Actually, before I do carry on I had an interesting comment from my last article. I did one of those visual writing comments regarding the amount of MMO "goodness" coming out in 2007. One of my readers and fellow blogger Cuppycake seems to feel that there is a lot of "MMO mediocrity" coming out in 2007 and she got me thinking...way to go Cuppy :) 2006, I think we all can agree, was a very dry year for MMOs with the only new thing really launching was DDO. For 2007 we have 5 or 7 high profile MMOs launching, most of which are fantasy based. Cuppy is not the only person really feeling "meh" about the offerings for 2007, the MOG Army guys Garry and Ryan are kinda projecting that vibe as well. Personally, I don't think it's going to be that bad of a year...actually, I think 2007 will be the year that the MMO reaches a maturing point. I think the MMO genre is now reaching a point where it is establishing standards for itself, i.e. UI layout, death penalties, exp curves, quest expectations, PvP etc. All the MMO companies are putting all of these expected standards into their games and choosing a handful of new features and innovations to excel on. I think this is a good thing and after 2007 we'll start seeing the real innovations coming out of the industry, with even more standard features included from the 2007 games. It's the great circle of MMO life we're seeing here.
Switching gears completely, Spellborn is starting to make a bit of a ruckus right now. A couple of really good features that are being introduced in this one:
- No stats for armor. Actually, you can add stat increases to your armor by adding modifications called sigils. This is kind of like the slotting feature that BC brought to WoW. There whole drop system and crafting of new armor looks really interesting.
- No big raids...thank Zeus!! Presently, no MMO has broken away from this end game grind for gear we call raids. It's starting to become a relic and this whole raiding concept needs to be revisited. Looks like Spellborn is first up to bat with this reevaluation of the raiding end game.
- Combat is more action oriented than other MMO offerings right now. Their system kind of reminds me of Guild Wars, so there is a certain strategy to setting up your skills.
Lastly, for those that are interested, here is the current schedule for the LoTR beta. I unfortunately missed the end of beta event yesterday and as of today, the beta servers are dark and won't be up again until the Open Beta starts. Hope to see everyone in there on the 30th.
D out.
