ArcheAge the Disaster & An Apology to FFXIV

I have a long and tumultuous history with Final Fantasy XIV.

I played the original release way back in 2010, but found it to be lacking in a lot of areas. The questing was boring, the level progression was confusing, and I just felt no attachment to the world around me. I found it unsurprising when they shut down the entire game a little over two years later.

The relaunch came in 2013, and I have been actively playing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn  since then on both PC and PS4.

I gave Final Fantasy XIV a lot of grief when it was re-released last year. Looking back on it, I would even go so far as to say that I was overly critical.

It had a lot of problems, but they were problems that seem to follow every AAA MMORPG release.

To be fair, they seem to plague indie MMORPG's, too.

Or any MMORPG's launch, it seems.

For those of you who never got to read my initial thoughts from the second coming of XIV, here is a small taste and a link to the full article -

When FFXIV : A Realm Reborn was released last week, I decided to take advantage of my free trial to see if I could grow to love this new vision as much as I loved XI. After all, they openly admitted it was a flop and poured untold money and resources into it because they didn't want to give up on it. That's admirable, but after the experience I've had with this "new" version of XIV, I think they should have just let it die and laid it to rest next to Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes.

As someone who writes about the gaming industry, I was frustrated with the launch. As a gamer and Final Fantasy fanatic, I was downright pissed off. I couldn't comprehend how a major company like SquareEnix could botch a launch so badly. I was positive, in that moment of being a whiny bitch, that this was the absolute worst launch in gaming history.

Little did I know that on September 13th, 2014, a title would come out that not only eclipsed FFXIV's traumatic launch, but would also cement itself as one of the biggest disasters in gaming history.

History, say hello to ArcheAge.

WoW Updates - Female Orc Art and Pay to be 90 (And don't bitch about it!)

What better way to christen the new MECHABLOGZILLA sister site than with an article about the MMO that is most near and dear to me very own heart? No, I'm not talking about Ultima Online.

But I will be in a few paragraphs.


The official World of Warcraft site released pictures of the new female Orc models that will be implemented some time around the new "Warlords of Draenor" expansion. Like the previous releases, this one is both familiar enough to the characters you've grown attached to over the past ten years, while being clearly superior to the point that you don't want to play as your avatar until they upgrade her.

Assuming anyone even plays as a female Orc. Seriously, do they? Male Orcs are impressive for their huge muscles and fearsome look that gives credence to the notion that they are war mongering beast men.

But female Orcs? Gussy that lass up all you want Blizzard, no one is buying it as beautiful or intimidating. To be fair, I feel the same way about female Worgen. Male Worgens are jacked and look like fearsome werewolves, while the female variety kind of look like something your douchebag high school girlfriend would carry in her purse. Seeing these races brings to mind a quote by our president Barrack Obama. Something about lipstick on a pig, which I think was referencing the election but might have just been about Rosie O'Donnell.

Actually, she kind of looks like an 80's punk rocker, but she certainly is not Linnea Quigley in Return of the Living Dead. My advice is to NOT Google that unless you're ready for a lot of nudity and awesomeness from one of the greatest zombie movies ever made.

However, this is all just based on my own prejudice against Horde races. I'm an Alliance player, not because I like losing or having RP sex in Goldshire, but because I'd rather play an honorable underdog knight than a power hungry monster who enrolled in a free course at the Kratos School of Character Development.

RAWR RAWR VIOLENCE ANGER BLOOD BLOOD!

So my own personal racism aside, it looks really good. It retains the overall look, but you can really see the improvements they're making to the aging client. The changes are great so far, and when you combine this with the new expansion dropping later this year and the increase in subscriptions, it looks like it will be a very big year for WoW.

And that brings us to the new elephant in the room.

I saw this leaked on WoWInsider.com first, but I'm pretty sure it's making the rounds on most of the major sites. When the servers went up recently someone noticed and snagged a picture of what appears to be a new service option that lets you instantly upgrade a character to level ninety for a staggering price tag of sixty dollars.

And soon, the darkness.

Players were livid. It didn't matter that this was an apparent accident that wasn't supposed to go live yet. When "Warlords of Draenor" releases, players will be able to upgrade one character to level ninety for free and it seems like this service goes hand in hand with that. I've gone incognegro in some of the forums and listened to an overwhelmingly negative response to the service. To be honest, I kind of jumped on the fury bandwagon at first but soon found myself conflicted and hungry.

