I started my Friday night excited to try TERA out. First smart thing they did was limit you to ONE character per server – out of two servers. This way people played the game instead of trying out all the classes to see what they were going to play in 3 months…and actually made them advance to test the game. I was disappointed when I got into the game that it had no bug reporting tools…just an email address to send reports. I think ease of reporting should be a beta test’s #1 concern. So I basically opened up an email window and wrote down things I found wrong and my opinions and they got it all at once today in one big grouping. I hardly found any bugs at all! No crashing either.

Lets start with some of the highlights: The graphics are beautiful, characters are good looking, outfits are skimpy (not that that is always good). They added a bunch of really nice features that many MMOs dont have off the bat. You can dye your armor…you can pick out a favorite armor look and remodel ugly armor to look like your favorite with the new stats.

All mining and herb nodes can be harvested by your entire group at the same time using the person with the highest skill to determine what you all get. You can gamble with your craftables too! Stick 5 in a box and try your luck at doubling….then tripling, and beyond…but you might lose it all!
Don’t like battlegrounds or dueling…how about creating a Deathmatch of 3 v 3 or 5 v 5 – a free for all battle wherever you want in the world…and then placing bets on the winners! Anyone can walk by and join too if you open it up.

Some armor and weapons can be enhanced several times as in +1 +4 +7 like some MMOs let you…of course it can fail but it lets you be able to collect and create some nice stuff. I didn’t get into enhancing or crafting yet. Other things they have are an achievement system, guild banks (i know right, guild banks from day one…how odd) and they will have guild housing eventually. I heard there is a placeholder in existence already.

The starter area for Tera was not very good. Let me explain. I just came from Star Wars: The Old Republic where I didn’t have to read any quests…they were all read to me, so I am a bit spoiled from that. I had to read all the quests now which I found to be boring. I didn’t get engaged in the story at all and quickly found myself skipping reading quests except for the key parts. This isn’t a good thing. They need an opener that makes you want to dig into the lore.

Second thing is they made the starter area too easy. This is an action game, so people need to learn to get out of the way when something is attacking. There are no dice rolls to see if something hits or dodges. But the mobs are so slow and weak in the starter zone that it made it not so fun. A tree attacking every 10 seconds giving you way too much time to get out of the way and if they do hit you, it is for hardly any damage (see above screenshot for the combat log). I know people need to learn – but this was too simple. Mobs also live longer than in most games so you throw your fireball at them 10-15 times till they die and none of them are aggressive to you the whole time. Risk in games make them more fun and the starter area offered no risk. First time I died was at level 17 when attacking a higher level boss out in the world with another person and I died at the last possible second. How many games have you played that it took that long for your first death? If they add more risk, the starter area can be fun.

After you get out of the starter area and to the main city and onto the next area (and get your first horse for freeeeee), things begin to pick up on the fun factor. There are packs of mobs, but not the boring 2 or 3 standing still doing nothing but waiting to be killed. The groups wander around and patrol. It may be a single mob, it may be a pack of 3 or 7 or 12. Mobs will dodge back or side to side…charge you, knock you down, run away and other neato stuff.

The combat is pure FUN. No using tab to pick a target… just walk up or aim your recticle and swing or shoot. If you swing and there are 10 things right in front of you – you will hit them all. Take a few whacks and dodge out of the way quick and rush back in from behind. Ranged classes can take a leap backward if things get too close. Run around a pack of mobs to get them more clustered together and then charge in.

You do have a hotbar for skills but you cant click them while fighting. It’s all keystrokes and mouse clicks. I am a clicker by nature but have gotten use to action games like Dragon Nest, Vindictus, and Hellgate. People that are clickers can play these games…you might need a new mouse though. That is what saved me. I bought a Razer Naga Gaming Mouse which has 12 number buttons on the side to press with your thumb. I LOVE it.

