As I eagerly await the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I decided to spend my time looking at some of the other new MMOs out there on the market. It’s hard to review an MMO without having some kind of context of games to compare it to. You also need to understand that these are just my opinions, and I know you’ll disagree with them. I’m going to try to be unbiased and objective, but don’t flame in the comments just because you don’t agree with me.

I held off reviewing this game until I’ve played it for a couple of months, so I hopefully have some good insight into the game.

Character Creation

Somewhat underwhelming. It’s a middle-of-the-road process where you select predefined features for different slots on your character. I’ve seen worse (Star Trek Online), I’ve seen some on par (Lord of the Rings), but I’ve seen a lot better (EVE Online, DC Universe Online, WoW, Aion). In my opinion the character creation process should teach you something about the game and the world you’re going to be playing in. EVE Online, and Aion do a good job of that. With Rift I had a hard time telling the two main factions apart, and just as much trouble telling the races apart. I was left with the question “why should I choose this faction instead of that faction”?

User Interface

I really like that you can completely customize the user interface. You can change the location of every single UI element which helped me to get much more comfortable with it because I could rearrange things to something more familiar. I think more games should allow you to do this.

Class System

I liked the class system much more than a typical MMO like WoW or LotR. The ability to blend three different roles really allows you to develop a character that plays to your style. The only downside is that it can be pretty overwhelming which choices you should make.

Gameplay

The gameplay is on par with most MMOs. The real selling point of this game is supposed to be they dynamic content with rifts opening up and spewing enemies all over the land. It was ok for the first couple of weeks, but then it turned more annoying as I was just trying to level up my character and go through quests, so the rifts kept getting in my way. In my opinion it’s not a big enough unique selling point to make the game stand out.

Even after two months of playing this game, I still don’t really understand the world and the struggle that everyone is going through. I mean… I understand what’s happening NOW with all the rifts, but it doesn’t do a good enough job of telling a story. Some games have stories to tell like LotR, WoW, and Aion while in other games you are the story like EVE Online and Star Trek Online. If a game has a story to tell, I want to experience the story without having to read a bunch of tiny text in a quest dialog window.

Conclusion

Rift is an MMO that offers only a couple unique selling points that other MMOs of it’s class don’t offer. An advanced class system along with dynamic content in the world aren’t enough to make it stand out and really be something special. It was fun to play for a couple of months, but didn’t get me hooked enough to continue playing it.

Let me know what you thought about the game. Do you agree with my review or disagree with it?

Seems like CCP has been busy… seems like they also have too much money on their hands. What happens when you have a company run, built, and dreamed of by gamers? Apparently you get CCP. Their persistent world MMO EVE Online has been a classic. Something all other MMOs should strive to be. Now they are branching out. They have been busy developing a first person shooter called Dust 514. Apparently they are wanting to release it on consoles. “Well, what’s so cool about that?” you ask. I’ll tell you. The two games (EVE and Dust 514) will exist in the same universe. Actions done in either game will effect the same universe. Dust 514 will be battles in the trenches on the planets in EVE.

It just boggles the mind and has never ever been done before. To think that a player in EVE can contract a group of Dust 514 players to go and control resources on their planet is simply incredible. There is one question though. With now 55,000 planets that you can interact with in EVE, you’re going to need to narrow that down for the FPS game. I mean EVE only has about 40,000 players at a given time playing it. If you eventually get to that same number in Dust 514, you’re going to have a lot of planets with no activity. Maybe that’s the idea though.

Way to go CCP. Keep up the good work!

Reported first at DreadGaming

So, I came across this MMO yesterday called Allods Online. I was very very skeptical. I’ve been looking for a good MMO to get into lately and the barriers have either been high-barriers to entry (EVE Online), you have to pay for it (just about any MMO out there), or bad graphics and childish gameplay (WoW). I was first impressed by the graphics for Allods. I looked at a couple of their videos on their website, and it had me intrigued. Then I saw that it was free subscriptions. Double-take! My first thought was then “they must make you pay for in-game items”. Not the case (at least as far as I can tell).

Now it was time to take a closer look into the game. It looks like it is a European game, maybe actually Russian to begin with. Ok, so now I have to look forward to bad English translations and weird gameplay that doesn’t make sense to us westerners. Whatever. I’ll try any game once.