On one hand, how dare Blizzard offer up a paid service that basically renders a players time and progress pointless when they can just click click click and become an insta-hero? It's bad enough that Blizzard offers microtransactions on top of being a strictly pay to play service, and as far as my memory goes I believe they're the one of the few companies with the hearthstones to do so. You can play for fifteen dollars a month, and for just ten to twenty five more you can purchase some great pets or uber mounts. It really gives off the impression of "why work yourself to death when you just swipe a card and receive instant gratification?"

That dog won't hunt, monsignor.

The very essence of an MMORPG is the time and love you put into your character. It may be an online game, and the player base of an online game may have devolved into an arena zergfest filled with entitled assholes with inferiority complexes, but it's still an RPG. The reason to play an RPG is to build your character, go on adventures, and create a memory of living as another person in another world far from the sad existence you call your life.

It's an escape, but now we're looking for shortcuts to help escape the escape. Do players really want to just upgrade instead of experience? What about when that player upgrades to level ninety on a class he's inexperienced with, and you're running a raid with him and he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

Blizzard is running the risk of destroying all the positive attention they've been getting this year.

Once I started to think about it though, and ate some pizza, I reconsidered my stance. Yeah it does belittle the entire point of playing an online role playing game, but it won't change my life at all. In fact, if anything, it would greatly improve my lifespan as a player.

I'll tell you why. I'm going to let you in on a secret. I've been playing WoW since launch, and I don't even have one character at level cap. I did once, before Cataclysm came out, but once they raised it again and I had to drag my feet underwater for what felt like fucking forever I gave up and stopped playing. My warrior, who I've been going to war against the Horde with for years, sits at an embarrassing level 84 while day in and day out I hear the simplest idiots in gaming brag about how many level nineties they have. Rednecks, grandmas, meth addicts, douchebag college kids, you name the stereotype and I can tell you how often they dangle their superiority in WoW in front of my very unimpressed face.

The free level nineties I get from the new expansion will allow me to play the new content without devoting all of my busy time to leveling my proud warrior. Managing two game stores, a dying father, a fiancee, a violent cat, and the other trials and tribulations that always seem to pop up in my life leaves little time for hardcore gaming.

And there are WAY more people out there with rougher lives than me. Do you think parents, college students, religious snake handlers, and other like minded individuals have the time to devote to virtual characters when real life is so demanding? They shouldn't be punished for not having the same time to put into a game they love that your asshole friends who mooch off of their parents money and contribute nothing of their own to society do.

It isn't the first game to offer this kind of service, either. Even my beloved Ultima Online, now a hollow shell of its former self, offers the ability to buy an advanced character instead of, you know, earning one.

I'm going to try to reserve judgment on this service until I see how it plays out. I feel like it won't reflect me at all, and people are just looking for a reason to bitch because that's what gamers are conditioned to do now. It's really a reflection on the industry, where DLC and paid services are all the rage now. It's a sign of the times, and as long as the money is there so too will there be a market for it. I hate it, I always have, but I let go of that lie about one person making a difference a long time ago.

If you disagree with WoW's direction, you could always try FFXIV. It's a nice throwback to an old style with just enough new car smell to feel different. You could bore yourself to tears with Guild Wars 2, or try one of the upcoming titles - ESO, EQNext, Wildstar, and a plethora of Asian F2P titles that seem to come out despite the fact that no one cares.

Kind of like Michelle Rodriguez.

Keep your goddamn hands off of my sweet Cara.

The Death of War....hammer Online: Age of Reckoning

It was with a sadness in my heart that I read this morning about the closure of one of my personal favorite MMORPGs - Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. This is a disheartening development, but not an entirely unexpected one. The MMO world is starting to emulate Hollywood in the sense that they'll use you, abuse you, and bury you on a whim. If you've read any of my other MMO-centric blogs you'll become suspicious that I'm very critical of the industry as a whole.

You'd be right on the money, my friend.

Don't be mistaken though - I'm the biggest fan of the MMO genre there could possibly be. I respect it as something unique and ambitious. I had stars in my eyes and love in my heart when I was a teenager and the industry was new. Games like Ultima Online and Everquest showed me that a video game could become something more than a "one and done" single player experience. These games built worlds and relationships between strangers, and we all grew in a new era of discovery.

Fast forward fifteen years or so and the discovery is dead.

The bonds are broken.

The strangers are now enemies.

There are a number of factors you can blame the demise of the MMORPG on.

