The First Pillar Is First–Dragon Age 2

Before the launch of SWTOR, Bioware talked a lot about their new model of four pillars of game design: Exploration, Combat, Progression, and Story. Bioware uses characters with strong motives to energize their Story pillar because characters are the heart and soul of story. Characters move mountains, ravish princesses and princes, and start wars.

What’s the heart and soul of Progression? I’d say it’s the hero’s journey–the desire to venture forth to battle, seek treasure, overcome obstacles, and become powerful and great. Everyone wants to live a hero’s life. So what about Exploration? The first pillar is the first for a reason–it’s of first importance for fantasy fiction. We often take it for granted.

Aside from the continued simplification of DA2 , which is more a matter of opinion, (I’ve been trying to come up with a good euphemism for “dumbing down” because the phrase is getting stale) setting is the main weakness in the opening chapters of Dragon Age 2.

The Bioware devs were apparently so close to their project that they didn’t write for the average Jane. I didn’t even realize until I’d played Dragon Age for a few hours that this was a city campaign. The narrator just said a short blurb about Kirkwall during the boat voyage cinematics, something like this:

Kirkwall–the city of chains. A free city, in a manner of speaking.

And some other vague historical things that I didn’t bother write down after making a new character to verify whether or not I was imagining my perception of this. Speaking of historical things, everyone has probably read Robert Howard’s fiction, for contrast.

Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars – Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.

Okay, we’re psyched to go to seek our fortunes now, right? Gather your party and set sail for the tombs. Meanwhile, I know almost nothing about Kirkwall or the Free Marches where the city of DA2 is located. It’s probably somewhere in the depths of the journal that I’m supposed to be reading but never really do.

This design, by the way, is a real weakness of Bioware’s voice-over imperative. You speak to NPC’s and go back and forth with one-liners, but this isn’t close enough to describe a world, so you get these big “info dumps” in fiction writing terminology–you read a huge essay on a tablet or something.

Guess what is considered a no-no for fantasy and sci-fi writing? Info dumps. Avoid them, because your reader gets bored. Try to weave setting into the action and dialogue instead–something MMO writers so often just don’t do. Guess what? This latter strategy doesn’t work for Bioware. Voice file sizes will go haywire. Players will get bored listening to NPC’s drone on about backstory.

And with respect to the Exploration pillar, what can you really explore in Dragon Age 2? Linear dungeons with dead side-passages that lead to trash. The city overall is really nicely designed, though–the areas are big enough and the art and architecture are beautiful.

Bioware claimed that Dragon Age is the spiritual successor of Baldur’s Gate (these classics are on sale right now by the way–buy one get one free until the end of February at Good Old Games). I admit that in DA2, I’m finally feeling this a little bit. This is a really good thing.

You’ve got the snarky party banter. You’ve got this great city where random things do seem to happen, and adventure seems to be everywhere. My point is that I wish I felt a lot more of the good vibe of a great city adventure campaign–with more attention to the “first pillar.”

Also, I greatly admire the stylish, sleek maps and interfaces in DA2–this is some brilliant artist work–but the tried-and-true realistic fantasy art romances me better. (The art in the map graphic above is my own.) I kind of have the same reaction to the new stylistic, modern-looking maps in LotRO, which I’ve gone back to playing a little bit in the past few days–as predicted.

I signed up twice today for the Guild Wars 2 beta–once for English and once for Spanish. You too can throw in your bid for the next two days with the hopes of being chosen. Visit the article on Massively.com if you need a link.

I hope GW2 is great and surprises me, but I can’t help but feel like–as with SWTOR before launch–the game is slightly overrated right now. The similar combat system as the original, combined with the desire of Arenanet to put GW2 on consoles, are also speed limiters on my enthusiasm. The WvWvW PvP sounds interesting, but it makes no sense at all to me in terms of immersion.

Kitties Just Want 2 Have Fun

Is There Anything A Popular ‘Verse Can’t Sell?

