I've spent a bunch of time playing this Elite-style MMOG. Anyone else tried it out?

--Dave

No, but I'm curious about it. What are your initial impressions? Can you be Han Solo and smuggle contrabrand?

I'm working on the review for CGM. I don't want to go into detail on it. Should save that for the write up I think...

I'm having a good time though. Think Elite with all human players and an alien race terrorizing the shipping lanes and you're on the right track.

The Jumpgate website which shows all players, their medals, credits, bounties, etc. has a lot of info and is vital to the game as well. JOSSH

--Dave

I spent hours on the beta of Jumpgate, and enjoyed it immensely. Being a huge fan of Elite and space trading sims in general, I really liked what NetDevil did with Jumpgate. It's for a fully dynamic trading model, a well-done experience system, interesting combat, and a great community that really enjoys role-playing as well as space combat.

I'll probably sign up for the full version eventually.

"I'm working on the review for CGM. I don't want to go into detail on it. Should save that for the write up I think..."

Then why the hell did you post soliciting comments? "I'd like to start a thread, but I don't actually want to talk about the game I started the thread about."

Because I was looking for some people here who might be playing it for the camraderie often enjoyed in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Since I "know" you folks, I thought it was a good opportunity to go hunting Squids with some of you.

Forgive me for asking such a simple question. If I'm not mistaken, Tom and friends were taunting everyone with CivIII recently and there's NO multiplayer in that at all.

Sheesh.

--Dave

It seems to me this game could be huge. An online Elite. I was amazed to see it on store shelves and realize it was released with hardly any fanfare or discussion. This game could in theory fulfill the potential of what Freelancer might have been (what ever happened to that game anyway?).

They're still working on Freelancer, Gordon. From what I saw at E3, it still looks quite promising. The "joystick-less" control scheme seemed odd at first, but after 5 minutes, I was enjoying myself immensely. :) Jumpgate, however, is out now, and is a great game in its own right.

Let me just break my own self-imposed silence to say "this game works". No lag, no dropped connections, no crashing, no strange in-game anomalies as experienced in other MMOG releases this year. They spent two years on Jumpgate and it shows.

--Dave

Sounds interesting. It takes a certain number of players to reach critical mass, though. How many players are on the jumpgate server at any given time?

4 words: dark age of camelot

You can monitor that yourself on their homepage for the game. http://jumpgate.3do.com

--Dave

Geesh. Now I'm tempted to buy jumpgate *AND* a headphone amplifier.

My employer better be giving me my performance bonus next week!

DAoC is the game to beat right now. Time to play some more!

Geesh. Jumpgate, DAoC, *AND* a headphone amplifier.

My employer better be giving me my comp time days next week!

Jumpgate is a very different beast from most MMOGs. It requires the player to actually posess some skill with a joystick. No push button fighting here.

--Dave

What's the largest number of ships you've seen in combat? How's the game do as far as lag?

Hey Mark, do you really love DAOC? The forum over there is starting to fill up with naysayers. Whats the real story?

And have you been involved in an invasion? I've seen some pretty neat screens:

http://cgi.camelotvault.ign.com/display/display.cgi?http://camelotvault.ign.com/thegame/0110/battle.jpg

These look pretty cool.

Naysayers? Which forum do you mean?

The official DAOC forums. Don't get me wrong, the initial response was almost 100% ecstatic, but the last day or two it seems like the Trolls are striking back. I'm just looking for an opinion to trust before the reviews come out.

Where are the official forums? I can't find anything on www.darkageofcamelot.com or on the Mythic website.

Also, to get back on topic, I see Jumpgate got a good review at Gamespot.

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/reviews/0,10867,2819087,00.html

http://camelotvault.ign.com/

This is what I've taken for official.

I really like it, but if you didn't like EQ, I'm not sure you'll like this game. As one player in game told me as we chatted, "It's like they fixed everything in EQ that players complained about."

It's run around and kill monsters and get XP and level up, so if that doesn't appeal to you, you should stay away. The multiplayer aspect of these games can be quite compelling, though.

Oh, about invasions, that's only for high level players. You have to be at least level 15, and the potential issue here I see is that you can be killed by any level of player. So a level 40 can take you out. It makes me wonder if the RvR makes sense to even try until you're really high level.

Mark,

I was just wondering what you thought of Asheron's Call. I'm not a very big fan of EQ, but I've been playing AC for 2 years now. I don't really hear much about it outside of this past week or so what with the expansion coming out.

Just curious what you thought of my fave MMOORRPPGG..

Spigot

I'm loving every minute of DAoC so far. Have a 12th level Shaman on Pellinor, a 10th level Druid on Percival, and I've been using Merlin as my "Lets test drive Albonia" server.

The DAoC boards on Camelot Vault have been invaded by the EQ "Whineplay" style people now. It was once a great place to get information but has turned into a place for people to complain that they can't solo, group, get tons of gold, make magic items without practicing, and summon Thor all while eating lunch.