First and foremost is the player base grew up and apart. Even the worst game can become something spectacular if the players make it that way, but the golden age of gamers is over and has been replaced with this new era of tea bagging, shit talking, and cowardice behind the safety of a computer screen. The good ones have either left their virtual days behind them or barricaded themselves into their own group within these games and have become the minority. They're outnumbered by hordes of kids with their parents credit cards and a lack of maturity or civility. Call of Duty and Halo have taught them to shoot first, shoot second, shoot third and when everyone is dead maybe ask some questions. They bring that sense of territorial isolation to OUR worlds and drag us all down as a result. Some of those players grow up and develop into worthwhile human beings, while others call you a faggot or nigger for doing something as simple as not having the right gear score.

The mass amounts of MMO's released every year is the other big contributor the downfall of my favorite genre. I think there are somewhere along the lines of twenty to thirty games put out per year when you factor in F2P and P2P titles. If you count mobile games the number increases to a staggering level when you consider that when the industry was new you were lucky to have four to five different choices. The community was smaller and more devoted to each other, and the games really benefited from that. Once the flood gates were opened and "casual gamers" started invading the MMO space, they started pumping out new games monthly.

It would be so easy to criticize World of Warcraft at this point for being the ultimate villain to this world we love. A lot of people would point to WoW as the Lex Luthor of our story - ruthless, greedy, and powerful enough to do whatever they want. Games blame Blizzard for opening those flood gates, and some even fault them for ruining the industry with the now standard "fetch and kill" quest style. But, believe it or not, Blizzard and the monster it created are not the Anti-Christ of multi-massive online role playing games. You cannot fault someone for becoming successful. Blizzard never forced anyone to play, and they certainly never forced the other developers to rip them off and take the industry in a completely "copy and paste" direction.

Individuality is up to the individual, that's sort of why it's called that.

Regardless of the reasons, the industry is suffering from a lack of a good community and fresh ideas. A whole slew of games have come out recently that seek to change the way we look at MMO's. From the best selling Guild Wars 2 and radically unique Secret World to the upcoming EQNext, it feels like they're really taking a stab at fixing what we all broke.

But I present to you the argument that fresh ideas have been available all along, and we've just been stuck in a daze. It's like Street Fighter, and the big strong fighter named Cliched Design just hit us with an uber combo that made us puke and stand there with birdies circling our heads.

There have been some games that I've really enjoyed that bit the dust way too early, including ones I've mentioned on here before like Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes. They were great games and revolutionary in their own ways. There have been a lot of titles to be laid to rest in the MMORPG graveyard in the past few years, and yet we're still pumping out title after title like a goddamn Mediocrity Machine (TM).

And that brings us full circle back to Warhammer Online. As I got myself settled in at my other job, which conveniently enough is still in the gaming industry, I read that they'll be shutting down the serves in December.

That one hurt a little bit and I got the same kind of sickly feeling that I had when I heard about City of Heroes. This one is a little worse though, because as much as I liked CoH as a game, I love Warhammer as a universe. From the witch hunters to the space marines, I love everything about Warhammer. My best friend and I play Dawn of War 2 quite often, and I even bust out the original Dawn of War sometimes. I love the miniatures, although I'm way too broke to dive too deep into that aspect of the universe. Besides, I'm more of a digital kind of guy.

Obviously.

I preordered the collectors edition of Warhammer Online and, even when I sold off a huge chunk of my collection, kept it simply because it was Warhammer. I played the game for years off and on, and every time I logged in I felt like I was apart of something awesome. Aside from the stylized and darker graphic style that I adored, I felt like the core gameplay was a real shot in the arm for an industry thirsty for change.

Go back a few paragraphs and read again about the argument that we've been fed fresh ideas for years and were too blind to see it. Warhammer Online was a big push in the right direction and gave us all something new, or at least did it better than previously thought possible.

It was the first game I can remember doing public quests in, so those FATEs you do in FFXIV are nothing new. Hell, Guild Wars 2 based a majority of their game around that system.

The PVP, to me, was a major selling point, atlhough it made it difficult to convince my fiancee to play with me since she absolutely despises fighting other players. I absolutely loved the feeling of real war though, and I felt an emotional investment in destroying the agents of chaos with my witch hunter. I became an incarnate of death, with a sword in one hand, pistol in the other, and a skull painted on my face to let my enemies know that judgment was coming. The battles we had in that game will live on in my memories next to those guild battles in Ultima Online and vanilla WoW when I was a sergeant in the Stormwind army. Warhammer presented a violent and darker alternative to the kind of race wars that games like WoW presented. You really felt like you were apart of war.

As a whole, from the unique questing system, graphics, and PVP, Warhammer should have been a massive hit.

It wasn't.