As you gain new skills, some can be chained together but you don’t have to activate them with your buttons, you can use the space bar for many of them. EXAMPLE: I have a nasty opener attack on my warrior that takes a bunch of swings at a mob…by the time i’m done they will probably attack back so I would hit my next button to jump over them and attack from behind, but I don’t have to find that button because the dodge and jump are chained to my opener attack, and on the screen a little note appears to hit the spacebar to activate X. After jumping there is another skill that chains to my dodge, to twirl around low to the ground if I hit the spacebar. I don’t have to though and it gives you a few seconds to activate it. Same with a retaliate attack…if I get knocked down, I have a skill to spin attack when I get back up. I don’t have to keybind that at all…the game lets me know to hit the spacebar to active that skill. At level 17 I use my left and right mouse buttons (simple attack and the other my flip dodge) and 2 or 3 number buttons on my mouse. I have other skills mapped but I don’t use them often or not in combat.

Over the weekend I played a Sorcerer to level 12 or 13 and a warrior to level 17. I had the most fun on the warrior flipping, slicing and dicing. Character creation is pretty good. They have quite a few presets to start from, then you can choose hair style and color, face and skin color, face details like eye color and makeup/tattoos, then you can fine tune your eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. No height, thickness, or breast sliders.

So what started off as me not really enjoying the game eventually turned out to be fun. If they increase the fun factor by adding some challenge to the starter area and engage people with the quests a bit more, I think it will really grab people and be a nice addition to the large list of MMOs. Come back in 2 weeks for the second closed beta update!

I’m still playing League Of Legends just about every day. For playing the same map over and over, its still loads of fun. I have since gotten into actually PvPing with some people. PvP is much easier to handle if you are talking to a partner (usually my son) or your whole team is on skype. They have since increased the variety of bots that you can fight against and improved their AI which was a great thing, you are now matched against 5 random champions from a pool of 40 instead of 12. Also – people are under the impression that LOL is a PVP game only. This is far from the truth…you can play LOL purely against the computer with friends or strangers and have tons of fun without them calling you a noob. Its great to pop in and out of without trying to find someone your level or travel 20 minutes to meet up with them like other games.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is sitting and rotting. I havent really played since I posted the review. I cancelled my subscription on the 18th and as soon as I did, I was locked out of my account, which should have stayed open for another 2 days. I wasn’t very happy about that and I think that just made me not want to play more. I re-subbed cause my friends wanted me to play with them, but I have yet to get on and meet up with anyone.

Skyrim – I did continue to play this until SWTOR took me away from it. I think I am up to 190 hours and still not nearly done. I have popped in and done a quest or two now and then – still a great game. In the past few days, Steam/Bethesda have released the Construction Kit and a new texture pack for people with high end computers. I took a peek at the Kit and it was confusing I remember tweaking and creating areas in Oblivion and it was easy. I guess I’m going to have to look at the instructions! *GASP* There are already tons of mods to add to Skyrim on Steam for people to check out.

Hellgate and Dragon Nest – Still great games, but I have been game hopping a lot… Dragon Nest PvP is kinda fun – I was actually doing good. I really miss these action type MMOs. Tab target and clicking hotbars is just ruining my fun in SWTOR. Which brings me to the next reviewed game…. TERA.

I have gotten my invite for the TERA closed beta!! I downloaded it on Monday – which took over 24 hours. Many people were saying they were getting 300 kb/sec minimum. I was getting 50 to 200 Kb/s with my Verizon DSL connection which they say is a 3MB/s speed connection. I dont think I ever get over 250 kb/sec with them no matter what I download, even torents. This has prompted me to start changing my email in all my game and billing accounts to my domains so I can dump Verizon and grab Comcast. Not that Im going to be any happier with the customer service but at least it will be faster. Verizon is HORRIBLE with CS. Totally irritating trying to deal with people that are not even in this country telling me things that are untrue and have no clue about fixing your problem beyond reading a script from a book. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

TERA closed beta starts this Friday, Feb 10th, so I will be making some posts after each test for the next few months. It is set to release May 1st and hopefully not be shut down by NCSoft’s court case against them. Above is a picture of me from last night when, for some reason, the server was left open for a few minutes. I got to mess with the character creator, which isnt too bad, and go kill a few simple creatures. YAY for ACTION MMOs!

All in all, it is just another RPG MMO with leveling and killing stuff for quests. What makes it special is that every quest has full two-sided voice conversations, which adds something special. You see each other’s faces while talking and the characters have emotional facial expression and body movement for what they are saying and how they react to your answers. Each time you are required to respond, you pick from 3 answers, very similar to Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Some answers are funny, some serious, some mean…. The answer for most quests will not effect what quest you get or what you have to do but those answers will change how your companion feels towards you. Now and then there will be answers which effect your light or darkside reputation and some really will change the direction of the quest and your path through the game. I am enjoying being a blunt good guy…watch video below.

