So, I'm going to write a little post here about this game I got sucked into - I should warn you that I don't know everything about the game (yet), but feel I have enough to write a little brief at least.

In its core, it's a solo/coop shooter with RPG elements. You have different frames which are equivalent to classes, each with their own special powers and general type of tank, support and/or damage. That's where the "generic" description ends though. You are "Tenno" - which I assume is latin for "fucking overpowered", and you carry around swords or other melee weapons on your back just in case you want to stab things as well.

The gameplay tends to vary depending on which frame you have picked, anything from straight up ranged, sniper stealth, team support to furious melee, but it doesn't restrict you really as you can equip any weapon on any frame. Now, this is where the RPG elements and "leveling" comes into play, each frame has levels from 0 to 30, as does every weapon in the game. Leveling up the frame/weapon gives you more slots to put "mods" into, essentially augmenting and customizing your weapon and frame to your liking or to your given role for the next mission.

The different combination of frames, mods and weapons imply that there's a relatively low chance of two people having the exact same build, and you can have virtually endless amounts of time planning and scheming on how to make your "perfect" character work. Then you realize you need a "perfect" character for support... and for playing with your friends... and for mission X... and mission Y... and so on.

The missions you do are varied enough in objectives to keep you on your toes, anything from straight up kill missions, assassinations of single targets, sabotage, espionage, base control, defense and survival makes the game feel relatively fresh as you alternate through the various game modes.

The "loot" for some of the longer lasting missions like survival or defense, where you face endless amounts of enemies is also done in a very nice fashion, where you *have* to make it to extraction at the end of the mission or keep the defense objectives alive, or lose all the loot (mods, materials, etc) you accumulated. Obviously the longer you play, the better the loot gets, so it requires a very nice balance between greed and safety.

The game has a F2P with premium currency for sale model, which isn't exactly my favorite, unless it's done flawlessly like in Path of Exile, and to be honest, I'm not too happy with the way they've done things here, but after playing for a while, I've come to realize it's not really too bad. You can pay premium currency to unlock frames and weapons which otherwise would've needed to be crafted through the crafting system. After playing a while, I've come to realize that this isn't a huge deal in my view, as the way to power up the individual frames comes from the mods you place in them, and these can't be bought on the market. In addition, there are better upgraded versions of frames and weapons called "Prime" which can't be bought on the market, so, you still have to do some "work" to get to the promised land.

There's also the option of doing private trades with other players, so you can essentially trade some of your loot with other players for premium currency and so on if you're so inclined to remain a free player but still have "pay" options.

So, just give the game a try - a few hours to pass the first few levels. It's good fun, and if you find that you like it, don't feel bad if you want to spend some cash to support it, go for it! When you perform the first sliding sword-kill, you *should* be hooked! :)

Feel free to use my referral link at https://warframe.com/signup?referrerId=549df5e33846320f3a0bd579

Enjoy the game, remember that it's better with friends, and have fun being a space ninja!

So, while playing Diablo 3 and the new WoW Expansions, I've kept EVE Online running as an excellent game "on the side" when I want something slightly different. The insane risk/reward system and thrill of taking your hard-earned ships into hostile areas is quite refreshing really.

I'd recommend people that aren't adverse to steep learning curves and extremely brutal "death penalties" to give the game a go, if you're slightly careful like me, I'd recommend giving the exploration route a go initially, and then progress into the slightly harsher parts of the game later on.

Another interesting thing is how the game has quite a bit of data for third party developers, so, I've made a bunch of calculations, namely how to maximize profit when it comes to industry and the Planetary Interaction. So, here's the first actual link to my "MijEveTools" project, http://eve.mijanweb.com/ 

I've hidden some of the more "interesting" features here, but give the manufacturing overview and Pi page a go, I don't think anyone else lists PI profits quite like that, which, I found to be weird...

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written something here, and wanted to attempt to write a quick intro to the new Final Fantasy game, as I’ve been spending some time with it over the last week.

The game is a re-launch from the earlier FFXIV – which was horrible, with everything revamped and to a certain extent optimized. When I played the previous game I just couldn’t bring myself to like it regardless of how much I wanted to, and I actually ended up playing FFXI for a while instead, that’s how horrible it was.

The new version is a huge step up from the previous one, although it’s still being marketed for PS3 as well as PC, and have slightly more clunky UI than regular MMOs, it’s not horribly apparent like it was in the previous version. There’s still signs of the insane things that Square likes to do, they have a Sony type mindset where they don’t want to do something simply because others are doing it, even if it makes perfect sense, and their own way is just insane. Note that this isn’t exclusive to the game, take for instance when I decided to actually pre-order the game from their official page, I actually had to navigate around for close to 45 minutes to satisfy all their requirements and update my account with all kinds of information. I’m fairly sure new accounts wouldn’t suffer these issues, but still, it’s harder to give money to someone that makes you jump through hoops to actually give them the money.