I haven’t followed Blizzard in the past, but they’re really pushing the merchandise lately. Just a week ago they unleashed World of Warcraft cups on AM/PM stores in the U.S., and this week they’ve announced WoW Monopoly.

Meanwhile, Blizzard is gearing up for the release of the Mists of Pandaria expansion some time later this year, which will bring Kung Fu pandas to WoW. I’m not one of the players accusing Blizzard of jumping the shark, but if you’re going to do it, why not ride in style on a kitchen sink, aka a pile of merchandise.

Can a popular game universe sell pretty much anything? I picked up a Sith T-Shirt at the thrift store last week for when I play SWTOR (someday soon, I hope). It’s nice, new-ish, and fashionably Sith-black.

Then I saw this snack display at the grocery today. These bright-colored little goo-globs are a little bit frightening. Crispy roast lizard or Bantha jerky would be full of protein at least and healthier for kids both young and old.

Basic Guide To Writing A Video Game Blog

My gaming is adrift right now. I’ve considered writing a “blog on hiatus” post. In the last several months, I’ve spent a lot of time leveling multiple characters to cap in Rift and to L80 in WoW. I’ve spent time in LotRO and DDO. I played the SWTOR beta and the KoA:R demo.

I’m playing Dragon Age 2 right now. The best things I can say about DA2 so far are that it looks good, it allows me to roll with a group of fierce NPC adventuresses and go girl-wild with a few of them, and it makes its predecessor, DA:Origins, seem like one of the greatest single-player RPGs in history. Maybe it is. I’m also waiting right now for the Great River zone for LotRO, which I hope will be great.

Since no one wants to read about DA2, I’m writing about game blogging, including a bit about how to do it, how to get your name out there, and different styles of writing you might try. I’ll give examples from specific game bloggers that I enjoy reading.

I’ve found blogging to be a fun and rewarding activity, but when I started, I wasn’t even thinking about blogging. I just wanted a space online to share my contributions to the LotRO community–namely my guide to dual boxing, some graphical extensions to a mouse pointer plugin, my Elven Adventuress interface, some news digests, and a collection of LotRO links.

I mainly wanted to help people out with information, which is what I still try to do here. I like collecting information and making it readable. Most MMOs nowadays make Google and Youtube into requirements to learn what they’re supposed to be doing in a game. This is unfortunate, but on the positive side, it’s great that game communities have the tools to come together and contribute to a good entertainment experience.

As far as technical aspects, at first I started with a plain HTML document and hosted it as a web page on my personal site, but I noticed game bloggers were using WordPress. When I looked into WordPress and saw that it was gloriously free, I knew that I had to use it immediately. WordPress just happens to be a “blogging” platform, so I started blogging.

You can sign up for a free blog on WordPress.com with an email address. You can also install it on your own website or on your desktop via WordPress.org. If you want the freedoms that come with your own site, GoDaddy will auto-install WP for you with no hassle, along with the necessary database, if you purchase web hosting with them. You can also use tools to write offline on your desktop for WP.

Once you’re running, click the appearance tab and find a look that suits you, learn the interface and how things work, and you’re good to go. Incorporation of graphics is trickier, and there are limitations for the free usage. I ended up hosting my own graphics so I wouldn’t have to deal with how WP handles them, which I found clunky and constricting. Maybe they will work better for you.

You might want to learn some inline CSS to handle the graphics. The free WP platform supports the “margin-right:8px;” etc, and the “float:left;” etc. commands in an inline STYLE tag. Most other custom HTML and CSS things that I know of are stripped out of the free WordPress.com platform because they are paid features.

Every game blogger has their own style and approach. It will take you some time to find yours. If you’re going to try MMO design criticism and commentary, the best bloggers pull it off with a really broad and deep knowledge of games (i.e. Ancient Gaming Noob and Keen), and/or they have industry credentials of some kind (i.e. Eric Heimburg at Elder Game).

