“There was some parrying of blows, of course, but the main thing was distance and movement. The best way to avoid being hurt is to not be there, so a lot of swordplay actually involves moving out of range of your opponent.”

- Andreas Wenzel, Fencing and Historical Arms Expert, cited by BBC News, August 1, 2007

In most MMO’s these days, we seem stuck on the idea of a healer class. While damage comes flying in from bigger and badder monsters, these healers play whack-a-mole with your health bars.

So why don’t we just ditch the idea altogether? Is it really that blasphemous a thought?

(more…)

As we return from vacation and begin writing articles once more, I just have a short personal note to share:  she said yes.   That is all.

When I first started playing MUDs it wasn’t the early days of mudding, in fact it was just a year or two before the original Everquest released. The very first MUD that I played was more or less picked at random, but after about 9 months it was closed down, and I started looking around for another MUD to play. It was at this time that I realized that a huge number of MUDs existed, with a huge variety in rule sets. Player killing, roleplaying, multiboxing, were just some of the options, and they ranged from the MUD is completely centered around this topic, to it isn’t allowed at all.

For the most part a good portion of these ideas have made the transition over to MMO’s in a number of different ways, but the most popular seems to be as separate server rule sets. World of Warcraft for instance has PvP Servers, RP Servers, and PvP RP servers. Everquest 2 has a couple of PvP servers, and at least 1 Roleplaying Encouraged server. I have yet to see an MMO make a server where multiboxing isn’t allowed or the flip side where it is encouraged. I personally have never been a fan of multiboxing, but for the most part it has never seemed like a big issue in any of the games that I have played.

Probably the strangest, and maybe most unique thing that I saw some MUDs do, however, was player wipes. At the time when I first ran into this idea of periodically deleting all the characters on a server, and having everyone start over, I didn’t understand it. It didn’t make much sense to me back then, but I also didn’t give it much thought at the time. The other day I started thinking about it again and about how the idea might look if it was used in a major MMO. What if they had a server where they periodically did player wipes? Is this the worst idea ever, or did it have some merit?

(more…)

When Rise of Kunark was initially announced, one of the first and most anticipated features announced for the expansion was the return of Epic Weapon quests.  First released with the original Ruins of Kunark expansion for classic Everquest, epic weapons were considered the end-all and be-all of equipment for each of the classes of the day.  Some of these rewards were considered class defining, and most were highly prized even years later long after other gear of Kunark became obselete.

Needless to say, it was a bit of a let down for many players when it became known that they were being delayed till after release. Along with most of the playerbase, we here at Clockwork Gamer were left with many questions about the epic weapons.  Where were they?  When could we expect them?  What could we expect?

We set out on an epic quest of our own to find out.  What we managed to find - or rather “who” we managed to find was none other than the new Senior Producer, Bruce “Froech” Ferguson.  He agreed to help answer some of the queries we put to him, to hopefully shed a little light on what to expect when the epics do finally go live.

(more…)

As posted on the Everquest II and Vanguard official forums, Warcry’s Razorwire, and even the Wall Street Journal (and pretty much everywhere else under the sun), the RMT company LiveGamer has penned a deal with several MMO publishers to start legitimate RMT transactions within their games.

NEW YORK CITY, DECEMBER 17, 2007 – Live Gamer Inc™ (www.livegamer.com) today announced its introduction as the premier provider of a publisher-supported, secure platform for real money trading of virtual property. Live Gamer is partnering with top massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) publishers and virtual world operators worldwide, including Funcom GMBH, Sony Online Entertainment, 10TACLE STUDIOS, Acclaim, GoPets LTD, and Ping0 Interactive Limited. The company was founded by industry veterans and backed with $24 million in venture funding from Charles River Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, and Pequot Ventures.

-LiveGamer press release

Live Gamer has the support of publishers by promising to prevent the sale of goods by gold farmers, who are widely disliked because they tend to hoard game wealth without socializing with legitimate players. Live Gamers says players who sell goods through its marketplace will keep 90% of proceeds, with the remainder split between Live Gamer and the publisher. Sony, which allows the sale of virtual goods for its Everquest II game, said there is a need for an independently operated marketplace for virtual goods.

-Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal

The only real question most gamers will want to know is whether or not this will affect current games such as Everquest II, or if it’s set up for future games only.

Over at the Ancient Gaming Noob, Willhelm raises the question of whether or not level caps should be increased for the next Everquest II expansion.  Needless to say, I approach the subject from a notably different perspective.

I think that, by and large, new expansions for games which base progression largely upon “levels” should have consistent, regular level increases.  Especially now that the expansion cycle has been pushed out to a year, any expansion that does not release with level increases automatically means a minimum of 2 years between new level caps.  Even for relatively casual serious players like myself, that’s a long time to go without seeing additional character progression.

