The astute amongst you might have deduced that I, Syp T. Sypperton, has re-entered World of Warcraft, putting my total MMORPG subscriptions for the calendar year of 2009 at something like 39.  Or so I will tell the IRS for deduction purposes.  What?  MMOs can be listed as dependents, they CAN!  They certainly depend on me to keep funding their projects!

But before I get impaled on the stake of hypocrisy, I’m not going to backpedal on anything I’ve said about WoW (or, heck, other titles) in the past.  It’s got issues.  I’m gratified that Blizzard’s finally admitted they made a mistake with the arena system, but it’s hardly the only problem that saddles the game.  But like any MMO, it’s fun when it’s fun to you personally, and if that hits, then why not play?  I really wanted to see how the dungeon finder system worked (long story short: it’s simply one of the best additions to the game since launch, and I’ll stake my freshly-baked batch of thumbprint cookies on that statement), and I wanted to see some of the other changes that have been lauded by friends.

Of course, that’s not the complete truth either.  This might have all been a master plan to lure my wife back into the realm of MMOs — a plan that came to fruition a couple days ago.  You see, my wife — she of Peggle, Desktop Tower Defense and Professor Layton school of gaming — has only played two MMOs: WoW and Wizard101 .  We certainly enjoyed playing Wizard together, although the gameplay started to bore us after a couple weeks.  But why not try that again with WoW?  Even though our relationship together spans back to a couple months prior to WoW’s original launch, we’ve never owned two accounts (we shared one — SHH! Don’t tell Blizzards!), and so we never played “together”.   But she mentioned that she’d like to check out WoW again, so off we went into the wild technocolor yonder.

I leveled up a fresh new druid — Echoes — the hard way, from 1 to (currently) 63.  The changes to the leveling curve (better quest XP, less XP to level, mounts earlier on) helped considerably, and while I still feel uneasy about just how fast they make the game, it wasn’t a cakewalk either.  Now, seeing a friend get like 30 “free” levels with Recruit-a-Friend felt like just plain cheating, but that’s life.

My wife opted to roll a death knight and skip over 55 dull levels in favor of face-pwnage.  She still refuses to really get into the full-fledged gaming mode — she only plays with a mouse, for instance, using it to turn, target, and click spells — but to her credit, somehow she makes it work.  She navigated the DK tutorial mostly on her own, and even picked up some of the rudimentary skills as a tank when we paired up.

It’s also something we have shared with our infant son, as my wife bounced him on her lap and pointed out, “Look!  Mommy’s running for her life!” in a sing-song voice.

We both have no idea just how long we’re going to play WoW — we got a couple time cards instead of subscribing, just so that the game would have to win us over to make us go to the effort to get more cards in February — but for now, it’s a great excuse to spend a bit more time together.  There’s not a lot on the immediate deck for MMOs, so I can dither in this and Fallen Earth for the time being and not feel compelled to split my time further.

So remember, kids, love means never having to say “Would you please resurrect my corpse?” — love means that you just do it, automatically, after laughing when they try to attack a Fel Reaver head on.

“So… You kill these other people? From around the world?”

“Well, we also kill demons. And lots and lots of rats. It’s fun.”

“If you say so. Some of us don’t have time for that sort of thing.”

“Then the rats win, mom. The rats win.”

Here’s a question that might not get asked as often as “Why do you pick the MMOs to play that you do?” is “Why do you choose not to play a MMO that you might otherwise enjoy?”  By that I mean that you recognize that this is a game you probably would like, it’s right up your alley in many ways, but for one reason or another, you don’t take the plunge.

Maybe it’s because you’re overextended at the moment  — you don’t want to play more than one MMO (or more than whatever you are enjoying), or that it would constitute too much out of your monthly budget, or that you’re not spending enough time with your primary game/guild as it  is.

But sometimes it’s that the other game, as tempting as though it may be, exhibits some pretty serious red flags that makes you hesitate.  For me, whenever I consider a new MMO, I’m always evaluating its potential future — does it have a solid playerbase (which is at  least holding somewhat steady, if not growing)?  If it’s shrinking, if you hear of company layoffs, if people are fleeing it as though the ship was about to sink and they don’t want to experience the final moments of the Titanic, these are red flags that keep me from plunging in, no matter how good the game is/might have been.

Take Vanguard, for instance.  Yeah, at launch, it was an unmitigated disaster, a burden for computers to run, and saddled with scandal and heavy player criticism.  By all accounts, the game’s improved substantially, and I’ve heard several people even praise how the new dev team has performed superhuman efforts in fixing bugs and adding new content, to make it a rather enjoyable game.  And yet, when I hear reports like this, there’s just no way I’d ever want to set foot in the game.  Yeah, no MMO will last forever, but when the writing’s on the wall where the best possible future is maintaining the status quo and there are dark stormclouds on the horizons, I don’t get that “long term” feeling of commitment from their end, and so I don’t even want to begin, because what if I end up really, really liking it?

What if my fragile gaming heart will end up crushed as I fall in love at the end of its life?

Better to not have subscribed and not have lost, than to subscribe and experience an epic fail.