I’ve observed that some bloggers like to talk nuts and bolts because they want it on their resume, and they would like a real job in the gaming industry. This actually works if you’ve got a gift for it. It didn’t work for me. No one was reading what I wrote. I don’t have deep, fascinating MMO experience that goes back decades, and I’m not truly that passionate about game design.

I persisted for months with my blog with no real traffic until I wrote a guide for Rift last spring that got picked up officially by Trion, and then I wrote another Rift guide, and those two guides have brought a ton of traffic to my blog–many thousands of readers. Several hundred people looked at my review of the Kingdoms of Amalur demo as well. This works fine for me. I like this kind of informational writing.

If you’re a funny, good-natured person who can fling some witty metaphors and similes, you might try more of a Biobreak style. I would personally like to see more blogs like that–where you’re writing to entertain and share some earthy gamer comraderie as much as to inform, reflect, review, or criticize.

This type of writing requires some real skill of the kind that can get you hired at a paying publication, which actually happened in the case of Biobreak. Justin Olivetti was hired last year to a job at Massively, and he’s been solid gold for them ever since.

Writing lots of criticism will interest readers, but I think you need to temper that. If you’re outgoing, ambitious, doing videos, etc. like MMO Troll, you don’t want to hate too much on a company that feeds you and could give you a job someday. No one wants to read a Debbie Downer, either. I’m not necessarily saying MMO Troll is too critical. I’m just saying.

Pure cheerleading isn’t the best approach either. MMO Gamer Chick gives us solid, entertaining writing, and she’s heavy on the graphics, which I like, but in my opinion the best parts of her blog posts are where she puts some close-to-the-bone criticism in there like with her last SWTOR post.

I do feel the good vibrations when I read a blog that’s an unceasing essay of love and admiration for a game, complete with liberal exclamation points–but that can get a little boring. Maybe sometimes that’s just another tactic for sucking up. I wouldn’t know.

It’s good to find your niche, be persistent, and do what you enjoy. If you’re enthusiastic and you have a long-term love affair with video games, that will get you far, assuming you also have some writing ability. Advertising and linking your blog socially in guilds, commenting in other peoples’ blogs (your name should have a website link), and linking in your game forum sigs will help get some recognition.

If you enable trackbacks in WordPress and link to other peoples’ blogs in discussion, you can also get some attention that way, especially if they allow the trackbacks to show up in their comments. Maybe they will link you back on their Blogroll in a best case scenario. Tag every post you write.

I can offer a few writing 101 tips aside from the usual grammar considerations like subject-verb agreement. I’ve studied writing, so I do know a little bit about it. I’ve written seven novel manuscripts over the last two years. I’ve published some short stories for money, and I actively participate in an online writers’ critique group. I’ve spent a lot of time editing.

Try to lead a blog article with a “hook”–something interesting or uplifting that grabs the reader’s attention. Hooks are an art and a science. Think back to your English class and consider tips for writing persuasive essays. Avoid fluff. People who read online don’t want to waste time.

Re-arrange sentences for the least amount of words. For example, in a paragraph above I changed “graphics are a little more tricky” to “graphics are trickier.” Try to cut unnecessary adjectives and adverbs that add nothing except your personal spin on things. Gamers can seriously, totally, and egregiously abuse adverbs and adjectives to an epic, overblown extent.

It’s also advisable to avoid weak statements like: tend to, kind of, sort of, maybe, I personally believe in my ever so humble opinion but not really, etc. Your opinion is your opinion. This is implicit, in my opinion. An exception might be where you’re criticizing a game really harshly, and you want no mistake that your opinion is just an opinion and not a fact.