It sold a lot of copies at first and was quickly praised by a lot of reviewers who found love for WAR. But that was at a time when it seemed like every MMO that came out got great reviews, sold tons of copies, and a few months later suffered a horrible player base loss and a reversal of opinion. I remember Age of Conan suffering a similar fate, and that was another title I feel should have been way bigger than it became.

So why did everyone abandon WAR? It was fun and unique, but also suffered from a lack of content and the people in charge made it clear very quickly that they weren't going to support it like they should have. There have been no real expansions for Warhammer since it's release, barely any updates or new content, and just a general lack of interest in a game from a beloved IP with all potential in the world.

Who can we blame for that one? What company could piss away such a golden opportunity with such a fantastic world to explore and expand?

Oh, yeah.

Them.

They killed the Ultima franchise, which is one of the most respected and influential RPG series in history, so why shouldn't they be the one to kill Warhammer?

I'm reading an official post on the WAR website that states the closure is due to the licensing agreement between themselves and Games Workshop ending. For those interested, it reads as such -

We here at Mythic have built an amazing relationship working with Games Workshop creating and running Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning over the last 8 years. Unfortunately, as with all licensing deals they do eventually  come to end and on December 18th, 2013 we will no longer be operating Warhammer Online. As such we will no longer be selling 3 month game time codes or have the ability to auto renew your accounts for 3 months as of September 18th, 2013. If you would like to read some additional thoughts from one of WAR’s Producer please check out http://www.warhammeronline.com/.  From all of us here at Mythic we thank you again for your dedication and support over the last five years.

A lot of people are going to say that this is just a normal closure and I'm blaming the wrong people for this. I call those people naysayers. If EA supported the company behind Warhammer Online then they would have put out more content, more expansions, fixed a lot of the linger problems that held it back, and increased the player base.

The only reason I stopped playing in the first place is because I developed a fear that the game would shut down due to lack of commitment. I was right, albeit a few years later than I originally expected.

EA is one of the most corrupt and evil entities in the gaming industry. Screw those bridges, let's burn them all down right now. From their arrogance to their shady tactics like repackaging the same sports titles and selling them at full price, EA is a devil that needs to die. They buy people up just to destroy what they've done. They pushed out Richard Garriott and took Ultima away from him, in the process turning my favorite game of all time into an uglier version of WoW with poor quests and gear progression that destroyed it's soul.

Sure, I'm bitter about that. I've never forgiven them for it, and when news like Warhammer's closure comes out I realize I'll never have to forgive them.

I'm honestly surprised that Ultima Online is still active,  much less a completely P2P title when so many others have converted to a free system. It's just a matter of time, really.

I know that Ultima will soon be dead, and EA can add another notch to it's bedpost. On this day, though, we have Warhammer to mourn.

From Leinhardt the witch hunter, I lay my pistol and blade down for the last time.

Final Fantasy XIV - Frustration Reborn

I want to like Final Fantasy XIV. I really, really do. I swear on my replica gunblade and wall of FF merchandise that I want to like this new attempt to save a supposedly hated game. I want to, I just can't. I don't blame FFXIV's myriad of problems and mediocre gameplay on any one person.

I honestly believe SquareEnix has finally just stopped giving a shit.

You can look at the past few Final Fantasy games and quite easily say that they've "lost the magic." Final Fantasy X was decent, X-2 was serviceable, XII was interesting, XIII was pretty, and XIII-2 was pointless. Now they're coming out with yet another entry into the tired FFXIII world, which not only completely goes against the origins of the once beloved series, but also stretches out a story that few people actually cared about in the first place.

Logic dictates that when you're losing popularity you start changing some things to win it back. Look at Microsoft! When they were vilified for the XBox One's policies they did a complete 180 to please the fans and save face. But SquareEnix decided the best way to win back the fans was to keep pushing their own vision, as skewed and disliked as it may be. 

Hey! Did you want that FFVII remake finally? You know, the one that has been rumored since the PS2 era that would sell about a billion copies and rake in tons of money for the company? Well too fucking bad! Instead, let's enjoy some more time with Lightning, a FF character so bland that she makes Cloud look like the Macho Man Randy Savage. 

I have not been in love with a Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy IX on PS1. That was, to me, the pinnacle of the series in terms of graphics, story, and characters you actually cared about. I actually got that from a good friend when I was younger as a gift, and I played it four days straight until I beat it. I couldn't get enough of Zidane, Garnet, Vivi and their lot, although SE has sure tried to make me hate it with that Dissidia fanservice bullshit.

Since that amazing entry into what was my favorite gaming series, I have only cared about one Final Fantasy game since then. Much like FFTactics, another stellar title, it was a huge departure from the FF we knew and loved, but it was a welcome addition and a damn legendary adventure. 

