Pirates of the Burning Sea Beta Impressions
3 12 2007
Today, Flying Labs Software dropped the NDA on Pirates of the Burning Sea and officially launched its Open Beta in anticipation of its early January release. I had the chance to get into the last few weeks of closed beta and was able to log enough hours to give some initial impressions. I wasn’t in any early betas and wasn’t part of any uber 1337 guilds. I just got in, tested diligently with a view to the every person experience. I’m sure as Open Beta gets underway, more and more information will flood the blogosphere.
VIA PotShot
Well Clearly I am not playing at the moment I am writing this post ...or am I? Actually taking a moment at work since I cannot hear the siren call of Mass Effect while I am here. I am about 9 hours in and I am as, Ryan V. from the MOG ARMY said, taking my time an licking the thigh of the game up and down savoring every moment ;) 
The Combat is excellent, with a well executed cover system. The RPG elements, as one might expect from Bioware, are also superb. However the real star is the dialog system, fabulous! I was, as I expect a lot of gamers were, skeptical that this would be anything more than the standard dialog tree system where most of the choices boil down no real choice at all. May be a polite vs snarky response at best. They seem to have nicely integrated the charm vs intimidate attributes you can improve via the character screen.
I have not decided if I have any right to be annoyed that you can only take two other NPCs with you. You end up with a total of 6 or 7 in the "stable" that you can select from when you land on a planet or a station. I suspect however that if you were to take all 6 it would be to many characters on the screen and the performance would suffer. Not to mention that the encounter are probably scaled for three combatants.
I can't wait to see what the downloadable content is going to be More Planets? More Friends? Space combat?
Actually space combat is the one disappointment. It seems so far that there is no way to fight other space ships
On to some scurrilous rumor mongering .....In the same MOG Army show Ryan an Gary speculated that the MMO that Bioware is working on might be a Mass Effect MMO. I have heard that Mass Effect is to be a Trilogy, wouldn't it be a coup if Bioware with each release made the game more and more of an MMO.
Is there anyway to take you own screenshots on an Xbox360?
I'll update this post more later ....stealing some time while waiting for some folks to arrive
So I found two candidates for a guild that I might want to join. One is the guild for the EQ2-daily podcast
bt187 or Brownie Troop 187. They seem like my sort. They want the thrill of the PVP server but don't feel the serial killer urge to gank anyone an everyone.
Link to podcast here
Also found the the guy that does the aggrome blog has a guild named aggroculture( clever ;) )
I'll also see if I can find them
Link to aggrome here
Also another podcast inside Nagafen seems promising.. These guys seem a bit more hardcore but I would like to contact them as well Podscast and site here
more to come
I cannot forget Brent at VirginWorlds.com ,the godfather of MMO news. where I start when I am looking for MMO stuff, and also a must listen podcast.
Well, really canceled my LOTRO account. I just can't play Guild Wars with my wife and indulge this foray into EQII pvp.
So, my general goal behind this is that I would like to understand how the social connections work on a PVP server in EQII. I might even try to make a map or something. This comes from my experiences in Ultima Online many years ago, when it first came out. Anyone who played this knew that the servers were ALL PVP. If you left town you could be killed, it was exciting and frustrating. One particular Encounter has stayed with me to this day and is probably the root of my current curiosity about the social structures in a more recent PVP environment.
I got UO right when it came out but at the time of this encounter I was fairly high "level". I could usually either defend myself from all but the hardest core PKs or I could last long enough to get the hell out. My characters name was Hugh De Payen but I do not recall the shard.
On this particular night I was solo'ing in dungeon called Hythloth, If I recall correctly, and had just seen a guy run by in death robes. I offered to give him some mediocre loot that I had taking up space in my inventory, because I had been where he was.
It is probably important to note that in UO when you died you dropped ALL the money you had on you and ALL your equipment. So if you were deep into a dungeon and died with no friends around you were pretty screwed. Even if you did not get PK'd your stuff would usually be long since looted by the time you got back to your corpse, if you got back at all.
So anyway I offered him a sword and some crap armor that might help him get back to his stuff, which he promptly declined. I was a bit shocked, he was not likely to get far with no weapon in hand. He politely explained to me that he had been PK'd nearby but that his guild was on its way to get his stuff back for him. This, I thought to myself, was why this game was so compelling, a mafia like organization had already formed which had the organization to "fix" a problem for a member. My next thought was, if there is a PK about I need to haul ass back to town and unload my loot.
Another note about UO and the bank. While nobody could really kill you in town thieves could steal valuables out
of your backpack. Many of them loitered around the bank hoping to get lucky and snag something valuable. You could usually tell a thief because they were always in death robes. They died a lot because everyone had a macro to yell GUARDS! whenever someone got near them at the bank. It was, on occasion, amusing to see the instakill guards roll in after a chorus of GUARDS! GUARDS! and lay the schmack down on a careless thief. It of course ceased to be amusing when you noticed that you were missing something valuable.