…and in games like Everquest II, most character progression paths are certainly tied to levels.

(more…)

This just in: There are other servers than Antonia Bayle. No, really.

I bring this up because it seems that every other player who decides to pick up Everquest II decides to go to Antonia Bayle server. Does anyone actually realize that other servers exist?  Oh sure, “AB” might be the most populated server, but does anyone stop to wonder why?

(more…)

If you have had a chance to play the new Rise of Kunark expansion at all since it was released on the 13^th of November, you have likely noticed some changes in the loot received for quests, dungeons and from named mobs. I am going to wait until the end of the article to post what I think of these changes. Instead I would like to see if I can make some comparisons from before and after. These comparisons may or may not be completely accurate, and will mostly be my opinion. I did not think to get statistics on drop rates before the expansion went live, and I am not going to bother getting statistics on the current drop rates.

I want to start with a look at treasured gear. Before the expansion I felt that the treasured level gear was for the most part pretty good. I still had at least 4 or 5 slots that I was wearing treasured gear in on a regular basis. Treasured gear had a somewhat wide range in how good it actually was, but for the most part it went from near legendary down to absolute junk. To be fair though, I felt most of the pieces were on the higher end of the scale. Even if a piece wasn’t great, there were a lot of pieces which were situational. I had some good pieces that were useful for an elemental or a poison fight.

(more…)

Game Update 41 is now live.  Here’s a few of the new goodies you can expect to find under the tree:

Tis the Season:  Frostfell is back.  With the exception of some new household items, there’s not too much different from last year’s Frostfell.  Run the quests and get your daily gifts (with each of your characters).

Store an extra Achievement Profile.  Adventurers can now obtain a component in high end dungeons which can be used to craft a household item which allows you to store an additional achievement reward.  This was originally announced as a release feature for Rise of Kunark, so it’s nice to see it going live.

Lava won’t kill you…right away.  Another long time difference between old Everquest and Everquest II is now removed.  Stepping in lava within the Shattered Lands won’t immediately kill you - but it can and will hurt you.  A word of warning before you decide to take a dip - not all lava is created equal.  Some lava hurts more.

No more “Not a Friend” messages.  Per the notes:  “Casting a beneficial spell on a hostile target without a target should now target the caster instead.”  Healers rejoice!

Smaller pets!  Tired of Paris Hilton having all the fun with tiny pets?  Per the notes:  ” Conjurors and Necromancers will now receive a new spell to shrink their primary pets’ size.”

New Faction Gear.  Likely this is due to the recent controversy over developer Fireflyte’s publically stated reasons for providing certain types of armor (i.e. - why is there so much damned leather armor for priests).  Take a peek at the faction merchants you’ve worked hard to impress and see if they aren’t more items for you to buy.

Better, Faster, Stronger Mastercrafted.  From the notes:  “* Armorers and Tailors have discovered ways to improve the quality of mastercrafted armor across all level ranges.”

Kylong Harvesting Requires More “Skillz”.  From the notes:  “Harvest nodes in Kylong Plains now require 340+ skill to harvest, like all other level 70+ zones.”
PVP Level Locking NO LONGER POSSIBLE.  I’m not getting into this today, but here’s the note:  “PvP - Killing another player will always reward experience now even if the player has their adventure experience disabled.”

…And Three Updates Affecting Collections.  From the notes:  “You can now harvest under attack.”

“Added “Hide Completed” checkbox to collection quest journal window.”

“Clicking a collection item in your quest journal will now submit a search for that item while in a broker transaction. “

Full notes listed after the break.

(more…)

Last night, I was surprised to find that we had three full guild groups running. It’s not that we don’t have enough members online to form groups, because we’re usually running 20-30 members online most nights. It’s not that our members don’t want to group, either, because there are constantly members online looking to set up groups. No, it’s the fact that lately, our fighters haven’t been logging on nearly as consistently as the rest of the guild.

When those fighters do log in, they’re immediately assailed by the rest of the members online who want to form up groups. This puts pressure on the fighter, of course, but also introduces an interesting dynamic to the rest of the guild, creating additional competition within the ranks that simply wasn’t there 2 months ago.

The obvious issue, of course, is that we only have five dedicated fighters within the guild. Of those, only three are currently of a level to make high level dungeon crawling a realistic option. For a guild of more than 60 members, that’s a lot of members left twiddling their thumbs or looking elsewhere for groups.

Is this our fault though? Is this a case of bad guild management or perhaps an interesting side effect of game’s design philosophy?

The answer, of course, is a little of both…

(more…)