That's right, I'm talking about Final Fantasy XI.

Oh God, I can remember reading about XI every day while I salivated in anticipation for what would be the most awesome experience in the history of existence. I played Ultima Online at that point, and you all know my love for it, but I was obsessed with FFXI. An online Final Fantasy where I could adventure with my mates and have my own chocobo? 

MY OWN CHOCOBO!?!

When the day finally came I bought it and never looked back. I also bought the collectors guide, which I read any chance I could. The game was so in depth and massive that you needed a guide just to figure out where to go. It did not hold your hand through the gameplay, so you could only rely on your guide and helpful players to get you from point A to point B. Some of my best memories of the game were trying to figure out what the hell to do for my class quests, and being helped through by a group of old friends that were far better than me. When I finally got my Samurai class I felt like a damn hero.

It was an experience like no other and one that will never be replicated. But you knew that SquareEnix sure as hell would try. 

So we got the much maligned little bastard that would be called Final Fantasy XIV.

I actually played in the beta for XIV and loved it. It reminded me a lot of XI, but prettier and seemingly more casual friendly. I played the beta for hours upon hours and I think we all agreed that the game was pretty awesome.

Then something happened, and to this day I'm still not entirely sure how. When FFXIV was released, everyone seemed to turn on it. I myself just couldn't bring myself to play it anymore, even though I liked it so much that I bought the collectors edition of the game. It still sits on my shelf as a constant reminder of how a good thing can go wrong so quickly. It wasn't that bad of a game, really, and in my opinion it certainly didn't deserve the beating it took. 

After a couple of months the game was deemed so awful that they didn't even charge to play it, and eventually they completely shut it down so they could rework it into a game truly fitting of the astonishing Final Fantasy legacy.

Unfortunately, I think they were aiming for the post PS1 era legacy of mediocrity and not the inventive days of yonder.

When FFXIV : A Realm Reborn was released last week, I decided to take advantage of my free trial to see if I could grow to love this new vision as much as I loved XI. After all, they openly admitted it was a flop and poured untold money and resources into it because they didn't want to give up on it. That's admirable, but after the experience I've had with this "new" version of XIV, I think they should have just let it die and laid it to rest next to Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes.

I finally got into the pre-launch one day early, as opposed to handful of days I should have gotten as a Legacy member. Once I was finally in the game seemed to work like a charm, and I was creating and playing without any problems at all. The game itself is still rather bland, but I'll get to that in a second. My problem free experience would only last about two days, and after that it became a nightmare. I couldn't play with my buddy Josh because they actually placed restrictions on the amount of characters that could be created on certain servers to control populations, since so many people were having trouble logging in.

And why, you ask, are so many people having problems getting in? Well, unlike most games, FFXIV does not kick idle players. You could literally go to sleep and your game on and the server would never boot you, or so I've been told. if enough people log on and refuse to leave out of fear of never logging in again, it prevents others from even creating a character on said server. 

That's baffling. I for the life of me can't understand how these MMORPG companies are always so surprised by the response to their games, and never seem to have enough servers or server capacity to handle all of the players pouring in. This isn't like when Ultima Online launched and MMO's were a new experience, we've had close to twenty years to learn from our mistakes. I don't understand how SquareEnix, the mega rich corporation that they are, were unprepared for the relaunch of an MMO that they were specifically campaigning to win back everyone's faith with. 

As soon as you try to log in to the game you're already slapped in the face by the same company trying to win you back!

I finally got a character made on the Siren server after reloading the server list for nearly an hour. I get into the game to discover a very pretty world with a very uninteresting storyline and quests so cliched you'd think they just read a handbook for dummies on how to put an MMO together.

For the uninitiated, here's how questing goes in FFXIV - PC walks up to NPC, NPC talks about not trusting players, tells player to go kill 6 of something and come back. PC kills 6 of something, comes back, NPC thanks him and tells him to report to a buddy somewhere else, who then tells the PC he doesn't trust him and to go kill 6 of something and come back.

I shit you not, that has been the majority of my questing. I have not come across a single quest that did not involve killing X number of things, or interacting with an object and bringing it back. If the story behind these quests were better maybe I'd be more forgiving, but they are so pointless that you just can't bring yourself to care.

The graphics are nice, but the world and the characters seem so uninspired. It all has a very FFXI feel to it, but in the sense that they're forcing it to get that nostalgic reaction from you. It doesn't seem natural, and I definitely don't feel immersed. The only real saving grace so far has been the community. Though I can never seem to find someone to talk to, the chat feels mature and more patient than any MMO player base that I've seen in a long time. 