I did run up one or two levels with the poor soul to the entrance thinking maybe I could protect him, at least from the mobs, so he could get out. Arriving at the exit I witnessed his guild mates resolving the issue. The clearly frightened PK was handing over his ill gotten gains to these "enforcers". He was by himself and there were two of them and I was nearby as well. He knew if he fought he would lose a 3 on 1 fight. The sight of this virtual street thug groveling before these two who were representatives of this "guild" was straight out of the Godfather.
This encounter ended well, the other guy got his stuff back and the PK was told to leave and not come back. I went to the bank any way but I came back to Hythloth for several more hours of mob grinding fun.
Is there stuff like this going on in EQII ? If so who and where are they? How to they organize themselves?
To this end I have created a char on Nagafen called NicoFlows. If you see me let me know something about yourself
before you pwn me ;)
It appears the reward for being the savior of Archet is prestigious career as the Middle Earth equivalent of an exterminator. I have killed spiders, soo many spiders, wolves, neekerbreakers, boars and more than a few of those
I'll have to say there is plenty to do around here some of it interesting. Not really feelin like I am striking any grievous blows at the "Rising Evil" in the East though.
When not killing spiders, who doesn't hate spiders, I' seem to be fighting the Blackwolds. These Blackwold thugs seem like your run of the mill criminal enterprise. Don't get me wrong there is plenty that is satisfying about killing "thugs" especially when I can do things to help out the folks. I have retrieved Fishing Poles, a lumber jacks ledger . I even helped cure someones sick dog which actually led to finding out Staddle's water supply was tainted. Which I also helped fix by gathering some herbs for a chick name Willowsong. I find this amusing, because Hippies in Middle Earth, who would have thought ;)
Any way Pictures of me, literally carrying Staddle's water:
So I am Felling pretty green right now having cleaned up Staddle's water supply. I think I can get rid of that pretty easily by killing some more of those Blackwold punks.
They still seem to have a main base somewhere. I am also still working with the constable in Combe, who's name escapes me at the moment, to gather these lockboxes that the Blackwolds seem to be carelessly not keeping at their main base, which I have yet to find.
Also I still want to help out poor old Falco and the pickle he got himself into with the blackwolds (Falco's Folly). It seems I will have to find some friends to take on this particular challenge.
OK enough chat I'll check back in later until then here are some scenic scenes from around Archet enjoy....
Eggy ran to a fro in the Archet Dale killing Spiders,wolves, Blackwold spies and some nasty boars, Bristlehide something or other. He ran various quests for the constables and farmers of the area. He also did a few things to help the injured Ranger that helped him bust out of jail. Sadly I don't recall the guys name Amadir or something like that.
Finally after much carnage Eggy hit, I think level 8, this is days after the fact so forgive my memory lapse.
News had been accumulating that the Blackwolds, a Middle Earth equivalent of a street gang, were massing for an attack on Archet. This seems a bit ambitious for a street gang. However other info soon came to light that this was part of larger plot( hehe get it ...larger plot). Some force, some evil was casting about looking for a hobbit of all things. A specific hobbit what the deuce?
So, like the insufferable goody two shoes I am, I sallied forth to the defense of Archet! And ...well ... hopefully another level and some sweet loot!
Narrowly defeating the bad guys and runing them off. Eggy was unable to prevent Archet from getting burnt all to hell.
Topping it off they dun run oft with the helpful Ranger what dun busted me outa jail.
Is Eggy redneck minstrel? The thought is appealing since you can, as a Minstrel, import music into the game.
Will Eggy's goal in life be subjecting as many corners of Middle Earth to "Free Bird" played on the Lute?
Surely, some expertly applied Classic Rock can defeat the Growing threat to Middle Earth!
Standin around lookin like a slackjawed yokel
Note teh sweet noobtatsic threads.
Also this is the first stab at an experiment ....is a blog for an Avatar more interesting that the 9000000000 other blogs out there. Do we need another blog about someones dog or God forbid about politics?
If the dog has 3 heads and eats hobbits.....well you decide.
Still slackjawed......... but no UI in the screenshot
is so god awful to have to say or type, is a Minstrel which means I can do a little of the magic stuff. I Can heal my comrads and play various tunes to help in other ways.
I flailed about for a couple of hours learning my way around and managed to get to level 6, if I recall.
So far, I'll have to say LOTRO has a pretty slick noob experience and the whole thing seems well thought out and well executed.
More to come... I'll try to keep better track of Eggy further adventures.
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