Mythic, however, is having a minor connectivity problem for a small percentage of their people right now. Lucky for me, I'm not in that small percent. I haven't been disconnected due to connection problems in over a week.

On the invasion front, I've been told you should wait until 30th before even trying to join an invasion force. The problem is going to be bored level 50 people preying on 30th level folks in the frontier. Not looking forward to that, but at least you can still level in your own lands up to 50th, although not as effectively as you could on the frontier.

So, Mark, what class and which server you playing on?

Spigot, I didn't really get into AC. I've been thinking about trying it again with the new expansion, but the time you have to put into these games is so daunting.

Bill M. and Mike L. who post here are big AC players.

Jim, I'm playing a cleric on Lancelot. He's level 10 now and solos quite well, although I group more in DAoC than I seemed to do in EQ.

I like EQ, but I think this sums up the difference between the two. In EQ to determine direction, you have to develop a sense heading skill, which requires that you use the skill thousands of times to build it up. It's senseless button mashing. In DAoC they put a compass in the display. All you have to do is glance to know your direction.

I wouldn't be surprised if DAoC forces Verant to do something about the downtime in EQ. It just isn't fun and DAoC has practically eliminated it.

Come on Mark, you can give us more than that. How about a 60 second review on the main page?

I could get behind a review based on graphics, the stability, the control scheme, the travel times, or character variety. It would be hard to take seriously any review of the whole game, however. There is just too much to see and experience before you can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the game as a whole.

At 12th level, I have been in a grand total of 1 dungeon. I ended up on the frontier once by accident at 3rd level, but in no way could I tell you if frontier hunting is an asset to the game. I have explored every city in the 3 realms, but there are places I just can't go yet due to the fact that I die a horrible death 5 seconds after stepping off the road in these areas. Bottom line, a person can only review the parts of the game that they have experienced. I know this draws a big "Duh" from most of you, but I have read both postitive and negative reviews of DAoC that are so wildly inaccurate that you might as well use them as liner for your birdcage. They aren't reviews at all, they are merely first impressions.

I would love to read an Early Hours though.

I agree about a review being incomplete, but the readers want reviews *now*. What are you going to do? You can't wait a year and review these games.

Heck, with all the time I put into EQ, I didn't see a lot of places.

I've been trying to get Tom to play this game. I'd love to read about how Trevor handles being a knight in the realm of Albion.

Hehe, I can just picture Trevor saying "Have at thee!" to every lippy Albonian and wondering why he can't kill every merchant he sees.

"Oh, this is stupid! If you hit a guy with a sword, he's going to die. This game isn't very realistic. And where's my frag counter?"

I undertand, Mark. And I know reviews have to be timely or they're useless. People want to know if they should pick up the game tomorrow, not 6 months from now. I would just like to see in the reviews that they are reviewing what they've experienced so far. Too many times I have seen a game discounted or praised based on a few days of gameplay. Devil My Cry was a killer game until the end, at which time it turned into something entirely different and confusing. No where did I see that mentioned on the net reviews. I was under the impression that the reviewers had played the game to completion.

And I know you can't camplete every game before you write a review about it. Games like Baulder's Gate II or Fallout would have had reviews published months after the game was released. I don't want to wait that long any more than anyone else does.

Hell, I guess I just don't know what I want. :) I want information NOW, but I want it complete and accurate. Those two things just don't go hand in hand. Just call me the typical consumer.

Well, its too late. DAOC is under my desk here at work. I doubt I'll really like it, but I couldn't stop myself from reading the stupid DAOC forum (Its good? Its bad. Its bad? Its good). So for 40 bucks I've bought some sanity.

But on a related note, I wish you and Tom would write more 60 second reviews/previews/etc. Those are really what caught my eye about Qt3 (no, it wasn't wumpus). There is so much fluff on the web, and you guys have managed to create something sharp and meaningful in a very small space. Do it again! DO IT!

We're going to write more -- that's the plan, at least. Tom was out of town and I've been busy with other work and playing DAoC.

It's EverQuest all over again with that game. It's sucked me in completely.

BTW, I chatted with Mythic today and they already have 92,000 active accounts. The game is a smash hit. They will probably exceed UO in a month or two and be number two behind EQ. Don't know if they'll catch EQ, but they might. Before it was released I thought they'd struggle to get to 100,000 players. So much for my industry acumen.

"There is so much fluff on the web, and you guys have managed to create something sharp and meaningful in a very small space."

That, or else they're very, very lazy. ;)

I guess I'm number 92,001. I had fun tonight with my 4th level Viking. I can't decide if I want to remain a full warrior or branch off into some Thane type stuff. I'm on the Gone Gold Pellinor server so I think I might try and join their guild. Look for Ashlander of Midgard!

The Thane sounds really interesting. I like it that the Thane gets some spells with the Stormcalling abilities. Gives you a little variety.