Despite the negatives, I find myself at my computer wanting to jump into the world and take part in more of these basic fetch quests. Why? I don't know. Maybe I want to give it a chance to open up more before I pass a full judgment. Maybe my old fanboy dedication to Final Fantasy and the great memories of XI drive me to make more of an effort. 

Either way, It doesn't matter. Instead of playing and trying to find my happy place I'm blogging about it instead, because there is yet another server error that prevents the NA shards from even showing up. My "Start' button is grayed out and I can't find anything anywhere to explain why I'm not logged in killing yet more mushroom men.

FFXIV has potential, but that potential is quickly fading into a sea of error codes and mediocre gameplay. I want to like it, I hope it gets better, and I'll keep trying to find my place in this new world. At least, I will until my free trial is up. 

The way things have been going so far, I'll be riding my chocobo into that EQNext colored sunset instead.

Theme Parks Are Dead, Long Live the Sandbox!

If you know me, congratulations!

No, seriously, if you know me, I'm not doing my job very well.

Alright, for real this time!

If you know me, you know that out of all the great games I've played in my many years as a gaming enthusiast, none have changed my life as much as Ultima Online. We had J.P. Harrod on the site a couple of months ago talking about his time with Electronic Arts and the role he played on the Ultima Online dev team, and I found him to be both humble and amazing at the same time. To work on such a legendary game that shaped an entire genre must have been a daunting task, but J.P. is a Cadillac of a man.

You should all know by now that I spent almost all of my time from age 16 to 20 braving the wilds of Sosaria in a never ending quest for adventure and coin. I had a damn good time with it, too, as a lifetime of red eyes and all night Orc-a-thons will attest to.

It's not that I love Ultima Online because it is the single greatest game of all time. I mean, it is, but I suppose the argument could also be made that it was my first MMO and I see it through the rose colored glasses. I can definitely admit that the game has lost its luster over fifteen years later. I blame that more on EA's inability to keep alive what made UO so great in the first place, along with the inevitable passing of the player base that made the world feel alive. Gamers today aren't the same class of gamers that we had in "my day," and I might get in trouble for saying that but it's my column so go play Halo and don't fornicate yourself on your way out.

You know why I loved Ultima so much? Because it was a sandbox game, and until recently it felt like that term was a four letter word.

It's obviously seven!

In its original form, Ultima Online had no quests. It had no levels. It relied upon the player to make items to sell, create adventures for themselves, and it didn't hold your hand through any of it. You made your character, picked some skills, and it dropped you right in the middle of a city and said "fuck you, make your own destiny!"

And we did. Sandbox games are designed as entirely open experiences where you can do whatever you want. Imagine Skyrim, with its skill based system and freedom to go wherever you want, but as an MMO with less story and more social interactions.

It's not that games haven't attempted to recreate the sandbox feel that Ultima had. Mortal Online, Darkfall, and even something as different as Eve Online have all labeled themselves, or been labeled by others, to be the "next UO." They may be decent games in their own right, but all of them failed miserably as the next Ultima. They were more akin to massive online arenas where players could grief each other, or in Eve Online's case, it missed the Ultima mark but still grew into a classic title on its own.

But those were your choices for sandbox games. Sure, you could go back to UO, but why bother? It wasn't the same beast anymore. Returning players will find items with stats, gear grinding, and a very lonely world that barely resembles the sacred lands of our youth.

So we hung our heads and forced ourselves into the world of the theme park MMORPG, where games like World of Warcraft satisfied the craving while leaving us hungry for something more. Apparently, back when UO and Everquest were the big two, all of the game developers decided to clone EQ and leave UO to die a lonely death as the greatest that should have been. Guided adventures became the norm in both Eastern and Western MMO's, and the success of the juggernaut that is WoW cemented the theme parks domination in this industry we all love.

Companies attempted to copy the success of WoW year after year, but always failed to live up to the gargantuan numbers that Blizzard's beast brought to the table. Still, there was success to be had, so the MMO Machine churned out clone after clone that over saturated the market and would probably kill off the entire genre eventually. Warcraft's numbers have fallen hard over the past year, and recently they admitted to losing over 600,000 subscribers in a matter of months.

Just when it looked like the industry had reached its low point in terms of both creativity and popularity, a small beacon of hope appeared somewhere in the distance. Like a heroic knight rising up to destroy the darkness that has claimed these lands, he stands on the edge of the horizon waiting for the opportunity to strike.

