Author Archives: Eric Decker

WildStar and Firefly

mmo geek

“You can’t take the sky from me…”

Those simple words drum up a plethora of memories for many who consider themselves well-informed in geek culture.

The MMO Geek: Neverwinter Impressions

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Dungeons and Dragons always fascinated me as a kid. This sort of creative mentality that was designed to let you have all kinds of wondrous adventures greatly appealed to me. That said, I never had any friends who were interested in playing, and my parents wouldn’t have been thrilled with 13-year-old me hanging out with a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings who were confident in the rules. So I held off until many years later when some friends and I finally mustered up the resources, time, and understanding to give it a try. It was a lot of fun, but as someone who got roped into the role of Dungeon Master, I also found it to be a lot of work, and I lacked the time and drive to get it done regularly.

I did have a chance to try DDO, and I love that game. Great experience and storytelling. However, it’s pretty old by this point and I was looking for something more.

Enter Dungeons and Dragons: Neverwinter. I’ve been playing this game for about a week now and I must say that I am impressed. In today’s MMO Geek, I want to talk about where this game succeeds, where it fails, and any other general observations.

Character creation

I have long been reluctant to get excited about Neverwinter, and a large portion of that probably is because of the limited class choices. A big thing for me in my gaming history has always been having a bevy of classes to choose from, and that is one area that Neverwinter is lacking. I understand that eventually they hope to include far more (I think I read one estimate that placed the total at 30??), but with timeline for release or schedule to expect, I’m skeptical that we’ll get anything in a timely fashion. The current choices don’t stir up much excitement in me either: the Guardian Fighter, the Great Weapon Fighter, the Devoted Cleric, the Trickster Rogue (the class I chose), and the Control Wizard. You have far more variation in race (seven total; eight if you buy a $200 founder’s pack), so that gives a bit more customization, as well as a few background choices that add a bit of flavor to your character (where they’re from ,what deity they worship, etc.)

Overall, not bad character customization, with plenty of sliders for you to tweak your character’s look. I still find the class selection rather limited.

Tell me a story

Neverwinter’s story is fairly well done. You pick up right after the events of the opening credit sequence and are immediately thrust into the fray, fighting various undead and helping to push back the forces threatening to overwhelm the city of Neverwinter. All the quests I have done up to this point have been fairly entertaining, despite being fairly straight-forward “Kill 10 rats,” and “Bring 12 items” quests. This is partially because combat is so damn fun. The game is very much an action RPG, and I love the satisfying animations as my rogue dashes and slashes, carving up all the weak little enemies who stand in my way. The game is fully voice-acted, which also adds to the excitement of doing quests.

I’d be remiss not to mention The Foundry when talking about story. Upon hitting level 15, the Foundry puts dungeon-making tools in the players’ hands and lets them go to town on creating their own adventurers for their friends (and random strangers). While the tools are a bit complex (don’t expect to just jump into the editor and churn out 10 dungeons in a night), they really allow for a great deal of creativity while creating. I realize this features has been included in other games (City of Heroes, Star Trek Online), but as a game that is set in the DnD universe, it was bound to have some great creations. Perhaps the best quest I’ve done so far has been a player created one where you are asked to solve the mystery of a strange family history. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but if you get a chance, look up the “From the Shadows” quest line. You won’t be sorry!

Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder

Many criticized World of Warcraft’s graphics for being too cartoony, and while Neverwinter’s graphics aren’t quite as dramatic, they still have a certain style to them that I hesitate to define as realistic. That said, the look of the game is absolutely gorgeous. The scenery is crisp and varied (to some extent) and the lighting is fantastic. The various areas do a wonderful job of setting the mood for whatever little dungeon crawl it is you are about to embark upon.

Cost of living

It’s all well and good that Neverwinter is free to download and free to play. However, that comes at the hefty cost of a fairly substantial cash shop. The folks at Perfect World have made it perfectly clear that while you don’t have to spend money on their game, it certainly will make things go a TON faster. For instance, horses typically cost five gold in-game. By the time I was of an appropriate level to buy a horse (level 20), I had just barely over two gold. Alternatively, you can buy a mount off of their cash shop. This sort of idea is fairly common in F2P games nowadays. The thing that sets Perfect World and Neverwinter apart, however, is the fact that as of this moment, these items are extremely expensive. To give you an idea, if I’m not mistaken a mount costs $30. As a recent college graduate, I have a really hard time justifying that.

Again, as Perfect World has said, you are never forced to buy anything. Everything in the cash shop can be achieved simply by playing the game (albeit far more than someone who has employed the cash shop) with the exception of the keys needed to unlock the epic lockboxes you occasionally find. That said, until the prices come down, I think I’ll have a hard time plopping down the money to take advantage of any available items.

A world of adventure awaits

Despite some of the issues with the cash shop and class selection options, I still must give Neverwinter a positive recommendation. The game feels very polished and runs great, and the sense of adventure you get from completing the various missions cannot be overstated. For those of you familiar with the Neverwinter setting and with Dungeons and Dragons in general, I think you’ll love it. For those of you who have never set foot into an online game or just don’t have experience with tabletop roleplaying, I think you’ll also enjoy the world that Cryptic has carefully crafted.