IANAL, but I know that stating inaccurate negative things about a business, products, or people can potentially be bad. To some extent, we game critics can choose appreciate the ability to state our opinions as freely as we do in public venues. Games are about having fun, right? So good luck with your blogging, have fun, and happy gaming.

p.s. Thanks to Mike, who sent me an email asking about this. I’m not in the least a game blogging deity, but I did my best to sum up what I’ve learned during the last year or so.

Feel The Rift Love

Trion released a video trailer today for its big wedding feature event on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, during which the Rift MMO will try to break the record for virtual marriages in 24 hours. The trailer heaps so much love (relatively) on LGBT players that I’m left a little bit speechless.

A lot could be said. I suppose a thanks could be appropriate in light of SWTOR pulling gay and lesbian romances right before launch. Go Trion, and long live Rift. *raises a champagne glass*. Here’s the video on Youtube. Discussion at Massively.

I just want to show a still from the video here on the blog to sort of enjoy the moment and celebrate the beauty of strong Bahmi women at the same time. If you haven’t gone Bahmi, you don’t know what you’re missing. If you haven’t played Rift, you don’t know what you’re missing either. There is a newbie guide here on this blog to help you get started.

Pay Not To Fail (Or How I Ragequit DDO At Level 1/1)

Ok, I didn’t really “ragequit” DDO. I was pleasantly surprised by my re-visit to Eberron. It’s been a while, maybe since Saint’s Row 2, since a game so charmed me right out of the box (aka cable modem) with no expectations.

I wanted to comment with some feedback for Turbine, but I figured the forums were pointless, and I was told furthermore that any bold comparisons of DDO to WoW in the forums would be met with merciless derision.

I originally played DDO at launch, but there were bugs, texture problems with my hair (bad hair is bad!), and stuttering, and I quit very quickly. I was inspired to look at DDO again because of the Underdark and Forgotten Realms expansion announcement. I really want to go there.

DDO has fun dungeon gameplay and decent voiceovers. It played fairly smoothly except for some minor server issues on Thelanis, and looked great for its age. The quests were totally unlike Wow, which was refreshing. The deep and respectable D&D character system was a daunting plus.

I also liked the cool things like climbing ladders and swimming that didn’t make it into LotRO. Why not? I’d love for LotRO dungeons to be more like DDO. Trap skills for my Burglar? Yes, please.

The interface isn’t terribly attractive, but it’s surprisingly functional once you get used to it, and the store buttons seemed less conspicuous than in LotRO. I appreciated this.

I wanted to play this game and get into it, and probably convert to a subscriber down the line. Yolari was playing with me, and she was more psyched about DDO than I’ve seen her recently.

There was only one problem–they gave us a default 28 points to distribute to our stats to start the game, unless we paid $20 for the 1500 TP needed to unlock the superior 32 point builds.

After I learned this, I simply couldn’t bring myself to start a default character missing 4 points. I also couldn’t make myself, on principle, pay $20 cash to Turbine just to make my first L1 character not a failure right out of the gate. I didn’t want to oblige Yolari to pay either, if I did.

I doubt if I’m coining a new MMO term here–I’m not that brilliant, but pay not to fail is the best description for how I felt in this specific case. It got me thinking in a different way about F2P in LotRO and other games.

I mean, are we really paying to win sometimes, or are we really, deep down, paying not to be a failure? It’s something to maybe evaluate and ponder when you’re considering plunking down money for something. Of course, this concept doesn’t apply to vanity items.

I honestly can’t think offhand of how Turbine could have done this thing differently. I don’t blame their design. They had to do their thing. I had to do my thing. It’s just too bad our things couldn’t mesh.

I also felt like things were maybe too expensive for F2P. I figured $60 just to unlock all of the classes and races in the character selection and $10 for an extra character slot based on the current prices in the store for TP. This didn’t make F2P seem like a viable way to play given the apparent difficulty of earning TP in this game.

Between the store issues and no dual-boxing in DDO (no follow command), this game is scratched off of my list of candidates for what to play. I’ll be paying the $20 to buy Dragon Age 2 next, which promises passion and romance in addition to the graphic bloodbath.