Kingdom of MMORPG's, meet your unlikely savior - The Sandbox!

Everything that is old is new again. While the clones fight for scraps among themselves, the sandbox MMO is ready to make its presence felt once more in a slew of new games coming soon. Richard Garriott and his UO team has reunited to bring us quite possibly a very revolutionary title called Shroud of the Avatar, while team Everquest will finally show off EQ Next this friday.

That's right, the two games that started it all are coming back to reclaim their industry, and I couldn't be more excited. I've never been a huge EQ fan, but the hype behind Next is so incredible that even I feel like an anxious kid at Christmas waiting to see what's in the damn box.

As for Lord British and his Shroud of the Avatar, well... I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I would follow that man into hell and back.

And it's not just those two vying for your attention. Eve Online is still alive and kicking very well, while upstart titles like Revival, Archeage, and Salem are going to offer a wide range of sandboxy goodness for the MMO player who is sick and tired of this theme park nonsense!

I started Blogzilla 1985 years ago as an outlet for me to bitch about MMORPG's. Back then it was called "Blogs THEY Don't Want You to Know About," and I spent most of my time waxing poetic about Warcraft, Champions Online, and Aion, just to name a few. BZ85 evolved from that simple idea, but I've never lost my love or interest for the genre that has most impacted my life as a gamer.

I'm damn proud to say that we are going to bear witness the revival of the sandbox MMO, and I'd like to take some credit for that.

Somehow.

My next mission? Get AKI involved with WWE games again.

This might take a while.

MMO Ramblings From a Veteran

Let me start this one off by reminding you guys of how I came into this wacky industry we lovingly abbreviate as MMORPGs.

I was never much of an RPG player growing up. The first game I can remember playing was at a friends house, on a pre-NES Sega system that I can't for the life of me remember the name of right now. I begged my mother to get me one, but instead she went out and got me the brand spanking new Nintendo Entertainment System.

It wasn't what I asked for, but I forgave her. Quickly. Also, yeah, I'm feeling pretty old right now.

My gaming tastes ran the spectrum from Mario to TMNT to Contra and even one of those point and click detective games that, again, I can't remember right now - possibly because I am so old. However, I never played the RPG staples of the times. I never touched Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, and to be honest I can't think of a single RPG I played during my much younger days. It wasn't until the SNES came along that I dipped into the Final Fantasy's, that awesome Mario RPG, and the like. I didn't dislike RPG's, I just preferred platformers and sports games at the time. I played a mean game of NBA Jam, let me tell you.

It was around this time period that a friend of my mother, who had also sold us our first computer in the form of a past its prime C64, filled my head with info about this game called Ultima Online. I had played the original Ultima's on that Commodore 64 he sold us and I didn't understand at the time just how influential and epic those games truly were. Ultima Online, though, sounded too good to be true. A completely open world with no levels and complete freedom? BOOMSHAKALAKA, indeed! I could be anything I wanted to be! I could be a warrior, a fisherman, or in my most random and useless personal quest ever - I became a grandmaster detective. I could tell you who opened chests and murdered other players, but not much. Still, it was pretty bad ass that you had that option. That was what UO was about - options.

Beginnings

I'm not going to go into my love for Ultima, again, but I just want to hammer home that point that my addiction to this genre started the first time I got to that starting screen while an MIDI version of the song "Stones" played in the background.

I've been as big a supporter and detractor of the industry as anyone since then. I cheered loudly for World of Warcraft when those gates open. I booed till my throat went sore when SOE turned Galaxies into the bastard child of poor decisions and uncaring greed. I've kicked and fought and screamed and laughed at the events that have shaped this business into what it is today, and make no mistake, it is thriving quite well. Just look at the influx of titles every year in the genre and you can see that we're apart of one of the most popular forms of entertainment going right now.

And that brings me to my point, one which makes me both sad and fearful for our beloved genres future as a whole -

As we grow, we can only grow apart.

Killing them NCSoftly

I decided to take some time off from the new WWE 13 game to relax and read a bit. I hadn't caught up on the news in a couple of days and for someone like me that is rare. Last I checked Megastorm Sandy was wreaking havoc on the East coast, Democrats and Republicans were still going at each others throats "for the good of the nation," and the Kardashians hadn't been burnt at a stake for Halloween.

Good for them.

Randomly surfing the web I came across an article that, as an MMO fanatic, made my stomach turn a bit. I was reminded that City of Heroes, the very first super hero persistent world and one of the longest running big time MMO's, was very much near its final days. I believe we're around one month away from City of X closing its doors and leaving many superheroes with nowhere else to go, save for two other similar yet radically different titles.

