(I foolishly tried to put this in the tabletop section - sorry again). Can I stick MMO stuff in here, even if it's not strictly wargaming?
Vanguard has just gone free to play
http://www.vanguardthegame.com/
A bit old school in terms of MMO, but enjoyable none-the-less.. seems to have improved a fair bit since the launch in 2007.
Quote from: spelk on August 08, 2012, 03:12:42 PM
Can I stick MMO stuff in here, even if it's not strictly wargaming?
Sure. We have several guys who play MMOs around here. Despite the name, we're not 100% wargaming :)
I wondered when this would go FreeToP.
It was released early and in a bad state years ago. But I could see the potential in it, and some of the systems were interesting like having a Diplomacy level and having to play a CCG-like card game if you wanted to do that stuff. Rather involved crafting mini-game. Huge amounts of race & class combinations with a lot of different areas and start zones.
Certainly had an EQ feel to it, albeit with a lot more .. everything. Including bugs at release. :P I suppose it's had a lot of work since then?
I'll give it a run sometime shortly, after my general gaming slump passes.
Its had some work on it, I think when Sony bought it from Sigil it was still in poor shape. Now that they're rebooting it as free to play, they've started piling on the updates. Some of the VG community are welcoming the new boost to their game. Some are very wary of what they'll do to it, in the name of monetisation.
One of the consequences of going free to play, is that they race/class combinations have been relaxed, so now any race can be any class. They consolidated the starting cities, to being one on each continent, I think. Or theres the choice of the newbie isle - which is centered around raising newbies in a more tutorial friendly less hostile way - a bit like EQ2's newbie island.
I've still not mastered the diplomacy game nor the crafting side of things, but the actual risk vs reward payoff is very much old school EQ, compared to these "care bear" MMO's we have nowadays. Creates real tension. You are punished for getting things wrong, you sometimes need others to make any progress, it's not all solo-friendly. Classes, party composition and specialisations are very important. There is a death penalty, xp cost, corpse recovery and now recently introduced a death sickness debuff. You can summon your corpse, but you forsake the percentage xp recovery also.
It's still a bit rough around the edges, but I think with this overhaul, and influx of new players, it might be a good thing for the game. Although (sweeping generalisation) free to play players tend to be a bit different personality wise to monthly subbers.
Thanks for the update on it Spelk. 8)
It was supposed to be The Next Big Thing in mmo circles. A friend and I played it for maybe a week before we returned to Warcraft ???
Quote from: Steelgrave on August 08, 2012, 11:23:38 PM
It was supposed to be The Next Big Thing in mmo circles. A friend and I played it for maybe a week before we returned to Warcraft ???
I remember being led through the demo years ago at E3.
IIRC the big selling point was the ability to combo powers off of other players. The tank would do a power and the rogue had a couple of seconds to recognize it and do a spinoff from that, then a wizard could see what he did and do something off that. It all sounded cool. No idea how it worked in practice. Like most MMOs, I think it was launched in a rough diamond state.