand what they have done? On top of that you cut off the six month and lifetime subscriptions. I am not even going to blog on that one, because that has the gaming nerds on a rampage as well. Those two blunders are going to cost you a lot of money. So on Friday morning, this gaming nerd is really going to be sad. I hope I have calmed down enough on Monday, to break out my credit card, and purchase a subscription to Champions. Right now I am not too sure if I will.

Dear Global Agenda

It is me Steadyc. Please send me a key for your closed beta this week. I cannot read any more good reviews, or watch anymore trailers. I have to play this game, please let me in.
I don’t like Elves. Every since another unnamed MMO closed their doors in February. I have been without my MMO sci-fi fix for a few months. I am having withdrawals. I tried the 12 step program, but failed. I am the leader of a pretty big gaming community, I will bring others. I cannot get in the champions beta, like breaking into Fort Knox. So please, let me in.

Ok I am off to buy one of your cool t-shirts.

Steady (Desperate gaming blogger)

As I often do, I was surfing the net, looking for info on new games, and you know just general gaming junkie stuff. I can across this very interesting article on Gamespot. It talks about how more people are playing games on-line then every before. One point that really jumped out at me was that, like the rest of the economy, the sale of retail games, was not good in 2008. However the number of people playing On-line games has risen to 87.1 million players in May of 2009, a jump of 22 percent from May of 2008. Wow this is a lot, and then I got to thinking, when is the last time I purchased a retail game that was not an MMO. You know what, it has been awhile. I do however subscribe to five or six MMO’s a month, as well as spend money in some of the free ones, like shot-online, and Cross fire, purchasing items that make the game easier to play. So I would say that 95% percent of my gaming budget goes to online games. Now do not ask me what that budget is, I think my wife reads this blog, and I do not want to ruin a good thing.

I just thought this article had a different take on the MMO world. Every game you are in these days, it seems like the sky is falling. City of Heroes is going to die out when Champions Online comes out. World of Warcraft is no longer for the hard-core gamer. It is going soft, and catering to the more casual player, which will be the death of the game. This article states that City of Heroes has had a 49 percent increase in players since May of 2008. Runescape has had a 41 percent increase. World of Warcraft saw a gain of 10 percent, and has broken the 11 million subscribers mark. I mean come on, 11 million people playing a silly game. So maybe the sky is not falling as bad as we think.

A few more points about this article need to be made. Most of these 87 million are playing free browser games; Yahoo games, GSN Games, and EA Online are getting most of these players. Still World of Warcraft has 2.2 million players logging in per day.

So why is online gaming becoming more popular.

1. Same reason more people are going to the movies. People are staying close to home, not traveling. The economy is in the tank, so people are looking for more value for their entertainment dollar. $14.99 a month for an MMO will buy you a lot of entertainment. Spend one hour in the World of Warcraft trade chat, and you will think you are watching an R-rated movie some where. MMO’s are just a good cheap form of entertainment. Some of these on-line games are free, so of course more people are going to start playing them.

2. They do not stay the same. MMO’s are always adding new content to the game. They are changing all the time. Look at City of Heroes five years ago, and look at it today. It is not even close to the same game it was then. So people feel that they are getting more value. Lets face it; you can run all the maps in a game like Call of Duty, then what, you wait for the next version of the game.

3. MMO’s are catering more to the casual gamer. I know that a lot of World of Warcrafters are not happy with some of the new changes. You will be able to get a mount earlier, and cheaper. Some of the Tier 9, really nice gear will be able to be purchased with badges from some of the heroic instances. I say, thank you. I avoided WOW, for a long time. One of the reasons was that that high end raiding community of WOW needs to get a life. I mean really it is just a stupid piece of gear. I can’t even tell you how many times I was ran out of raid, because I did not have the right gear, by some snotty gear hound running the darn raid. I am a good gamer, I understand how the game works, stupid to kick me out because of gear, or I have never been in this raid before. Also, is it really necessary for me to run all over the place for 30 levels, and then still not have enough gold to buy a mount. Don’t you think more people will play the game, if they can get a mount at level 20, and be able to afford it. So I like the changes most MMO’s are making to meet the needs of the casual gamer, even though I am as hard core (50 – 60 hours a week) as they come, I like to see people playing the games, and having fun.

So anyway I just found this article interesting, and had to voice my opinion. I hope the online gaming numbers continue to grow. I have linked to the articles on Gamespot below, take a look at them I you like.

87.1 Million Gamers
MMO’s revenue 2008

Global Agenda is the next MMO that is on my like to play MMO list. It looks like it might be a bit like Tabula Rasa, which I still miss (please bring it back). It got great reviews at the E3, which is really not the norm for a new MMO. The buzz word I keep hearing is, polished. Now that would be nice, a polished MMO, right out of the box. It has been getting a lot of talk in the small community that I have. I really need something to fill my sci-fi itch, and hopefully this will be the game to scratch that itch. I am not an EVE player (like watching paint dry), nor I am I thrilled about Star Trek online(I am anti-Crytic).

I have applied for the Beta, which I really do not do very often. I would really like to take a look at this game. So if one of you Global Agenda devs happen to read this, please let me in………

You can register for the beta here. Keep an eye on this game, I have a feeling it is going to very good.