How depressing.

The Secret World - The Revolution MMORPG Fans are Ignoring

With all of the promotion that Guild Wars 2 has gotten since its release, it would be easy to overlook some of the other titles available. After all, the prospect of a top quality MMO with no monthly fee is hard to pass up. In fact, Guild Wars 2 is a must have title and a bit of an odd duck in a bloated market. It's not quite a free to play title, not a pay to play title, but some kind of strange hybrid the likes of which we haven't seen since the "Macho Warrior" Ric Hogan.

Thankfully, Guild Wars 2 stands the test of time a little better than he does. Despite what some may think by reading my previous article about GW2, not to mention the chaos it left in the community, I appreciate the game for what it is and think it is a must purchase for any MMO lover. It is a quality title that can stand up against the best pay to play titles, and the one time purchase fee means that you'll have an MMORPG to play even if you can't afford a monthly fee.
 
I decided to play Guild Wars 2 years ago when it was first announced, and in the months leading up to its release I had decided to give up MMO's altogether and make it my last buy. I was tired of all the launches, the trial months, excitement turning to boredom, and spending money on something I knew I wasn't going to stick with.

Maybe I've become bitter after spending half of my life in this genre, or maybe I had just grown tired of similar games with a fresh new skin.

Fifteen on Friday

J.P. Harrod, or "GrimmOmen" as he's known around the interwebs, is an interesting fellow. He's an artist at heart, which is something I can relate to. The only real difference between us is he was successful at it, while I toil away on DeviantArt hoping someone likes the picture I drew of Kirby after he sucked in Richter Belmont.


But J.P. found his success in the business, from his early days working with the 3DO company to his years as CG supervisor and art director at Electronic Arts. For a time he was involved with one of the most influential MMO's of all time. If you remember the old days of persistent online gaming, back when your choices were almost as limited as the American political party system, you have heard of Ultima Online. It was one of the first graphical online persistent worlds, and what it lacked in cutting edge graphics and polish it made up for in pure imagination and creativity. It was also a continuation of the groundbreaking RPG series Ultima, which has continued to influence Western RPG's to this day.


A lot of the great art found within the game can be attributed to J.P., who remains refreshingly humble about his time in the industry. I'm happy to share my time with J.P. with the sexified readers of BZ85, so let's get down to business.

It's  Fifteen on Friday - fifteen questions, one interesting person. 

MMOSite signs Shannon Young to Super Contract!

Well, there isn't any real contract, but it sort of feels super.

Yes, dear readers, I know you love reading about games you've never played and probably never will play, but I feel the need to spread the knowledge. So, I've agreed to write for MMOSite. Now you'll still see your favorite MMO articles on Blogzilla 1985, but there will be a bit of exclusivity for those guys. Two places to find me, all kinds of love to give me.

Check out MMOSite for exclusives by me, as well as first shot gaming articles before they touch the golden child, BZ85. This is just another step in the direction of taking over the entertainment world.

Death of an Industry - Or - Why Isn't Anyone Playing Guild Wars 2?

I just wrapped up my FoF interview with J.P. Harrod about his time working on the grandfather of multi-massive online role playing games (whew!), Ultima Online, and we discussed the current state of the industry. J.P. is a talented guy, but for whatever reason no longer works in the industry, and that is a shame. You would think that an industry that has gotten so stale would welcome talented minds, but I'm beginning to think that we are heading towards the very death of the genre.

Or, at the least, the death of new ideas within it.

We discussed at length the positive and negative impacts that the juggernaut World of Warcraft has brought to the table, and I found his thoughts on it to be very interesting. In the interview you'll be able to read this Friday, J.P. explains how the blame for the stagnant state of the genre doesn't fall on Blizzard or Warcraft for being successful, but on other companies for taking the easy road and just aiming for another WoW clone.

Success seen here crushing Creativity in battle.

I can agree with that. Everyone has been clamoring for a new revolution within the MMO genre, but aside from little bells and whistles here and there it seems to follow a pretty linear path. And, to be fair, that path wasn't even originally walked by Blizzard's behemoth. Everquest was as much of an influence on WoW as WoW has been for games that came after it.

Now, I never cared for EQ. In my younger days you were either EQ or UO, and I was a Garriott guy through and through. I even played his Tabula Rasa, another post-WoW game that tried to change up the formula a little bit and was shut down within two years. There was something else in there about publisher NCSoft screwing Garriott over and him winning twenty eight million from them, but we're not lawyers here at BZ85. We don't even have lawyers, which is why we're hoping Toho never sees our logo.