Monk for Sale

I finally had the time to sit down and enjoy my beta invitation for D&D Online: Unlimited today. I've always wanted to try this game since its initial launch back in 2006. But, since I was just out of school and jobless, I couldn't afford the monthly subscription back then. By the time I got myself a job a lot of good MMORPG were already out in the market, and DDO's number of subscribers have been falling rapidly. So I skipped it and jumped into Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft and then Warhammer Online.

A few months ago, however, I was surprised when Turbine announced that they're restructuring DDO's model, making it a free-2-play game. So I dug hard into it (that's how I got my beta invitation) and now that I've tried the beta version of the game, all I can say about it is: not bad. Not bad at all.

Flurry of Blows FTW!

If you've played any D&D 3 to 3.5 games (like Neverwinter Nights, Temple of Elemental Evil, or Icewind Dale) and liked them, then you'll definitely like this one too. I rolled as an Elven Cleric on my first run and everything seems to be intact -the Elven and Cleric feats/abilities. With my healing abilities and spells, I pretty much breezed through dungeons by myself. Leveling, however, is different, and also difficult, in this game. Because you must gain 5 ranks first before you reach level 2, and another 5 before your reach level 3. But each rank gives you an action point, which you can spend to buy an ability, improving your character a little bit.

Some classes and races, however, are not available to those with free accounts. These are called "premiums". So if you want to play as a Drow Ranger, then you better shell out some real cash and buy the Drow race. As for me, since I couldn't resist because it's my favorite class, I paid real money just so I could play the Monk. All premium classes and race costs 595 Turbine points. So I bought a bundle of 900 points for $12 in order to unlock the Monk. But it really is a premium class since they've put some new bells and whistles, like the elemental stance and finishing moves, to make the Monk a much more martial arts oriented class.

All in all, D&D Online: Unlimited is shaping up to be an nice game. Some people argues that Turbine has locked and reserved all the good features of the game from non-subscribers, and that you'll end up paying more by buying points. But I just don't see that. The free content is fine by itself. Of course, things might be different when the game goes live this early August. But, hey, it's free. You've got nothing to lose here.

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D&D Online: Beta Invitation

Normally, I don't get anything good in my e-mails. Just a bunch of Facebook alerts and Viagra ads. That's why I was so surprised when I opened my Hotmail account and found a closed beta invitation to test out the newly structured D&D Online: Unlimited. Unfortunately, I'm too tired and too sleepy to try it out tonight. So I won't probably be able to give it a shot until this weekend.

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DND MMO

It's pretty evident that I've been slacking off with my blog posts. We're already half-way through the month of June and I still only have 5 posts in here. That's lame. The truth is, however, I'm having way too much fun playing Warhammer Online and it sucks my time out of everything. Normally, I'm not much into MMO's but this game is different. Plus, I've joined an awesome guild that has a lot of in-game events going on.

But, knowing myself, I'll get bored with this game and quit later, if not sooner. The most I could see myself playing Warhammer Online is about a year more. That's it. So what's next for me? Well, Champions Online is just on the horizon. Then there's also BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. I also found a couple of noteworthy Dungeons & Dragons-based MMOs that are being developed right now. Here's a couple that I found.

Neverwinter Nights MMO
A lot of people are familiar with BioWare's Neverwinter Nights (NWN). But many don't know that the original Neverwinter Nights, by Stormfront Studios, was actually the first graphic MMORPG that ran from 1991 to 1997. So, now, rumors have been floating around that Cryptic Studios is actually developing a new NWN MMO for Atari. That's pretty interesting. I'd really love to see a well developed DND game.

Urban Arcana
I was taking a gander at Cryptic Studios website, trying to look for some info regarding their NWN MMO, and found this picture (above). If you examine it closely, the guys with the octopus heads look a lot like Illithids, which are monstrous humanoids from the DND universe. But the setting seems to be in modern times. So this could be an Urban Arcana (DND with guns!) MMORPG in the works. If it is, then my dream came true.

Dungeons & Dragons Online
This one's actually been around for more than 3 years now. I just didn't get into it. However, they're restructuring their subscription method from pay-to-play into free-to-play. So instead of paying every month, you can play this game for free. In exchange, you'll just have to buy your in-game items in cold cash...credit card works too.

Well that's my MMO forecast. Hopefully, I'd be able to snap out of my addiction before these games come out. I don't think I can, however. Especially with good games, like Star Wars: The Old Republic, coming out next year. And, if it's really in development, I definitely can't resist playing a game set in Urban Arcana.

