You could be forgiven for thinking that 2012 is the year of
the MMO, they’re everywhere! With Guild Wars 2 dominating the headlines and
reviews, what’s the rest of the competition up to?
Well I’m going to cheat to bring up Diablo 3’s recent patch
(Blizzard think’s it’s an MMO). I was fairly critical of the difficulty in my
review. There was a clear lack of balance in the difficulty of elite enemies
and bosses. To counter the problem Blizzard made a range of changes, tweaking
numbers across the board.
Abilities were buffed and enemies nerfed to create a
massively improved difficulty curve. I’m still slogging my way through Inferno,
but it has become a lot more fun to play. It feels like a challenge again rather
than a test of my patience. I still wish they would add an option to start on
higher difficulties. As much as I want to play the other classes, I can’t bring
myself to play through hours and hours of gameplay that is unlikely to kill me
once.
To spice up the endgame content, Paragon levels have been
added as well as buffs to legendary items. Paragon levels allow your character
to continue gaining power. Each one grants a stats boost and gives you a little
extra gold and magic find to help you find the best gear. It keeps the levelling
treadmill ticking over. Each one requires a massive amount of experience and
there’s a hundred of them! Only a madman or someone who farms items for a
living (oh yes they exist) will ever hit the maximum level.
Legendary items have been tweaked to include bonus effects,
such as on hit bonuses and special effects to make them stand out. Adding up
all the changes does move Diablo 3 towards being a great game. It’s this level
of care and attention to their game’s post release, which has earned Blizzard
the reputation they have.
But in a galaxy far, far away, things are not looking good. Everyone
had predicted The Old Republic’s inevitable slide into a free-to-play model,
but it happened a lot sooner than expected. Bioware’s studio that developed the
game has shrunk drastically, which is always a shame.
The new system is built around cartel coins that can be
earned through play, or bought through the standard subscription. Now almost
all aspects of the game have limited access for free, with the option to spend
cartel coins for full access. Oddly, the operations are limited to subscribers
only, blocking free players from sampling some great content, and potentially
paying for more. However the best part of the game is entirely free. The levelling
in SW:ToR is easily the best story content in any MMO. Bioware is clearly
hoping to use this to draw new players into the game and get them spending money
in other areas.
In the world of MMORPGs, WoW and Rift have decided to jump
in the same boat. Their new expansions aren’t far from release with all the
standard content we have come to expect. More character levels, new dungeons,
raids and story. But surprisingly, the granddad of the genre Everquest is about
to get its nineteenth expansion. It goes to shows what happens when a game
carves out a dedicated fan-base.
And finally, Sony Online Entertainment has let slip the news
that Planetside 2 will be released before Christmas. It was announced as part
of the ‘Alpha Squad’ package which acts as a sort of pre-purchase. The game
will be free-to-play, but the package will grant beta access with in game items
and a chunk of Sony’s online games currency on full release. The market has
been dominated by MMORPGs for such a long time; it’s exciting to see the return
of MMOFPS. The alpha and beta footage released so far has looked fantastic. So
fingers crossed for an excellent end to the year.