There are 4 starting areas, two for light two for dark with 2 of each class sharing a starting area. The storylines are well done and are basically continuous through the game. Each class has its own unique storyline which takes you through each of the planet areas. While most of the side quests are the same for the classes, your class will change the dialog a bit. If you like to complete all quests in an area, you will be able to skip some planets which will leave fresh material for your alts but you will still have to go to those planets to do a few quests that your storyline needs you to do there. Nice to see they put in enough quests and areas to let you choose incase you hate questing somewhere.

Combat is one thing I am not in love with. After going through 2011 playing many action based non-targeting MMOS (Hellgate, Vindictus, Dragon Nest) it is hard to come back to a tab-targeting based game. I was loving the 5 to 8 button hotbars or not using hotbars at all. But SWTOR has decided that is what people want. So I now have 34 or more buttons to push and remember what they do. I’m not quite sure why these companies think this is fun. Switching to an alt character is hard if you didn’t play them for a while because you sit there and try and remember what these new 34 buttons do.

My next complaint is the layout of the mobs. Its almost always packs of 3 things standing around, maybe one paces back and forth a tiny bit. If it is a harder mob, there might be just one. But the game is just start combat, kill a pack, stop and heal, move to the next pack, start combat, kill, heal. Don’t always have to heal, but you may have to wait for power, force, cooldown, or reload. It is way too much stop and go and not enough non-stop combat fun. Play one of the above games I mentioned and you will see what I mean by non-stop fun.

The Companion system is a nice thing. You get 5 + 1 companions you can use, picking up 1 here and there as the game progresses. They are a nice way to compensate for an area you are weak in, so if you are tanky, you might want a healer/DPS, or if you are DPS, you might want healing, or something to tank for you. Companions can also be sent off to sell your grey items for you while questing (Like Torchlight) and they can also go on gathering missions and they are the ones that craft items for you. There are a few crafting materials that can only be gotten from sending out your companion. I kinda don’t like this feature as it makes it very hard to get something you want quickly if you even have the skill to do it.

Next gripe: Travel! The cities in the game are needlessly HUGE. Its nice looking, but 50 foot or more ceilings….huge long hallways and rooms…maybe they are planning ahead for very tall aliens in the future. This design makes things very far away from each other on foot. They do let you use a speeder but you can’t use one in space ports or in some buildings and both of those are rather large usually. And to top it off, to get to another location where a friend is, you have to run through your current town to the spaceport, run through the spaceport to your classes ship hanger, run through the hanger to your ship, get in your ship, run through your ship to the Nav station and fly to the planet. THEN run back out through your ship and exit, land in an orbiting station, run through your ship hanger to an elevator, down, then run through the orbiting station to the shuttle, take the shuttle to the planet, run through the shuttle bay to an elevator, down, run through the next hallway out your class exit port and now you have to run through that space port to get outside and THEN you can use your quick-travel item (if you have visited the place you need to go) or hop on your speeder. Absolutely huge waste of time and totally useless traveling. One additional thing to add to that time are the loading screens when you change zones….UGGGGHHHHH – go to the bathroom and go get a snack.

The game released with a few bugs that probably shouldn’t have been in the release, I’ve sent them about 15 bug reports ranging from receiving in-game emails from quest people I let die, to strange graphic glitches, or quests that won’t let me abandon them. Some of the bugs I can see slipping in cause they would have needed many people to discover like guild chat issues.

So, to wrap it up, would I recommend Star Wars: The Old Republic?? I guess I would, but if you have MMO burnout from WoW or Rift, this will not be any different for you. It feels like a single player RPG with co-op ability. It has a bunch of well done storyline quests and isn’t a huge wall of text to read for each quest…you actually don’t read anything except the responses you can give and even they are tiny one sentence summaries of what you will actually say. One last point is the population…when you are in major towns, you feel very alone, with mostly NPCs and a few players here and there…maybe. I think they went too far splitting up the servers, but maybe they had to. So – BUY if you want a new game and are not feeling MMO burnout. Don’t get it if you are burnt out…play Skyrim instead.