Here's a good link to read about the Thane.

http://camelot.allakhazam.com/class.html?realm=Midgard&cclass=24

Allakhazam's is a good site for DAoC info.

Here is a great spot for info:

Camelot Class Boards

I also threw together some first impressions for playnet (shameless self-promotion) you can read those here.

No one can comment on the game as a whole but from my perspective they have really hit a home run with this one. They have fixed literally every issue with EverQuest and added so much more. Mark covers a lot of these in his new GameSpin. The one thing I would add is you can actually play this game in short bursts of an hour or two and feel like you really accomplished something. Every class can solo and there are tasks and quests to do to gain experience and money without a group.

Overall I am very very impressed so far. I have 4 characters of 11th, 9th, 7th, and 6th level and each has been fun to play for different reasons and each feels useful in a group.

Oh, and if you are interested I am on the Bedevere server (Albion Realm) and you can find me as:

Xaroc (9th level Friar)
Gaellyn (11th level Sorcerer)
Beorand (7th level Wizard)
Cendarr (6th level Armsman)

I have a few people I group with at various levels but there is usually room for more.

"I chatted with Mythic today and they already have 92,000 active accounts. The game is a smash hit. They will probably exceed UO in a month or two and be number two behind EQ."

I'm just curious how many people will stick around when they have to start paying the monthly fee. Although the response to the game seems so uniformly positive that it might not make much difference.

They'll get some drop off when the fees hit, but I suspect they'll still retain a lot. Last I heard EQ has 400,000 accounts, UO over 200,000. and AC people guess has about 100,000. A *lot* of people don't mind paying for these games.

What has surprised me is that I'm seeing more ex-AC players than I expected. I figured DAoC would draw from EQ fans as its main source of subscribers, but roughly 40% of the people I grouped with are ex or current AC subscribers.

I'd like to see, 3 months from now, if DAoC ends up reducing the subscriptions of these other games. I know the EQ, AC, and UO migraters, as a whole, aren't cancelling their other accounts yet. They are waiting to see if DAoC is good enough to make it their one-and-only to replace their current addictions.

I was fairly bored with the upper level game of EQ and the low level game was a boring contest to see who could twink more than their neighbors. I'm not cancelling my subscription to EQ yet, but it doesn't have anything that will bring me back...even, dare I saw, Shadows of Luclin. The expansion doesn't appear to be enough to get me back in. Why should I pay $40 for a new race, new class, and new land when I have DAoC with 12 new races, 20+ new classes, and 3 new realms to explore?

I think a lot of MMOG fans will keep accounts in two games. DAoC may not hurt the established ones all that much. I think EQ's bulletproof for the most part. The expansion will include a localized version so Koreans can play with Korean text now, etc. Even if DAoC managed to siphon off 50,000 - 100,000 EQ players, Sony could probably pick up that many new ones with the expansion and an overseas push.

I'm gonna keep two maybe. Definitely WW2OL, as I've stated before I think thats a great game, and maybe DAOC. The first 2 nights were fun, we'll see in a month.

"I'm working on the review for CGM."

When is this review coming out Dave? I was gonna wait for the review, but I put it on my Xmas list since it was only $10. I poked around the message boards and am starting to wonder if it's even worth that. Also, I've never played a MMOG before.

It's in the current issue of the mag. The one with Morrowind on the cover. January I believe... Four stars is the score. It's on the facing page from Tom Chick's excellent Rails Across America review and I don't say that just to suck up. His is a great review of a great game. In fact, Rails is my strategy game of the year.

As for Jumpgate, it's not without some faults, but the overall experience is great. There's a strong player community in the game although it's definitely struggling to maintain an audience now (about a month and a half later). For a song ($10) it's a hell of a lot of good entertainment, especially if you were a fan of Elite.

I've got a review of Spider-Man in the same issue and there are numerous reviews and articles from a few of the guys that post here at Qt3 including the usual suspects like Ben Sones and the staff of CGM of course. I think it's one of the best issues they've put together this year...though the brown cover has GOT to go. ;)

--Dave

I got that a few days ago, and it seemed like every other page had something by "Tom Chick" on it. Does he have a lot of gambling debts?

No...he's a full-time freelancer. He has the time a lot of others don't to just sit there and play, play, play as far as I'm aware. I do this part-time.

--Dave

"No...he's a full-time freelancer. He has the time a lot of others don't to just sit there and play, play, play as far as I'm aware. I do this part-time."

He's a private dancer. A dancer for money. And any old music will do.

I haven't even heard of Elite, but I've only been PC gaming since '95, so maybe that was before my time. I'll probably pick up that issue to validate my wanting it for Christmas. :) I've been meaning to subscribe, but just haven't gotten around to it. (and I'm not saying that to suck up either.)

Thanks for the info.

Yeah, I noticed that Chick had a lot of stuff in there, too. And a lot of good stuff, really.

And I AM just saying that to suck up. :-)