I also have an interested eye on the new LotRO expansion zone on the Anduin, which may offer a fresh and different way to reach the Isengard level cap. I really enjoyed Lothlorien, which is situated in a similar position to Moria as the Great River might be to Dunland, in terms of leveling.

Further Reading:

Some good news stories turned up today, including:

A clear description of how good and creative the Kingdoms of Amalur character advancement system is with destinies.

A reassurance from CCP that World of Darkness is well on track, and that we might actually hear a release date this year (that’s how I interpreted it.) I assume they don’t mean the MMO could release this year.

Fabulous Girl Friday

Today was an unusually sexy day for MMO news. Syp at Biobreak wrote about a Guild Wars 2 editorial that discusses the revealing bikini armor in GW2.

This is a very interesting, well-researched article concerning an often-debated topic that flares up whenever a new game is released that makes good use of sexy women, sometimes overtly to sell copies as GW2 appears to be doing.

Where do I stand? Firmly in a state of inner conflict. I can say that I’m indignant about male developers using their god-powers to get off in a juvenile way in sexualizing their game, which I believe may have happened a bit in Rift.

On the other hand, selling with sex bothers me not at all in the upcoming Lollipop Chainsaw game title, which is totally over the top. It didn’t bother me in the recent movie Sucker Punch, either, which is artistic, classy, and literary.

I usually prefer Lady Aribeth style armor with full crotch protection, but I don’t begrudge other preferences. Some female players may want to dress more sexy. They should have that opportunity. Our avatars express us.

I actually joined the minor forum protest when Neverwinter Nights 2 released and it became known that the underwear in the game were these suits that looked like full-body Star Trek uniforms more than medieval skivvies. In other words–too overtly prudish.

It comes down to how it’s handled. It’s intangible. In games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout, I don’t even look twice when I strip the armor off of a she-bandit (or handsome man-bandit) that just tried to empty my brains with a spiked mace. It’s dirty realistic. I still think women game designers should be in charge of female character design, including outfits and hairstyles.

Catgirls are renowned as an idiom that sexualizes girls, but there are all kinds of catgirls in addition to the standard vapid, panty-clad drool kittens. Adventurers like the one depicted above, for example, and superheroines like Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. Sexy can happen (and be fun) without being crass.

Other sexy news today came in the form of Massively posting a video on same gender romances that Conan O’Brien created. It’s hilarious, and it’s linked below on Youtube.

It’s great that this issue is staying on the surface in the media, keeping a little bit of pressure on Bioware to bring that thang. For better or for worse, we also have last week’s public (and quite premature) Christian outrage to thank for that.

Amalur Devs Hit The Campaign Trail

The Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning release is one week away, and some news outlets (USA Today and Ripten) are reporting today that the KoA developers are attending midnight Gamestop openings in different locations around the U.S. There is also a new mini release video.

What’s crazy is Todd McFarlane’s location – Tempe, Arizona: GameStop at the Tempe Marketplace located at 2040 E. Rio Salado Pkwy, Suite 110, Tempe, AZ 85281. That happens to be my Gamestop. Well, snap. That’s a new twist in my current quandary of what game to get next. A mile is so far though without a gryphon, a portal, or a fast horse.

Last night I downloaded and tried DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online). I was pleasantly surprised. In the wake of this huge, blood in the water media frenzy over the SWTOR release (which I completely blew off), I was looking for something old-school and small community. DDO really seems to fit. I was surprised by the nice graphics quality with anti-aliasing and high resolution textures.

DDO looks better than I remember at release, and it seems more newbie-friendly. I like the apparent focus on the dungeon-delving experience, including small, soloable, scaleable dungeons where you can hire henchmen to help you. This has always been a staple of D&D. LotRO and WoW are not so much like this–you are mostly forced to group for a dungeon, and it’s a big production.