The game itself is quite pretty! The graphics are very typical Final Fantasy, and when you throw up the details to their extreme levels, it’s very hard to move away from the wonderful sunsets, lush forest and skimpy females in character creation…

The gameplay isn’t too horrible either, although I suspect some ADHD kids will find the 2.5 base global cooldown on skills to be slightly over the top. The UI isn’t 110% responsive either, so if you cast a cure, it’ll land, and you’ll see the results roughly 0.5seconds after it lands. In tense situations, this isn’t ideal obviously, but once you get used to it, it’s not too bad.

One of the primary selling points of the game is the emphasis on story, which is thoroughly underlined by having the main story arc be what unlocks most of your useful utilities. There’s also the flexibility of the job system, where you can level all the different classes/jobs on one character, and swap between them simply by swapping your main hand weapon. In theory, if you’re smacking a monster, and he’s very resistant to physical damage, you can break out a wand instead, which switches your class to Black Mage, and rain fire down on him instead. This obviously requires both of those classes leveled to a similar level to be efficient, and there’s also a skill-lock delay, so you can’t hotswap in combat… but it’s still an option!

Up to roughly level 30, I wasn’t thinking much of the dungeons and instances you do, as they seemed to be sane enough. The main story quest actually forces you to do some of these to progress, so you’ll end up in some parties whether you want to or not. The party configuration is a 4 player party, with 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 dps. I didn’t really think much of it one way or the other earlier, but after finishing the last boss fight, it struck me how different this makes this game, with the boss encounters designed around this.

Based on the last fight I did, I’m fairly confident that, this is *not* a simple game. The fight had mechanics which meant that every player had to do exactly what they needed to do, or the fight would be a wipe. In WoW, I could usually load up a sane tank and healer, and be 99.9% sure that the dungeon would be cleared without incident, but let me describe exactly what the mechanics in this fight were…

Every now and then, the boss would jump up into the air, dash down and deal damage, and at the same time chop away at the platform the fight was on. If you were in the middle of the platform when he landed, you’d die. If you were on the edge of the platform, it’d get crushed, you’d fall, and die. If you were almost at the edge of the platform, you’d “only” take 40% of your hp as damage, and you’d live on. That’s not so bad, but let’s move on to the specific party roles!

The tank actually had it quite easy in comparison, he simply had to keep agro on the boss, and avoid any charge attacks. The boss would do a line attack, where he’d knock back everyone in it, and deal roughly 60% of their max hp as damage, this is avoidable, and if someone by chance gets trapped in it, it’s very likely a wipe.

… as the healer has to conserve mana while trying to keep everyone up. There’s not a lot of different healing options, you have a basic heal, a better heal and an AE heal. The problem is that the better heal costs twice as much, but only heals for 50% more than the basic one, so if you just keep spamming the top heal, you’ll run out of mana long before the fight is even close to ending. The boss deals unavoidable AE damage to everyone just to keep you on your toes, huge hits from 25-50% to the tank at times, and obviously the huge leap where everyone drops to 40% provided they were at 100% to begin with. In addition to this you need to avoid the line attacks, and if you’re the target, you need to stop whatever you’re doing and just run. This is especially rough if you’re halfway through your heal, and you need to cancel it to run and save yourself. In a bad spot, this could actually be a wipe on its own, needing to run out of a danger zone to avoid a certain wipe. When we managed to beat the boss on my healer, I was completely out of mana and had just died, think one person had been hit by the avoidable line attack once, and I had been spamming the basic heal like crazy to make sure I had best sustained healing possible.

The DPS people should technically have it easy, but not today. In addition to needing to avoid the obvious damage, the boss would spawn a part of him that needed to be burned down on a relatively short timer, and at the same time, trap another person. Whenever one DPS would get trapped here, the other one *needs* to shift focus immediately and blow everything to get the other guy out of the trap asap, or there’s simply no chance of burning down the part in time, and it’s a wipe.

Essentially, if either player is not on their game, it’s a wipe. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen it be as obvious as this, but cutting the party size down to 4 people really makes it tougher on everyone when they implement mechanics like disabling one DPS, who then is dependent on the other DPS and so on. The challenge is also level capped, so you will be down-scaled to be level appropriate for these fights – so no use getting help from overgeared maxlevel characters here!

Now, the slightly worrying part is that if you can’t beat this fight, you’re not able to progress the storyline, which again locks out areas with quests and potentially other benefits, so, it’s probably not the best move for attracting casual players, as I’m fairly sure some people will get really discouraged when they get to that point, but it’s also refreshing to see that they actually dare to put something that’s challenging to a certain extent in a very central role.

All in all, I think there’s a place for the new FFXIV – I’m not sure what it will look like when it comes to endgame, as my preference for arena PvP makes most other endgame content seem boring – but we’ll see when that time comes!

Link to the boss fight described at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bATN5hI4fTA

I recently fell into the trap of Lord of the Rings Online as they were transferring EU ownership over to Turbine, and found that the improvements done since I last played 2 years ago were quite interesting, and made me really want to play more, so, I did!