Quick rundown: The graphics are a bit better than Oblivion – very realistic. The framerate is great on the high setting but I do get hit with nasty lag after an hour to 3 hours of play. Not sure what triggers it but you need to restart the game to fix. I’m sure there will be a patch for this soon. The sounds are awesome, the music fits perfect, the world is HUGE, and the voice acting isn’t bad.

Skyrim is an open sandbox type world. You can go to 99% of the areas without having to unlock them or being told to go there. You can start questing anywhere or not do any quests at all. To some, this makes Skyrim hard to get use to. People who have just played MMOs like World of Warcraft but have never played an Elder Scrolls game might feel totally lost because they aren’t being pushed and led around the world in a linear fashion. Those people need to give it a chance…it is fun!

Now the details: The NPC interaction is very complex. They know what you have done in the past, they know if you look into their pockets, they know if you run right into them. Their behavior will change after you tell them something or give them something. They will make random comments as you run around with them. Then there is Lydia.

Everyone gets to know Lydia and come to love her. She is a follower you gain very early in the game who you just can’t live without…at least I don’t like going without her. The only frustrating part is her pathing ability. Pathing isn’t nearly as bad as most games and the terrain of Skyrim is not very simple but it can cause a bit of trouble for our dear AI friends. Followers help you fight and can carry stuff for you. You can outfit them and even have them hold a torch for you. They will make random comments now and then depending what you see and are near and even jump right in front of your arrows or spells…which can kill them. (So save often, you don’t want to lose her!) Many people are wondering who does the voice acting for Lydia – my guess is Colleen Delany.

The world itself is huge and immersive. As you explore your compass will inform you that there is a structure nearby that you might not have discovered yet. This tends to make you forget about your questing and put on your explorer cap…which then leads to dungeon delving, which leads to full bags of loot which makes you go home and sell and here you never made it to your initial goal. Even after 140 hours of game play, I still hadn’t finished a main quest line because I was too busy doing side quests and going into places I would find. Oooo a butterfly….

There is loads of lore to go along with the game play. 300+ books scattered around the world are not just random fiction. They all seem to tie into a quest you will pick up later or just a location you stumble upon. So read them! They may even help you get through a tricky door. If you are like me – you will want to collect every book that exists! You may even get a skill gain or quest from reading one.

Like I mentioned above with collecting books, packrats can also collect plants and fungus, animal and insect parts, hides and ore, and wooden ladles! These items let you mix potions or make your own armor. Add in the enchanting and smithing skill and your crafted armor can be better than anything you will find in the game. Of course you will need to buy a house to store all your treasures in and put them on display. Maybe even get married so there is someone there when you come home.

This is a definite BUY recommendation. People are paying $60 for games that only have 4 hours of content. Shame on you! At 150 hours, I don’t think I’m half way done. If you are an average gamer, Skyrim will last you 4 or more months before you consider selling it used. But I would recommend against buying the Xbox or PS3 versions as they don’t give you the selection of player made Mods or the construction kit that lets you make your own areas, tweak skins and hair or even redecorate your house or place a house somewhere in the world you want! The PC version is the way to go. Grab it at Amazon

What is League of Legends? It is a PvP action RTS. Not like Starcraft where you command many units. You control one champion who works with others to win a match. It is just like Defense of the Ancients from Warcraft 3, which I have never played. Two even number teams, up to 5 vs 5, fighting their way to the other side through computer generated minions and turrets, defeating them, chipping away at the opposing teams defenses, to try and take control of the field by destroying the opposing team’s nexus.

You are a summoner and at the beginning of each match, you choose one champion from an assortment to play a match. You don’t have to always use the same one, but it pays to learn to use one well. Each Champion has a few varying traits, ranged, melee, stealth, caster, tank, etc. and then they also each have 4 main abilities and one passive. Your champion starts out the match at level 1 with no items or money. As you defeat enemies and turrets, you gain XP and gold. Each time you level you get a point to either activate one of your abilities so you can start using it, or upgrading an ability you already activated. The max level in any match is 18. You spend your gold on items which boost your abilities like damage, movement speed, mana regen, and defense.

