Fallen Earth: Freetime Killer

If you haven’t been able to guess from the title I’ve been playing Fallen Earth lately. I picked it up to be another trial MMO to review for the blog and then move on, unfortunately I haven’t stopped playing it for two days.

First off I’ll say that the game is not for everyone. If you are the type of person who see’s a game and says “ugh, I could never play that game, those graphics are from three years ago” then you might not want to play FE. If you can’t stand MMO’s without classes, or two much information will make you frustrated and you just want to level, hit a trainer and buy skills prechosen for you, then this game might not be for you. That’s not to say that people like that are in any way wrong, just letting you know that it might not appeal to you.

Second there are some design decisions made by Icarus Studios, creators of Fallen Earth, that I absolutely do not like. These aren’t game breakers but they are annoying. For instance I received a quest from a poor old farmer lady to kill off some wolves that were attacking her sheep. Only after twenty minutes of frustration did I realize that the large pack of “Starving Wolves” right outside the gate was NOT the threat she was speaking of, but instead it was the non-aggroing well fed wolves about five miles out into the desert….

Another small complaint is that often times, if you are looking at a skill or stat, the actual benefit is buried inside a wall of text. Now I know it’s an RPG and I am not averse to reading massive amounts of text, but put the benefits down by themselves so I can, at quick glance, know what I am looking at.

The game is by no means noob friendly, though the community is great, especially in the in game help chat channel. Most people end up utilizing this channel more than anything else in the game, and the people in it were always friendly and helpful. You do only get 100 messages a play session on the trial though, to cut down on gold spammers, but a simple relog fixes that if you have more trouble.

Expect much more to come on Fallen Earth in the future.

Is preventing piracy worth killing a market?

Congratulations are due to Ubisoft. As of today I haven’t heard of any confirmed cracks for Assassin’s Creed II (There are rumors, and there are counter rumors, and there are rumors that it is out there but is gimped in some way). Of course there was that small hiccup that prevented people from playing the game for over 12 hours, but that is a small price to pay to prevent piracy.

I had planned for this blog post to slam Ubisoft’s DRM, talk about how worthless it is and how even if it works people will boycott the games that have it and we will show Ubisoft that we won’t suffer broken products! Sadly I don’t think that this is the case at all.

I don’t believe that their addition of ridiculous DRM has hurt the games sales on the PC in any way. I also don’t believe that it has helped the sales, after all pirates probably aren’t going to buy your game anyway.

We won’t know for sure until sales figures come out but my guess is that the public has spoken. We may rail against all things DRM but it hasn’t stopped us from purchasing these games (I sadly bought it on the 360 long before I heard about the DRM included in the PC version. If I had known I never would have bought any copy). And don’t think that hearing about the PC’s DRM and deciding to get it on a console is going to “show” Ubisoft anything. They still got your money, and the money of thousands of other irate gamers.

We like to think that we stick to our guns and if a company does something terrible we won’t suffer their crap, but the truth of the matter is that Ubisoft games will continue to sell on PC and console, Activision games like Modern Warfare 3, 4, 5 and 6 (all coming in 2011 probably) will sell, and there is nothing we WILL do about it.

They called our bluff, smacked us in the face, and we will still come crawling back throwing money at them when the time comes. Well played Ubisoft, well played.

I’m going to go take a hot shower and debate changing my hobby from gaming to wood carving.

Let’s Play Everquest II: Skulls and Cadavers 4

Donning his new robes, and finally getting a good meal, Amuntoth was all set to continue on his way.

Calnozz J’Melvirr: “Woah there friend!”

“I don’t remember you at all…”

Calnozz: “That’s not important. What is important is that I have a business proposition for you.”

“Not interested peasant…”

Calnozz: “Not even for several silver?”

“Well, I guess I can’t just walk away without hearing your proposition, that would be rude.”

Let’s Play Everquest II: Skulls and Cadavers 3

When we last left our hero…

When we last left Amuntoth the Evil Necromancer he had just left the starting town, bound for the wide world. Also he plans to own it all.

“Ahh, some of my subjects. It looks like they’ve made camp out in my wilderness. I’ll just have to see if they have any food, as I seem to have not bought any when I got to the surface.”

Let’s Play Star Trek Online: Captains Log

Ensigns Log, Stardate 63631.9.

My name is Amuntoth of Clan Teklik and for the last year I have been a Starfleet officer. Things weren’t looking up merely an hour ago, and I’m not sure how I like the current turn of events.

Amuntoth D’Teklik. It’s okay to drool.

As of ten minutes ago I was being escorted to the brig. It turns out Starfleet isn’t very keen on it’s officers recruiting enlisted into what they deem “cult organizations”. Thankfully, maybe, I’m no longer on my way to the brig. You can thank the Borg for that.