The major changes since I last played involves first off the free to play model, you no longer need to pay to play, yay! Of course, there are some limitations to what you can do, but with a fair bit of dedication, you can actually make it to the end without paying at all.

Second off, they’ve “solofied” the Epic storyline, which means the horribly difficult group quests which you needed to get through to progress the storyline now has the option to do them solo. You then get a buff which makes you roughly as strong as a full party alone, and can have fun without worrying about others getting you killed.

Last, but not least, they’ve added Skirmishes, a new set of small instance dungeon types, where you customize the level, group-size (or solo), and the dungeon/loot scales according to your settings. The best part with this is that the rewards gained here can be used to buy gear equivalent to decent quest rewards at that given level.

A final note on Skirmishes… While running these you get to pick a Skirmish Soldier which works as your sidekick while running around inside, now, it’s possible to run all the skirmishes with all the different soldiers, and that’s pretty much what everyone says as well – but in my experience, for the QUICKEST progress through these skirmishes, always go with the Sage decked out with heavy AE, until you start running out of Power/Health and get downtime as a result (was 40+ with my characters), then switch to a Herbalist with the Power Regeneration skill.

Give Lord of the Rings Online a try, it’s free, Signup Here! Enjoy! :)

As a long-time Final Fantasy fan I’ve been looking forward to the next online game with a fair bit of enthusiasm. However, the closed beta testing I was a part of didn’t convince me at all, and for those who know me – that’s a fairly worrying statement given that it’s both an mmo and a Final Fantasy game.

I’ll go into details on the actual gameplay after I’ve had some more time to see what they have fixed since I was in the closed beta, but there’s just a fair bit of extra annoyances that really put me down here.

The whole account management system is horrible and nowhere near intuitive, when you click to get accepted into the beta and need to search through the site and go through a ton of screens to simply apply the key to your account.

Furthermore, the performance in-game was quite horrible, as various other sites have mentioned, the graphics requirements are quite simply insane for a “casual-friendly” online game. Note that that might have improved since last time I played, but seeing how the launcher alone manages to slow down my PC, eat up more CPU and make my gfx fans go more crazy than on SC2 at 2560x1600 with Ultra settings in a 4v4 Zerg Insane AI match – it’s not a good sign in terms of performance in general.

All that said, head over to http://entry.ffxiv.com to check the game out for yourself!

I recently found myself logging into my battle.net account to see the status of my SC2 Beta, and was quite surprised at the overall changes they’ve done there since last time I visited.

I think in a way, this is something that really spoils people using Blizzard products, not only do I have the available downloads of my old games there, but there’s a simple link to administer my two WoW-accounts, and also a simple link that says “click here to add a new WoW 10-day trial account!” – almost scary how easy it’d be to get started with the multiboxing again.

In terms of SC2 though, I clicked around and found that they actually have the option to download SC2 now, and just pay/activate at the launch day if needed! If you misunderstand me right here, this is almost enough incentive to actually buy SC2 on its own!

This realization comes at a time where I’ve been trying to figure out what to do in regards to Final Fantasy XIV (online), and how the ordering there will work out. In terms of mmorpgs, I’m extremely fond of being able to log in at the exact minute that the servers go online and be one of the first to explore the new server – and I’m concerned in terms of the FFXIV launch and their pre-ordering options – as I don’t really know which ones will be able to get me the game on time!

In previous online games, it has been more or less the standard for pre-orders to gain access to an early access beta, and in that sense you’re covered regarding having the software available at launch – and they also have a 3-5 day grace period where you can still play live before you actually get the retail key in the mail.

Note that this could still happen with FFXIV, having their launch date two months ahead in time, I’m just slightly concerned as the pre-orders are already being sold, and if they have such perks, they’d usually announce them.

I’m hoping Square will follow slightly with what Blizzard is doing with their account management, downloadable software and all – not to mention simplify the entire account management process in general, as anyone who played FFXI will testify that creating the account and getting things working there wasn’t as trivial as it should have been. Note that they could’ve fixed this up already, but seeing how they didn’t feel like inviting me into their beta, I don’t know!

/bitter

I’m quite happy that the launch of FFXIV is coming closer here now, as I was planning on playing some FFXI this month to get my dose of Final Fantasy sorted out, but seeing how close the launch was – I decided to pause it and just wait it out instead.

However, from the reports of the beta, it seems that there’s actually a requirement for characters to have both firstname and lastname, which makes me – well – not concerned, but it got me thinking!

To me the name in an online game is something I respect a fair bit, I don’t really mess around with funny names or silly ones, I try to maintain my identity throughout games, so that if you encounter a “Mijan” in a game, it’s a good chance that it’s actually me. I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of last name would go well with Mijan, but it seems I’m not very creative – or I’m just too used to it being “stand-alone” to actually imagine it with another name at the end…

Any suggestions? :)