The main drawbacks of DDO so far are the F2P store, the limited ability to rest, the limited UI, and the unfriendliness to dual-boxing. There is no follow command. Your health and spell power do not regenerate. You can only rest at specific points, or use potions.

If you run into difficulty in a dungeon due to the difficult restrictions on health/mana regeneration, you’re out of luck–unless (you guessed it) you go to the store for help, which allows convenient dungeon access, unlike the in-game vendors. DDO helpfully informs you that you’ll suffer steep penalties if you try to leave a dungeon to rest up–but no worries. The store is there to help. The store is your friend and comfort in tough times.

The Case Of Turbine’s Missing MMO

I canceled my WoW accounts yesterday. I reached level 80 with a last effort and called it quits. I complained about Northrend in a previous post–the story and fun just weren’t there. I had no clue what I was doing or why. I was just wandering around helping people aimlessly.

I think it was actually the combination of lack of story and boring questing. Collect ten of those. Kill ten of these. Over and over. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I started grinding mobs to level just to reach my goal. I’ll hope leveling through WoW hasn’t killed the joy of MMO’s for me on a long term basis.

You know that feeling when you’re not playing a game? Nothing, then slowly but surely a torrent of games comes into your mind–ideas of things to play next until the dam breaks and you find something to download or you charge out to your local game store.

So far, I’ve considered the following games:

Fallen Earth — I don’t know much about it other than it went F2P, has issues, and it’s mostly painted in shades of brown and grey. Radiation, artist people! It can mutate things into being colorful. Love it. Use it. You know you want to.
Bloodrayne 2 — lots of blood and sucking. Yum. I’ve only played the demo. A vampire fix while waiting for WoD.
Baldur’s Gate 2 — (again) inspired by the recently-announced DDO Underdark expansion. Magic missiles. Fireballs. Companions that go exactly where I tell them and do exactly what I want.
Champions Online — (again) I know it won’t last. I’ll start to feel silly wearing tights.
LotRO — (again) It’s a great game, but all I need to do is go to LotROCommunity.com and read the complaints to be reminded of why I’m not playing it these days.
DDO — (try again) Underdark really pulls me, but again, it’s Turbine F2P, and I don’t like the meta-game shopping mall experience. I’d probably be paying extra for everything. This TTH article basically sums up the headaches of dealing with F2P without even telling me how I’d get a Drow nowadays. I might as well just play LotRO if I wanted to play DDO. That’s how invasive F2P is in the game for me.
Neverwinter Nights — (again) persistent worlds online are totally dead for this game these days–a pity. The SP campaign is a possibility–which would include those wonderful, full-bodied, old school-style expansions that we used to know and love before DLC took over. Expansions are really the old D&D adventure “module” concept.
SWTOR — waiting for improvements and boycotting the removal of same gender romances.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — I like these guys and loved the demo, but $60? I don’t know. That competes with SWTOR. My price point is more like $40 unless I hear raving, drooling reviews of the released product.
Dragon Age 2 — it’s down to $20 now, which makes it my top pick. There is no all-inclusive edition in sight that I know of (what I was waiting for), but neither do the DLC really interest me except for the one with Felicia Day. DDO and Fallen Earth are still tempting. Bloodrayne 2 via Good Old Games is a maybe.

Today, pondering my gaming situation, I recalled Turbine’s new MMO. What new MMO? Yes, exactly. It was announced in 2009. It had been in development for a year and half with an investment up to then of $20 million. So what happened to it? It’s been four years of development now if it’s still ticking. Is this a black hole into which LotRO’s celebrated F2P revenues have been siphoned?

Of the other console MMO’s in development at the same time as Turbine’s project, The Agency is long dead and buried, and FFXIV was such a disaster on PC that it still hasn’t been released for PS3 (fall 2012 has been mentioned recently). Meanwhile, Harry Potter MMO rumors surface in the LotRO forums every few months, but always disappear again like a great white whale. Who knows.