I downloaded it, and was instantly impressed in character creation. It’s not just the same models with different skin colors (thanks SWTOR), but you actually have extreme differences in characters. One character type is three little characters. Some of them are soft and cuddly while others are giant and must smell terrible! I’m liking it so far.

Ok, now I’m into the game. It starts out with a good action sequence getting you into the game and teaching you about game mechanics. The graphics? Outstanding! And it’s running so smooth on my computer with full graphics (something even WoW struggled with). English translations are spot-on. Everything is making sense.

Now I’m past the introduction and into the real world. It’s pretty underpopulated with other human characters as expected for being primarily European based, and not very well known. However, the world is richly populated with tons of quests. The quests actually make sense and draw you into the game. They begin to teach you about the storyline, although that’s probably one of my main complaints at this point is I have no clue which side I’m on, or what that’s supposed to mean, how the sides interact. I’m kind of missing the big picture.

Anyway, here’s the site: Allods Online

Go and check it out and let me know what you think. I’m on server Tensess. My character is a sorcerer named TKFourTwoOne.

One of the biggest disconnects in video games has been the inability for a 3D model to fully interact with it’s environment. Hair never seems to follow the laws of gravity, hands and arms seem to float right through clothing. I have often been disappointed that no one has stepped forward to solve some of these basic modelling problems. It seems now that my long wait could be over. In a video released by CCP (EVE Online) they showcase a technology that solves a lot of those interaction problems. It seems this will be the technology they are going to be using when they migrate to a fully 3D modeled character (as opposed to the static character portraits they’ve used for years).

Check out the video

And read the full article here

I kept wishing during the video that she would step on her dress and trip over it. Which does present some interesting concepts on how you’re going to handle that sort of thing. What if another character steps on her dress? I was also impressed at the realistic body movements of the characters like the woman in high heels going up and down the steps. It actually looked like she was wearing high heels and that she could tip over if her heel slipped. I don’t know if that’s motion capture, but it’s better than anything I’ve seen on Madden games (some of the best motion capture modelling out there).

Can you imagine the hair styling that you can do now? No longer is your characters hair going to look like some weird plastic helmet that doesn’t move or change, but I image being able to choose straight hair, wavy hair, curly hair, and then choose the length. Then during the course of the game, you can actually choose your hair style and change it at any time. Is she going to wear her hair up today? Keep it down? Pull it back in a pony tail? Get it really fancy for some formal engagement? Have chunks of hair ripped of their scalp? You could go any number of directions.

This is my strategy for the challenge Covert Ops for the game StarCraft 2. With this strategy I was able to get 207 kills.

Cloak one ghost and send him to the left and have him nuke the far left base on top of the cliff.

Cloak one ghost and send him to the right to nuke the far right base.

Take the rest of your ghosts and ships (cloaked) and send them straight up the middle with auto-attack. Drop some turrets at the edge of the Zerg ooze. Once you’ve taken out the two detectors at the ledge, drop a nuke on the central base.

The ghost that you sent to the left should have nuked his first base by now. Bring him to the edge of the cliff to drop a nuke on the next base just at the bottom of the cliff.

The ghost that you sent to the right, move him toward the center, but keep him on the right hand wall. Move him around until you get to a group of about 4 overlords. From there, have him nuke the base that is just up and to the right a little further.

The main group that was in the center, send them around the center to the left, attacking anything in sight and dropping turrets. By the time you get around the center to where you have all those spine jobbers sitting together, drop a nuke on those.

I still had a good 20 seconds left and had ran out of nukes. 207 kills.

This is my strategy for the For the Swarm challenge for the game StarCraft 2. With this strategy you can get all three achievements (bronze, silver, gold).

General strategy: Follow the help hints that they give you as far as which units to attach which directions. Try to move your units back that are taking damage. There are only some slight strategy changes that I will indicate below.

1. Round 1 (5 lost) – don’t worry about your infestor. Keep him behind the lines in any spot. With your Ultralisks, just keep them spaced out. I had them too spaced out at first, so two of them weren’t even attacking for a while. I pulled back the ones taking damage and moved my fresh ones in to do cleanup.
2. Round 2(5 lost) – send your infestor to go up against the zealots. Use the fungal growth on the zealots as many times as you can. This will slow them down and help your roaches to finish them off. You can try to burrow the roaches as they take damage, but it’s pretty difficult.
3. Round 3 (0 lost) – again, put your infestor up against the zealots and use the fungal growth. Make sure that your flying mcjobbies focus on taking out just the carriers, and not their little fighters.