Download the game, make a character, pour yourself some ale, and get adventuring. If you’d like to play a bit with my Trickster Rogue, look for me on “Eburk” on the Mindflayer shard.

Happy gaming!

The MMO Geek: MMO’s and Writing History

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I may be making the most obvious statement in the world when I say that developing an MMO requires a bit of presence from the community. Every MMO ever made most likely has at least one major fan site writing about it, and most have multiple, spanning many languages and sometimes many topics, depending on the scope. There are websites that focus on crafting, sites that focus on guides, sites that focus on pets, on fan fiction, on artwork, and the list goes on and on. Some sites choose to cover multiple games, while many big blog sites will cover a single game in great depth.

I want to focus on one particular sort of niche within these fan sites that I find particularly fascinating, and that is the creation of fan-made pieces of fan fiction.

The MMO Geek: This week in MMO’s…

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the MMO community, and as always, I try to stay abreast of as much of it as possible! I’d like to discuss a few of the big happenings that are taking place in the MMO world!

MMO Geek: A Public Service Announcement (Don’t be a jerk)

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I want to make a PSA. But first, some context.

Yesterday, while playing my Troll Rogue on World of Warcraft (my current MMO darling), I completed the “Heart of Fear” raid for the first time. Now this raid has been out for quite some time (opened October 30th, 2012), but I recently found myself capable of running it due in part to gear level, and in part to finding the confidence to sit through a potentially volatile LFR group. For those of you who don’t play WoW or aren’t familiar with the concept, LFR stands for Looking For Raid, and its purpose is to group players together at random in order to tank down easier versions of raid bosses. It’s a great way for  a casual player, such as myself, to experience content that I would otherwise never have the opportunity to see. Now, great as this may seem, there are quite a fair number of jerks and idiots who use this service without any sort of social etiquette whatsoever. Courtesy is really optional for some as they click the little LFR button.

The MMO Geek: You got your TV show in my MMO!

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The first time I read that Star Wars was being made into an MMO, I was giddy. The same went for Lord of the Rings and Age of Conan. All of these were IP’s that were popular outside of the online gaming genre, despite the fact that they most definitely influenced many game creators. For these worlds to be suddenly available for mass consumption in the form of MMOs made me so excited, as I could not wait to run around in R.E. Howard’s Hyboria, destroy filthy orcses in Middle Earth, or sample some of Tatooine’s blue milk- which, by the way, still sounds delicious to me. All these games have an established mythos, and I’ve invested time either watching or reading about all of them. It’s the dream of every little kid: experience the world (virtually, that is) that you grew up loving.

The MMO Geek: What to look forward to at PAX East

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Gaming conventions are a curious thing for me. A lot of times you cannot fully appreciate them unless you are there, taking in the sights and sounds. Gaming companies usually go all out, creating elaborate booths and props, bring in some heavy hitting developers, and hiring ridiculously hot cosplay chicks. From home, I get to just browse various news sites in the wake of it all, taking in news and marveling at all the cool stuff. That said, I still get crazy excited about these conventions, because it’s a time when we are guaranteed some big MMO news. It’s not always from publishers I’m uber interested in, but usually there’s at least one cool little snippet that piques my interest. In today’s article, let’s take a quick look at five storylines I’m interested in following this year at PAX East in Boston.

The MMO Geek: Hello there!

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Hello folks, and welcome to my new MMO Geek series of articles here on GeeksFTW! I want to thank William and Scott for affording me the opportunity to discuss all things MMO’s with you. I hope to provide thought-provoking editorials that will encourage you to join in on the conversation.

A little about myself: my name is Eric and I’m a recent graduate with a Bachelor’s in English. I’ve been playing MMOs for about nine years now, going back to when I first fell in love with EverQuest while at a friend’s house. I had always been a big nerd when it came to fantasy novels and games, and when I saw a game that afforded me the opportunity to take part in an online, persistent world, I thought it too good to be true. After convincing my parents that 15 dollars a month for an online game wasn’t outrageous, I embarked on what would become a very important hobby. It has given me the opportunity to interact with some great individuals across a plethora of games and introduced me to so many new and cool experiences such as podcasting, webcomics, and many other things that I was unaware of prior to playing online games.

My gaming history includes most major MMO’s on the market today: Star Wars: The Old Republic, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Rift, TERA, City of Heroes (obligatory moment of silence), Guild Wars one and two, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EverQuest 2, Champions Online, Vanguard Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Aion, Final Fantasy Online (I’m not good with Roman numerals) and a whole host of smaller titles and free-to-play games. I’m probably even forgetting some, but I’m guessing that illustrates my point. I love online gaming and discussing online gaming, and I hope these articles provide me with that opportunity!

To contact me with questions, comments, suggestions for articles, or anything else under the sun, please feel free to email me at ericgeek5@gmail.com.

Happy gaming to all, and I’m looking forward to the future!