After the match is over, you get to see the stats for the match and you are rewarded Summoner XP and IP. The XP levels YOU as a summoner and eventually you will hit max level of 30. Each level you go up gives you a mastery point to spend in a talent tree sort of way and opens up rune slots which let you add permanent bonuses to any champion you choose to play. One nice thing is that you can change all these things whenever you want at no cost or penalty. The IP is used to buy runes or unlock champions to play. You can also purchase champions or new skins to change the look of your champions for real money.

There is a nice tutorial to let you learn how to play and get use to the controls. It is click to move and then you use 4 keys to bind your abilities. After you get down the basics, you can queue for 5 vs 5 matches against bots. 5 Humans vs 5 Computer AI bots. This is a nice feature to let you learn your champion and to learn teamwork. The bots aren’t too nasty, I almost always win against them in the end but they can sure send you to the grave several times if you arent careful. Queue times for 5 vs bots take about 5 seconds.

You can also choose to set up matches 1 v 1 up to 5 v 5…and you can choose to pick your teammates or let people join…or assign spots to Computer AI Bots. Matches take anywhere from 20 min to an hour. Then you can chose to fight against normal players, and get into ranked matches after you get comfortable with a champion you like. They hold tournaments for real money if you get real good…which I never will…cause i’m too old to learn to PvP well!

The company, Riot Games, does a great job keeping people up to date with news, events, and changes. They put out weekly videos and spotlight videos on how to play different champions. The forums seem very active and people are tweeting about LOL all the time.

I typically am not a lover of PvP. I use to have some fun in World of Warcraft battle grounds but usually ended up frustrated because no matter which class I played, I would always die quickly. I don’t get that feeling as much in LOL. It does take some time to find the right champions that suit your playstyle, so don’t give up after 2 or 3 matches. Learn when to back off, learn what jobs your champion excels at and learn to do that well and you will have fun! Its a great game to hop in and out of without having to grind quests to level and worry about having the best armor or weapons for your next match.

Give it a try! Please use this link to sign up as it gives me a referral point to get a new champion for free! SIGN UP and Play Free My current favorites are Sivir and Orianna. Add me as a friend in game (Mirinesse) if you want to play a bit.

Without spoiling too much, the setting is a school campus in what appears to be the after life. Students are there trying to keep from passing on because they don’t want to come back from the afterlife as some animal or bug…. so they are constantly being rebellious students and running from a special girl that apparently can make you pass on.

Packed with action and goofiness, it only lasts 13 episodes, but has a very touching storyline. It’s rare that something can make tears come to my eyes and this one does. You can watch a little clip from it above. Recommendation: Buy It! Here is Another Video showing it’s action!

Then on Jokaydia Grid I made my own TARDIS that can send you other places on the grid! Someday I will try to make the insides….maybe. The geek in us shines through! You can visit the TARDIS and other places at JokaydiaGrid. If you are an educator or have any influence over it’s innovation, you really need to come check it out.

What is Dragon Nest? It reminds me a bit of Vindictus but its not quite as action oriented as it uses a hot bar to activate moves, but it still has an action feel to it as you dont target specific mobs…it all in your aim. The characters are cutesy and gender locked. You can be a Warrior or Cleric (male) – Archer or Sorceress (female). It is heavily instanced with portals leading to more portals which give you choices of areas to quest in. They are all linear. I did tend to get tired of all the zoning portals…which take from 10 to 30 seconds to load but are a bit quicker once inside a specific instance.

The towns are hopping with people running about. You can pick the channel/instance of the town you are in like many other games. NPCs hand out quests depending on your level and send you into one of the instances to get items, find people, or kill creatures. There are 2 starting zones specific to the classes you pick and all 4 classes meet up at the next town and merge the main storyline of the game.

There is a cash shop for clothing, enhancement protection jellies, storage add-ons, and marketplace enhancements. There is also an auction house for player selling and buying. The crafting system isn’t very extensive, its more of an enhancing/upgrade system similar to Hellgate where you can risk enhancing your items up to +12 with loot that drops from mobs and each time there is a chance to make it worse or destroy the item….thus the need to buy protection jellies from the cash shop.

Game play is very fun. There are destructible items throughout the instances and some chests to pop open. Mobs kinda hang out in their little groups until you approach and pick on whoever they feel like. They aren’t too bright but they don’t just stand there either. When you enter an instance you get to pick its difficulty – Easy, Normal, Hard, Master, or Abyss. Each increase adds more mobs to the instance and makes them harder and add new abilities to the tougher mobs.