Round 3 (6 lost)

• Send your stalkers and phoenixes to the group at the top. Move the stalkers as close to the green sphere as possible. Leave the phoenixes back by the pylon. Once the fighting starts wait for the vikings to take to the ground, then direct your phoenixes to attack the battlecruiser. Continue to rotate your damaged units out of the front line.
• Send your colossi and archons to the top right group. Put the archons in front. Rotate out the damaged units and be careful because the archons go quickly once their shields are down. At one point I pull all the archons back so that the battle line gets a little closer to the colossi, then I direct the archons to attack again.
• Move the rest to the right group. Put the zealots as close to the green sphere as possible, put the templar and sentry in the middle, put the immortals directly behind. When the round starts, immediately have you sentry put up a shield. Direct the template to continue to use his storm as quickly as possible in the thickest part of the battle.

This is a walkthrough for the Strategic Command Challenge for the game StarCraft 2. With this strategy you can get all three achievements (bronze, silver, gold).

Round 1 (5 lost)

• Send your Hellions to take out the top group of enemies. Split them up into two groups of five and put one group to the sides of the supply depot. When the enemies come, attack from both sides and you’ll have less casualties.
• Send your siege tanks to take out the right group of enemies. Put him in siege mode. He’ll survive no problem.
• Send everyone else to take out the left group of enemies. Keep them in a tight group. When the fighting starts, make your sniper cloak, and have your marines use one stimpack.

Round 2 (2 lost)

• Send your Marauders to take out the top group. Use one stimpack when the fighting starts.
• Send your siege tanks to take out the left group. Put them in siege mode in a straight line blocking the path to the supply depot.
• Send everyone else to take out the right group. Use a stimpack when the fighting starts, cloak your sniper.

Round 3 (2 lost)

• Send your vikings and hellions to the top. Put the vikings as close to the enemy as you can, put the hellions right in front of the supply depot. When it starts, immediatly send your vikings to attack the air enemies. The hellions will take care of the ground enemies.
• Send your Thors to the left. Put them in a line to block the path to the supply depot. When it starts, keep an eye on the ones taking damage and move them to the back row when they turn dark orange.
• Send everyone else to the right. Put the siege tanks in a line to block the path, and put the marines and sniper in front of them (but off to the side). Once it starts, direct your siege tanks to attack the hydralisks, direct your marines to attack the roaches. Keep the healing things above the marines and put your sniper in cloak mode.

Now that you know how to maximize your coin gathering (here) you can turn your attention to maximizing your leisure. When looking at leisure, you want to analyze how much leisure you get for each grid square that the building is using, what the cost for each leisure point is, and how much money the leisure building will make for you.

Click to enlarge

There are several conclusions that can be made from this analysis

1. The more expensive a building is, the more leisure you will get per square. This means that the building is more leisure efficient and as you progress to the final stages of the game, these buildings will be key to utilizing the available space you have.
2. The more leisure efficient a building is, the higher the per leisure cost is. With the leisure costing more, you’ll need to save up a lot more money. Be sure to read how to maximize your coin gathering here.
3. If you are looking for a monetary return from your buildings, then you need to stick with Casinos. It is the only building that provides a sizable income and can actually pay for itself in 17 days (if you make sure to clean it every 2.5 hours).

Be sure to maximize your coin gathering

Learn how to use macros with Social City to automate tasks

A macro is a small program that runs on your computer that you can use to automate certain tasks. You can use a macro to simulate keystrokes on your keyboard or clicks from your mouse. I will show you how to setup a macro to gather all of your coins in Social City enabling you to maximize your coin gathering. With this strategy I am able to gather over $90,000 from a single factory in a day.

Step 1: Download and install AutoHotKey

Watch me install AutoHotKey

Step 2: Set up your factory locations

Watch me setup my factory locations

Step 3: Record your macro

Watch me record a macro

Step 4: Fine tune your macro

Watch me fine tune the macro settings

Step 5: Run your macro for the first time

Watch me run my macro for the first time

Step 6: Finish configuration and set the macro to run in a loop

Watch me finish the macro configuration