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First Impressions: Storm of Zehir

My party of four. An archer and a thief. A fighter and a priest.

I thought Fallout 3 had me pegged already, at least for a couple more weeks. But ever since I installed Storm of Zehir, the 2nd expansion of Neverwinter Nights 2, I had a hard time pulling myself away from this game. What I like about this D&D game is that it allows you to create a whole party, much like in Icewind Dale, instead of just one character. Secondly, gameplay here is different. Instead of fast traveling on the map, you're going to have to explore the whole world by foot. Exploring the map will bring about random encounters and hidden places. You can avoid hostile encounters by hiding, and you can only find hidden places if you have the appropriate skill. Hopefully, I'd get over this soon. I still need to finish a Fallout 3 review.

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A Timeline of Gaming Pt. 2

Here's the next, and the last, installment of my Timeline of Gaming series. During my last post, I covered the first five highlights of my 22 years in gaming. So, now, I'm going to list the last five highlights that happened from my teen years up to this date. Honestly, I wasn't that active as a gamer in the early 90's. It's because, during those years, I forayed into extreme sports (skateboarding) and was engulfed in the world of music. But gaming affected me profoundly by the time I got back to it.

And so it continued on to...

1996 - PC Gaming
Favorite Game: Fallout 2

During my last years in High School, the computer was getting common in households. Internet cafes were also slowly sprouting up in my area. Since I didn't own a computer until '98, I'd frequent the cafes to research and write school papers. Sometimes, when I get my work done early, I'd poke around their installed games, and that's how I got into PC gaming. The first games I played were real-time and turn-based strategy games like Red Alert and Heroes of Might and Magic. Their gameplay was so much different and advance than the Platformers and Beat 'Em Ups that I played on any Nintendo console. I was so astounded by them that I became a PC gamer for life.

1997 - Trading Card Game
Favorite Game: Magic: The Gathering

When Playstation was becoming the craze, I went low tech with trading card games. It started when I saw a fellow comics aficionado, from my elementary days, playing a card game called Magic: The Gathering. Desperate for more opponents, he taught me the rules and gave me a starting deck the very next day. After that, it was only a matter of time until I became addicted with the game. Addicted because I quit school and broke up with my girlfriend just to play it. While I only played Magic for two years (because I needed to stop before my addiction gets out of hand), I actually made a lot of friends through it.

1998 - Pen & Paper Role-Playing
Favorite Game: D20 Modern

A lot of people started playing Magic: The Gathering in my school, even the whole Tau Gamma Phi fraternity, and it started to feel like a religion. But if Magic was the religion, Dungeons & Dragons was the cult. An older fellow "Magickero" -who's also my English teacher and the theater director of my school- suggested that we should try playing table-top role-playing. Since I was already inside Geekdom, but haven't thoroughly explored it, I capitulated and agreed to the idea. Like Magic, I was hooked right away. For months, we spent plenty of hours on a derelict cottage behind a friend's house, pretending as fighters and mages, pillaging villages and raping elven queens. Not only the game was fun but it was also therapeutic, a quick and temporary escape from reality. Once you enter a campaign, all your problems are forgotten the entire duration of your stay.

1999 - Forum-Based Role-Playing
Favorite Game: RPoL.net

Before the end of the century, Internet Cafes where running amok in my area. Two main reasons that people go to cafes are either chatting or LAN gaming. I don't like to chat, and while I do enjoy a small dose of Counter-Strike, I'd rather be role-playing in a forum. After my RPG group went separate ways, I craved to play more campaigns. Since it's impossible to find a group in Iloilo (Philippines), I turned to online role-playing. This time, however, I was more than a player, I was also a Dungeon Master. But I was so new to the game I don't have mastery of the rules. So I failed as a DM, and my players started dropping out of my campaigns. Although, through planning and plotting campaigns, creating background stories for my non-playable character, I learned that I love writing.

2007 - Nintendo DS
Favorite Game: The World Ends With You

I never intended to buy any other gaming platform, not a console or a portable. PC already keeps me occupied. But when I was working night shifts, last year, I got so bored that I needed some form of entertainment. Reading was allowed but I'd get sleepy if I did. So I asked my boss if I could play some games on my cellphone. She told me it's fine if it doesn't disturb the patients and as long as I could hear the phones and overhead announcements. A month after, I got myself a Nintendo DS. Primarly, I thought the DS would only serve as a placeholder whenever I can't play PC games. But with its innovative and unique games, I just can't put it down even at home where I have access to my PC.

So that's the last leg of my short series, A Timeline of Gaming. I hope you guys enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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