I have been playing an Archer and a Sorceress (females of course)…both are a blast to play with their AoE’s and dodging abilities. As you level – you gain skill points which you then sink into the skills you want to specialize in. At level 15 you get to pick 1 of 2 paths in your class to specialize further. The Sorceress starting storyline is very funny…a rebellious teenage smart-ass. It is solo-able or you can group with up a few people.

There are PvP battlegrounds which were quite fun. They were voted best PvP of E3 this year – you set up the number of players and where you want to fight and how the winner is determined. There are some rewards you can purchase with your wins.

And onto the bad: Gold Farmers. Half the people in town are named uiahdfgyf and they are all clerics, and you can see them zoning in and out, infesting the exits. There are always 2 or 3 yelling websites to buy gold and all this has made every item on the auction house priced so high you can’t afford anything. Plus you can sell some items from the cash shop in game to become rich. This also has the unwanted effect of lagging the zone so it can take over a minute to enter or leave. WHY do game companies allow this? I can’t be the only one to see the negative effect this has on their games! Storage is very small and upgrades cost a whopping $13 for 30 spots. You do get at least one bank slot upgrade at around 15 of 10 more spaces added to your initial 10. This doesn’t sit well with the packrat in me.

Recommendation: The game isn’t finished, they still need to boost the level cap and open other areas I assume – currently the cap is 24 but it is plenty of fun and I heard they are upping it to 32 soon. I would give it a try if you aren’t heavily involved in anything. I play on the Ellena server. Get it here!

UPDATE: They have just raised the level cap and added new content!

And for your enjoyment – here is a dance video from the game! The dance animations are very well done.

The game didn’t last all that long though due to the lack of players and the company (Flagship Studios) going bankrupt. It was sold and a company in Korea picked it up and released it as an MMO. Finally this year it was re-translated back to English and released in the US as free-to-play. It has changed slightly from its original design and expanded with more areas, quests, a cash shop and marketplace.

If you have never heard of it, I would ask you to give it a try. It is a shooter type game, but not a hardcore first person shooter. I myself play in 3rd person mode 90% of the time unless in sniper mode. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic London after demons infest the world and humans are forced into hiding underground. The settings are a mixture of destroyed city streets, subway tunnels and pathways, outdoor fields, and hellish ruins. Many of the zones are randomly generated and each zone outside of stations are instanced just for you or your group. Npcs give you assignments and some lead you on the games unending main storyline to fight back the hordes of evil that brought the world to its current state.

It is very much a Diablo clone in that you need to identify items, play Tetris to organize your cube style inventory, upgrade your weapons with slots and take a gamble with a chance of improving your weapons. There are different levels of rarity of weapons and armor. You gain skill points and choose different paths to spec your person how you like and choose what stats to increase. They even have a Transmogrifying Cube to make special items or combine things.

There are 6 classes – 2 with swords, 2 with guns/bots, and 2 with magic/minions. All classes can use guns….just different types. Grouping doesn’t use the trinity of Healer, Tank, DPS…there are no healers. Most classes have some skills mixed in to heal themselves, and there are HP injectors. A tank type person can be handy in some very hard boss fights but everyone is a DPS’er and that is pure fun.

Hellgate is non-stop action, creepy and dark, and will give you a bit of an adrenalin rush as you mow down enemies and sneak through tunnels. You can solo all of the beginning of the game but as you get into your 40′s you will run into a boss or two that you just can’t down alone. At that point just look for a group or enlist a buddy. This is a very fun game to grab 1 or 2 other people to level up with you. My son and I have a blast together. It won’t become your next MMO that you stay in for years, but it is a great game to get some entertainment value from…and its FREE (though they did build in a point where you can’t progress in the game without buying a pass when you are around level 20….so you have to buy it from the cash shop for $4 or make enough cash in game to buy one from another player.)

Downsides to the game: Scenery can get a bit repetitive, there are some odd translations and items called “Needs Translation” still hanging around. People can sorta buy in game money for cash if they buy passes and sell them in game. The Marketplace could use a way better search function and the marksman could use a bit of love, but other than that, I didn’t really run into any bugs.

Recommendation: Worth the download – Get it here!