Or maybe that’s just the Charlie Brown in me talking.

For instance, will I be able to role-play a Nazi Vulcan, or will that be against the EULA?

The very first Star Trek video game I ever played was a cheaply programmed space combat simulator on DOS, featuring a duke-fest between the Enterprise and an infinite wave of Klingon ships.  I remember back then feeling pretty disappointed that the combat was the be-all, end-all of the game — that’s it?

In fact, the only Star Trek game that’s come even close to balancing combat with all the other elements that make Trek Trek was Star Trek: 25th Anniversary — and that was in nineteen-ninety-freaking-two — which added adventure and problem-solving elements to the equation.

So every time I hear anything about Star Trek Online, it worries me that all that’s being blasted from Cryptic’s loudspeakers is combat, combat, combat (and character customization).  Yeah, sure, combat’s a big part of MMOs and a slightly significant part of Star Trek, but Trek isn’t an action show at the heart — it’s a space opera with adventure overtones.  So here’s my question before I start thinking “That’s it?” of this upcoming title: what is there to do and experience outside of combat?  Is this just the same DOS-era combat simulator updated with fancier graphics, or is there depth past the combat layer?  After Champions Online, which is also combat-centric to the exclusion of almost all else (and creating a shallow world as a result), do I have a cause for concern?

I guess what I’m looking for is how much of a “living world” (or living universe) will STO have for us beyond the quest/combat model.  I find that MMOs rich in features such as crafting, pets, player housing, social hubs, achievements and so on are ones that I tend to want to inhabit longer — I’m able to plant deeper roots as a result.  At least from some reports, STO has a good Trek “vibe” to it.

Here’s what I’ve been able to dig up, and I’d love to hear more if you know something I don’t!

• “Diplomatic missions”
• Exploration
• Walking around the bridge – Cryptic’s shoehorned this in as a semi-last minute feature, allowing players to explore their virtual bridge and use it as a social hub.  Will it be?  Who knows!
• “Star Clusters are a part of the exploration content of STO. They provide endless procedurally generated combat and non-combat missions for both ground and space.”
• Memory Alpha – This seems to be a collection feature, where you pick up relics and info on missions, bring them back, and if you finish a collection you get a nifty reward or new ability.

I contacted Cryptic and sent them ten questions along this line of thought — no word yet, but if they respond, I’ll be glad to post their perspective!

P.S. – Awesome to hear that they’ve also snagged Leonard Nimoy for a few voiceovers as well!

Do me a favor and head on over to Mutant Reviewers today to check out the presentation of our reader-voted 12th Annual Mutant Awards!  What won “Best Death Speech”?  “Worst Movie Robot”?  “Hottest Movie Parent”?  Find out!

Out of the very, very few common qualities that World of Warcraft and Fallen Earth share, this one I notice the most: both titles are saturated with silly, quirky humor.  Whether it be the thinly-veiled NPC name to a real world celebrity, goofy quests (one of which invariably asks you to dig through poo — what is UP with devs with this?), or laugh-out-loud interactions with the game world, they’re titles that never quite take themselves too seriously.

Heck, not even just those two games.  Champions Online is quirky as all get-out (Foxbat FTW!), and Warhammer marinated itself in black humor that was always worth a chuckle.

Personally, I appreciate that.  I’m never a person who can be serious for long — I love puns, teasing friends and looking at the sillier side of life.  It doesn’t break immersion for me to have a game try to make me laugh, or at least smile.  Jokes and humor have always been appreciated in my video games going back to the time when Syp was a wee laddie, cackling at the gags in King’s Quest and Space Quest.  Pain, as the saying goes, lets you know you’re still alive.  Laughter, as I see it, lets you know you’re still tolerable.  And if you’re a special breed of person, freak everyone out in the nearby vicinity with your braying, unholy brand of chortles.

Of course, my viewpoint isn’t shared by all.  Some gamers downright resent humor — particularly glaring, obvious, silly humor — popping its unwelcome head up in their super-serious quest to pwn n00bs and commit genocide on the local fauna.  These grinches scowl at any attempt of a game to introduce levity in the midst of death, gore and epic loot drops.  And if that’s your thing, then sure, there are plenty of MMOs out there that stamp down on the funny in fear of it taking over like Kevin Bacon infesting that midwestern town with sinful, sinful dancing in Footloose.

So out of curiosity, what’s your stance on this?  Does humorous aspects of MMORPGs annoy or delight you?  Are you too hardcore for a laugh, too uber for a tuber?

"No, the whole article is silly and it's very badly written. I'm the senior officer here and I haven't had a funny line yet. So I'm stopping it."

As we prepare to head home for the holidays, some gamers are prepping for truly epic play sessions — while others may have to go cold turkey (brr!) for a few days to be with friends and family.  The truly smart amongst us will bring laptops loaded with our favorite MMOs.

