Monday, May 11, 2009

Spreading 1, 10, 100 Lamthara(s)

Leaving wow gave Lamthara the occasion to try out a few games out there... so she transformed, she became other things but still keeping her name and the role she likes the most: healing ppl (and if possible kick mob's butts :)

Age of Conan
Lamthara became a Priest of Mitra... different from other games here every class has some melee abilities. The Priest of Mitra is the most powerful healing class of this game but at the level I arrived (34) she is quite strong. The spells have some nice uhm... aoe side effect. Which means that casting a spell to a mob that spell will "bounce"to the closest enemy (if close enough)... it's not a real aoe spell but it's confortable :) Sometimes if you finish your mana you take your mace and your shield and you start to break the other one's head.

Did i like Age of Conan? The answer is quite easy... yes i liked it. Most of the quests aren't about kill X mobs (you find them but i've met just a few of them) but are about kill THAT mob... which means going in a place... destroy all the living beings there just to kill the chief of that village or the boss of the monsters and so on. This is nice because you can decide how to face the problem. Will you go there with your shield and sword and destroy the mobs one by one opening a path to your objective? Will you hide (rogue-like) and reach the boss avoiding the others? Will you take the enemies in packs and aoeing them till death? Will you take a friend with you?
The quests are very funny in my opinion... and the scenarios are just wonderful. Never in a game i felt how beautiful the places i met were... really. 
There are a few things that i didn't like, anyway. First the monsters... When your enemies are humans they are well designed, they are realistic and everything is smooth and nice. But if they are "monsters" or animals they seems like they're made of wax or plastic :|
Same for the instances that seem a bit uhm... empty. I haven't dont too many of them... actually i have done only the Black Castle but actually the experience was so and so (and i sadly say this...) because as an healer i didn't have the real feeling i was healing my mates, i didn't have a proper feedback... sometimes the life of my mates didn't move at all... sometimes it fell down in 3 secs and i had no idea what to do because even if i were casting all the things i had... nothing happened. 
Conclusion... great game but i'll take another month of subscription maybe on september to see how this game is after lvl 40. For now i give up. 


Runes of Magic
Free World of Warcraft are on the rise :) This game is Wow 120%.. the classes, the mechanics, the locations. But there are some nice features like a real double spec (which means you can be a priest... and a warrior, you only have to respec), you have own an house. Actually i can't say too much how it is since this Lamthara has reached only lvl 14 but i guess if you played wow you'll find yourself confortable with Runes of Magic. Everything is more or less the same... even the quests.
I like it? Yep, a bit but i've seen too less of it to make a right description of my feelings. 
Anyway I feel I have left wow because i didn't have anything to offer to me anymore... doesn't sound too smart to start a game which is its copy :) Maybe i'll lvl up a bit and i'll check out how the instances are and the scenario as well... who knows...


Atlantica

This is a strange game... it's more like a Final Fantasy 7 mmo. The fights are turn based and you don't fight alone but you have to control a group of fighters that you train with your main. The concept is similar to Granado Espada only that the last one has a fast paced combat system while this one, being turned based, remembers me the old days of the superNES age.
Can't say anything special about it... i haven't played too much. For what i've seen so far it is nice even if quite grinding oriented. I'll try it more by the way :)


Eve Online

The cold of the universe against the warmth of fireball spells. Here there is a drama because this game is so much different from the others that it's difficult to compare... maybe the solution is just describe how it is to play Eve without trying to find out some relation with the other games (relations that for me are quite feeble...).
Lamthara of Eve (actually named Lamthara Lachesis) is an Amarr Khanid which is trying to understand how this game works.
You kill tons of spaceships but you gain no exp... you need to study you skills and you can do everything only that it takes times. Even if you will shoot a billion of times with your lasers you won't become better... you'll kick ass only if you'll study the proper skill to use the lasers in the proper way ("advanced lasers that kick ass" lvl5). 
The gear won't make too much the difference because (at least at the level i am) the gear is standard, the spaceship called Noname is just like the other Noname ships and you'll find a lot of them in the market. The difference is in the skill you have learnt and the way you "fit" your ship... which means which lasers or turrets you'll use, the special gizmo you'll use to survive (like shields or repairers...) and other stuff like drones useful to support you in combat, etc...
Well Eve isn't perfect... for instance i miss a bit the toons. Yeah they'll introduce them in the game in the future but for now using only ships could be strange above all because you'll cross a lot of ships that are just like you and you won't feel like you are your toon (like it could happen with other mmorpg)... i mean i spent a bit of time to create my portrait and now i can't see my khanid lady anymore. sic!
And another thing is that even if eve is very skill based... the skill are quite "passive" for the way the fights are. Usually a fight session is all about target an enemy, approach it an start to shoot in the meanwhile you use the gizmo (webifier lazers, energy sucker rays, armor repairers, etc...) to keep you alive and get an advantage to your enemy. 
If the fight would be more uhm... "arcade" it would be better in my opinion. I am thinking about something like Freespace, it would be nice to be able to shoot at the thing using your own skills and not only the books you've studied in the game. Nothing special and i don't think it would be that hard to implement... for the way it is now it is like to play chess more than a space ship combat :)



Then there are the other games like Floresia, Dream of mirror online, Archlord,  Granado Espada etc... but i've tried them just a bit to be able to comment their gameplay.



So i'll post something interesting about them in the next future ^^