Why are developers so closed-lipped about their projects? Why wouldn’t Turbine want players to be looking forward to their MMO and talking about it? Maybe they don’t want to tip off the competition. CCP on the other hand has no qualms about keeping fans abreast of their World of Darkness MMO. Cheap F2P vampire MMO competition has oozed out of other companies in the meantime, but CCP’s openness has engendered my respect and appreciation as a vampire fan.

Riders Of Rohan To Light The Candles On The 2012 MMO Cake

Turbine has announced their plans for 2012 today, and it includes the next expansion–it’s Riders of Rohan for next fall. The expansion will bring mounted combat.

Some critics are speculating that Turbine is trying to counter bad press by timing the announcement now, but we were told weeks ago that we would have a map for 2012 laid out soon.

Justin Olivetti heralds the scope of the expansion as “insane” at twice the size of Moria, but Dunland/Isengard was billed as being about the size of Moria.

Could I get excited by two more Dunlands? I’m honestly not sure. I’m sitting only halfway through the first one. I actually like helping villagers just fine, but the idea of bigger, more epic battles the likes of which I’ve never seen before in an MMO could be exciting. Turbine started on this new game tech with Isengard, and it will be interesting to see what they will do with it.

Other critics are pointing a finger at the verbiage used by Kate Paiz that suggests another grind (your mount quality) in addition to legendary items and skirmish soldiers. The success of this expansion will pretty much hinge on the success of the mounted combat, so it makes sense to make it a weighty, significant system. Maybe the LI grind will be reduced a little bit. You know the store will be there to help you, of course.

Turbine also announced some coming free updates, which will include a new Great River (Anduin) region with update 6. This region will basically be a bridge between Lothlorien and Rohan. This means that we are back on the track of the Fellowship’s path (Frodo, Sam, and company boated the Anduin) instead of continuing with the Rangers. This is a very good thing for the game.

Another major feature coming soon is skirmish soldiers in the landscape. Turbine appears to be copying SWTOR, which recently implemented this full-time companion mechanic with success. I hope Turbine does something more with skirmish soldier customization though–such as new features, voice sets, armors, and weapons–something to make soldiers differentiated a little more in LotRO and seem less like cardboard.

I think Turbine needs to do something special if they want to advertise post-SWTOR by suggesting yes, we have that too–and be taken seriously. Although I have no intention of returning to LotRO, I’m still open to a possibility of logging back into the F2P-gone-wild situation at some point, and spiffing up my skirmettes could work for motivation. (The KittyKitty dual-boxing girl powers don’t need no stinkin’ skirmish soldiers, but the more the merrier.)

As far as the cake goes–i.e. the 2012 MMORPG outlook as a whole–the big titles of 2012 are starting to fall into line at this point.

We have spring releases scheduled for Tera and Secret World (see list in the right column). Blizzard announced a cancellation of Blizzcon today in order to focus on the three titles they hope to release this year, which may mean summer or early fall releases for Pandaria and Diablo 3, which would be a logical basis for the Blizzcon cancellation because Blizzard would then have nothing really left to show.

Guild Wars 2 remains a wild card in closed beta, and I’m a little bit interested in Wizardry, which should be coming to NA and EU this summer. This permadeath MMO has been a hit in Japan, and I did play the ancient original Wizardry games (Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Knights of Diamonds, and Legacy of Llylgamyn) on dinosaur Apple computers three decades ago, so there’s a small nostalgia factor.

There are also some caveats. Wizardry Online is a F2P game. This video apparently reveals the mechanic of using “cash items” to have an increased chance of avoiding permadeath (character deletion). This kind of corrupts what makes the game unique.

I don’t mind paying a fee for a game service (preferably a fair, flat fee), but I don’t like feeling tortured into using my credit card.

Further Reading:

A RoR Discussion Forum has been opened in the LotRO official forums.