• Epic Slant re: Guild Recruitment – “Most players these days are quite jaded when it comes to guild membership and will frequently think you offer more trouble than benefit.”
• Corpse Run re: Allods – “Controls are fluid and responsive, somewhere between WoW and Aion.”
• Darth Hater re: TOR – “No matter the path you choose, it appears your look will match your play style.”
• ITG! re: WoW – “Is this going to make it harder to bring up a new character because DEAR GOD, if I have to run Oculus again I’m going to jab a fork in my eye?”
• Scott Jennings re: PvP – “In any discussion of game design, the longer the thread, the probability that someone will introduce PvP as either the reason for its subject’s success or failure approaches 100%.”
• Mystic Worlds re: Subscribing – “You’ll need to do it DIFFERENT or BETTER than, where I’ve been before.”
• Werit re: WAR – “What does WAR need to do in a hypothetical expansion?”
• Spinks re: Tanking – “Tanking is scary.”
• Simple-n-Complex re: Disappointment – “Yet, what would YOU do if you logged in one day and find out that an expansion you payed for was blocked off from you…for no reason, and that content was unaccessible?”

And on this previous week over at Mutant Reviewers:

• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane review
• Star Trek VI review
• Star Trek V review
• Star Trek IV review
• Poster Dissection: National Lampoon’s Vacation
• Christmas Vacation review
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen review
• Alice review

Head on over to ITG! for my latest Syp’s Quips advice column – “Gaming on the Mind”!  In it, we explore all sorts of sensitive and touching MMORPG issues, that I effectively deal with with a literary sledgehammer.

Go now!

And if you have a question you’d like answered for an upcoming column, leave it here or over at ITG! in the comments section.

Is it just me, or does Zachary Quinto seem really less-than-thrilled with providing voice-overs for Star Trek Online?  It’s cool they nabbed him, tho — it really will help their marketing to continue to provide any and all connections to the wildly successful Star Trek movie this past summer.  And on a related note, shouldn’t they be just trucking in gobs of Star Trek actors for voice-overs at this point?  I mean, it’s not like they’re really sparse or anything.  You’d think that William Shatner or Red Shirt #6 wouldn’t mind another paycheck.  Shatner’s done WoW, now he can prop up the franchise that really made him famous.

My theory continues to gain support: that Syncaine and Tobold are actually a married couple using the internet for therapy.

You won’t hear me talk a lot about Final Fantasy 14 on Bio Break next year — despite their claims of future awesomeness, I’m really ho-hum about it overall.  Especially after a very lackluster experience in their current MMO a few years back (aka “The Incident In Which I Was Killed By A Sheep”).

I’ve been pretty impressed by The Old Republic’s planet selection — up to now.  I’m with Moon Over Endor on this, it’s just disappointing that BioWare’s trucking out Tatooine for one of their locations.  Yeah, it’s iconic, and ironic as this “backwards, nothing planet” is featured in almost all the movies and games.  But it’s boring, it’s dull, it’s been-there-done-that, and even in the fantastic KOTOR, Tatooine was the lamest part of the game.  Ah well, quibbles and bits.

On a brighter TOR note, this article’s pretty dang funny.

What ALL the cool kids want for Christmas this year!

Remember when we were kids and all we’d have to do to make a Christmas list was to take the recent Toys ‘R Us advertisement and circle what we wanted?  That seems so much easier than it is today (even with Amazon’s wish list feature — love it!).

So in lou of that, here’s a quick article you can print out and gift to the person in your life who’s fishing around for a good present to support your addicting, compulsive hobby!

1. Gaming Headset

Really, any type of headset-mike combo will do, but for any gamer who uses Vent, Teamspeak or other voice program to communicate with guildies and teammates in game, a quality gaming headset is almost a must!

2. Game Time Cards

For some of us, subscription costs aren’t a worry — for others, they’re significant barriers to navigate when determining who is going to play what.  Take a load off your loved one’s mind by propping up their habit for two months with a game card.  And as a bonus, sometimes these cards have additional in-game rewards!

3. MMO Apparel

Step one: figure out what game your loved one is most into.  Step two: buy them a t-shirt, hoodie or (for the truly daring and/or obnoxious) boxer shorts that features that game in some way, shape or form.  It’s one of those things that gamers might not feel comofortable buying for themselves — kind of like painting yourself as a target — but they’d happily wear if someone else went to the effort of giving it to them.

4. A New MMORPG To Try

There’s deals all over the place this holiday season, and it’s the same with MMOs.  While subscription fees more or less stay constant, the cost of the retail box can widely fluxuate, and you might be able to snag a game that your loved one’s never played before for a hugely discounted price.  If they don’t have to pay for it, then it’s a free month for them to try out something different!

5. An In-Game Present

Many MMOs are trending toward adding an in-game store to sell virtual items to “enhance” your loved one’s gaming experience.  These can range from little virtual pets to new costumes to new content, and trust me — it’ll be a gift they’ll never see coming (but will love!).  Find out if the MMO that they play has an in-game store, and see how you might get them a present through it (or at least purchase “points” for them so that they can pick out their own present).

6. The Gift Of Time

Want to go total cheapskate and yet do something incredibly cool for your loved one?  Then give an entire day where you’ll make sure that the calendar is cleared and they have no other responsibilities — other than to game all day with no nagging, distractions or chores.