I bought Dragon Age: Origins a while ago but put it aside for a future day for two reasons.  The first being that I have too many games as it is and not enough time to play any of them.  The second being that I wanted to finish reading the prequel novel, Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, before diving into the game.

The Stolen Throne is not typical of the books I read, and to be honest, I didn’t really expect it to be any good.  I picked it up on a lark, thinking it’d be interesting to get some more background info on the lore of Dragon Age.  The reader reviews on Amazon were surprisingly positive however, so my hopes began to elevate a little.

I finished the book over the Christmas holidays and quite frankly, it’s kind of bad and I had to push myself to continue reading it.  I will not be reading the follow-up novel.

There are a lot of problems with the book, but my biggest issue was the over-use of tired, old, fantasy clichés.  There’s the prophesizing witch that lives in the mysterious foggy forest, the over-the-top evil guy, and the young, naive prince who rises to heroic stature seemingly overnight.  I kept thinking that the book felt like the final project of a “How to Write Fantasy in 21 Steps” course.

I really hope that the game does a better job than the novel at providing a sense of scale to the world.  In the novel, it apparently doesn’t take any time at all to travel from one edge of the map to the other, as the characters in the book end up criss-crossing the map seemingly at random.

Fortunately, the book has not dampened my enthusiasm for the game.  Like I said, I bought the book thinking it’d probably be bad, and it lived up to those expectations.

My Mage, pictured above standing outside the city of Varanas in the free to play MMO Runes of Magic, hit level ten last night after questing in the Howling Mountains region.

This game has been a pleasant surprise for me thus far, perhaps due in no small part to the complete lack of expectations I had for it.  The first ten levels have been fairly standard as far as MMOs go.  I’ve killed various creatures for their various parts for whoever wanted them for whatever reason.  No new ground has been broken here, but still, I’m enjoying it.

One of the more unique aspects to Runes of Magic is the dual class system.  When you reach level 10, you can choose a secondary class which will give you access to certain skills and spells from that class in addition to all of your primary class skills.

As it stands right now, that’s about all I know of the dual class system.  Because I jumped into this game blind, not knowing much about it, I need to research the mechanics of it a little more in depth.  I’m not entirely sure which class I’ll choose for my secondary.  I’m leaning towards Priest at this point, but that may very well change after I do some reading.  Aside from the dual class system I’m not sure if I’ve been making good choices with my skill progression upon level up.  With each level increase you receive talent points that can be spent on upgrading your skills.  So far I’ve just been maxing out all of my existing skills, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are probably skills that don’t need to be maxed.

After ten levels in the game there are a few things that stand out for me.  I really like the graphics and it performs well on my aging computer.  The server population seems quite healthy too, as I was running into people all night.  I’m not going to go crazy and suggest that this game can replace one of the triple-A titles out there, such as WoW, but as far as free to play MMOs go however, Runes of Magic looks like a gem.

For the past week or so I’ve been feeling a pull back to MMOs and with all the talk of the random dungeon LFG tool introduced to World of Warcraft, I’m getting dangerously close to re-subscribing.  The problem with that is I don’t want to re-subscribe.  Not yet, not until Cataclysm comes out.

I’ve found it to be quite liberating not having an active subscription to a game.  By “liberating” I don’t mean that I’ve finally freed myself to work on that novel I’ve had brewing in my head, nor am I doing anything else remotely productive.  Rest assured, the “liberating” that I’ve felt simply means I’ve found time to enjoy other video games, so let’s not get crazy and start thinking that I’m actually doing something productive.

I recently finished Fallout 3, which never would have happened were I subscribed to an MMO, and I’ve also cracked open a bunch of other games I had bought and never played.  It’s been nice, although my time wastage is now spread out among all these different things, and sometimes I think I’d prefer to have all my wasted time directed at one focal point, which is just a long and stupid way of saying that I’m feeling a pull back to MMOs.

In an attempt to scratch that itch I decided to check out Runes of Magic.  It’s free, it looks good, and it’s an MMO.  I’m seven levels in right now, playing as a mage.  From what I’ve seen so far it feels very much like WoW, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that it doesn’t hit you over the head with all the stuff you can buy for real money.

I like it.  Let’s see how long it lasts.

Just a quick follow up to my last post regarding the difference in advertising between World of Warcraft and Everquest II…

I read somewhere yesterday that all inactive EverQuest II accounts have been made active for a few weeks of free game time.  I would have thought that I’d receive an email from SOE saying as much, but no, I had to find out about it elsewhere.  When I got seven free days in WoW, they sent me an email that practically screamed as such.

Fortunately I still have EQII installed so the patching process didn’t take long and I popped into the game for a few minutes.  Upon entering the game as my Berserker, I received a message that some of my character skill choices had been reset, and I noticed that my guy was mostly naked.  For whatever reason a bunch of my gear was in my inventory and needed to be re-attuned; there was no indication as to why.  As for the skill choices, I took a look at the screen and was completely lost.  I think it would take me a few hours to remember how to play my characters again if I ever decided to come back to EQII (which is extremely unlikely).

What I really wanted to do was check out the damage done to Freeport as mentioned in the Will of a Tyrant cinematic trailer.  The trailer claims that “war has erupted in Freeport” and that “chaos rules the streets”, but in reality, it all looks rather lame.  I saw a few staged fights going on interspersed here and there, but I would hardly call it chaos.  Not to mention the fact that the Frostfell decorations are up, which kind of detracts from the whole impression of chaos.

I logged off soon after, feeling very underwhelmed at the whole thing.

EverQuest II and World of Warcraft are the two MMOs that I’ve spent the most time with; three and a half years subscribed to EQII, and approximately one and a half with WoW.  Despite no longer having an active subscription to either one, I still follow the news from both games as much as I can.

Both games received major patches recently and both released cinematic trailers for their respective patches.  The first one I saw was for EQII’s Game Update 54, Will of a Tyrant.  Here it is, courtesy of YouTube:

I’ve always thought EverQuest II could use some work in the advertising department.  The trailers they’ve released over the years have never really done much for me, but my immediate reaction to this one was generally positive.  I find it to be more “cinematic” than previously released trailers, with the sweeping camera movements, the music, and the semblance of a story behind it (albeit small), as opposed to randomly inserted action scenes without context.

Soon after, World of Warcraft released a trailer for Patch 3.3, Fall of the Lich King.  Once again, courtesy of YouTube:

World of Warcraft, in contrast to EQII, has never lacked for advertising, consistently releasing top quality trailers.  To me, there is an obvious difference in quality between these two trailers, and yes, I think the WoW one is significantly better.  The camera work, the pacing, and the music are all masterfully executed, not to mention the story.  Anyone who has played Warcraft III and its expansion will be familiar with the story of Arthas and its significance in Warcraft lore, and for over a year now, WoW has been re-telling that story, building its players up for the events depicted in the trailer.  For over a year now, players have been chomping at the bit to get at Arthas/The Lich King, and as I watch the trailer I can’t help but feel an epic sense of anticipation.  Even though the chances that I’d even be able to take part in any of the fights depicted in the trailer are slim to none, I still feel an urge to resubscribe.  That is some great advertising.