Seems like yesterday that I was last updating Ratosorf’s adventures in Everquest 2. Had to go back and update where Ratosorf lives too, it’s no longer at 8 Indigo Road in Neriak, he’s moved on up to a two room apartment at the Blood Haze Inn in West Freeport. Mo money, bigger place, let’s hope it doesn’t go to this rat’s head.

Ratosorf remains my highest level character ever (why do they call these ‘toons’ anyway?) and has now joined the ranks of the 40s (almost 50s, level 49 as of this writing). Since my last update I’ve spent a lot more time tradeskilling bringing my sage level up to 47. The tradeskill system like the broker system in Everquest 2 are a lot of fun and add other playability factors that I hadn’t experienced before in other MMORPG. Now I’m going to be disappointed in new MMORPG that don’t have fun tradeskill and broker systems.

Let’s recap several different types of games within games, if you will, offered in Everquest 2:

• rare item harvesting – this is where you go around searching for rare items by mining gems, foresting, trapping and gathering from roots and shrubs. There are 8 tiers of which I can only harvest up to tier 5 at my current level. It’s fun traveling Norrath in search of rare items. Several of these rare items are crucial ingredient for crafting Adept III mastercrafted spells created by my sage.

  Tip: Instances have harvesting opportunities too. Try going in a lower level instance and you’ll find you can walk around and harvest aplenty without any monsters attacking. This can open up all sorts of rare item harvesting opportunities.

• brokering – mentioned in my last post that I was enjoying the whole world of selling items through the broker system. I learned there are special containers you can purchase or even make if you are the right tradeskill profession in order to allow selling more items through the broker. The game here is to figure out how to price your items so they will sell quickly and yet at a good price. I’ve been trying to focus on listing items that sell for at least 1 gold unless they are sold in bulk. Long time EQ2 players have an advantage here if they have the Veteran’s 3 year Reward in that they have the ability to cut the broker’s fees by 50%.

  You can also encourage other players to purchase items directly from your house. If you set permissions in your house to ‘visit’ and use a sales container like the Salesman’s Crate (all items) or Scroll Stand (for spells) it will display “Visit (your character name) at (home location.”

• Unlock the map locations – this works really well for those with invisibility. Just travel around and unlock areas of the map you haven’t visited. Keep in mind that some monsters can see through invisibility. It’s also nice if you have some sort of escape spell so you can quickly escape if too high level monsters attack. Ratosorf’s necromancer pet has bought me time in some hazardous areas to flee.
• Power transmuting levels – you’ll need one higher level character (level 10+ adventurer or level 2+ artisan) with new secondary transmuting skill and a brand new or low level character on the same server. Position your higher level character in the bank and camp to the newbie character with command (/camp NAME) where NAME is the name of your newb. Now use your newb to attack monsters in search of treasured items that can be shared through the shared bank slot to the higher level character which can be transmuted to level up the transmuting skill.

  The challenge here is to level up along with the transmuting skill. You can ‘cheat’ this game by simply turning off adventure experience and combat experience, but it is more fun to let the setting go. If you level the lower character too fast then the treasure drops might be too high a level item to be able to be transmuted.  Formula is: RAW Transmuting Skill / 5 + 5 max levels. If you don’t want to do the math, you can click on any high level item to transmute and the chat window will display the Transmuting Skill required. Level 12 items, for example, require transmuting skill of 35.

  Some things you might want to know about transmuting (see this forum post for even more transmuting info):
  1. you can add transmuting as a secondary skill as a level 2+ artisan or level 10+ adventurer
  2. to get the transmuting skill visit the transmuting trainer near the Butcher Block Mountains docks accessible via Freeport –> Commonlands –> Nektulos Forest –> Thundering Steppes –> take the boat at the dock. You can also find another transmuting trainer at the Kelethin, or Gnomeland Security in Steamfont
  3. the transmuting trainers sell additional level transmuting recipes

  Tip: You can also use this lower level character for low level rare item harvesting.

I’m sure there are more games within games, especially when it comes to guilds. I just became a recruit for a guild and am beginning to explore that world as well. The guild I was in contact for membership seems laid back and not hardcore raiding like some of the guild recruiters I spoke with. Sure I’ll have more to report back on with what I’m learning there. Hey, it just might be that I get another first someday: my first max level character in an MMORPG.

Do you have any games within games in Everquest 2 or other MMORPG worlds you like playing?

After seeing this, I just have to say that it’s not only a brilliant way of mixing a virtual world with reality, but it’s definitely a sweet art form to play music against gaming themes. Reminds me of that one guitarist, House the Grate. In any case, Andrea Vadrucci plays what looks to be a full drum set in the only way a professional does it.

Eat your heart out Rockband fans. Just you try to to match those skills.

On January 4, 2006 I added a premium annual membership to Second Life.  A few months later a second one. Dropped the second one already and just now a little after entering new year 2009, I have downgraded this one as well. Goodbye to that L$500 every week stipend that was grandfathered in. Oh well.

One minor snag in the process. While going through the process, I still had 16 meters of land donated to our VTOR group land space (under the SL Blog Bar group) and received the error message when trying to downgrade my account to the free basic account:

This was easy enough to fix, although as you can see the message doesn’t go out of the way to help you figure it out. Just login to the world right click on your avatar, choose groups, and then go to the “Land & L$” tab as shown below and make sure “Your Contribution” has a 0 in every group.

Once you do that the process to downgrade works and leads to an exit survey, which I’ll let the picture speak for itself.

So in a few days I’ll join the land of the freebie members again. I would expect my usage of Second Life in 2009 will be greatly reduced, perhaps eventually to the point where the software will be uninstalled by year end but that’s just a guess. Had high hopes for Second Life but in the end it didn’t measure anywhere close to the hype. What I didn’t put in the downgrade survey is that they ruined it by making it too first life.

Gambling, remember that? I find it interesting that inside the game Everquest II there is a Gigglegibber Goblins’ lotto where you can win a bunch of coins by matching all six numbers. Can this currency be traded in real dollars like Linden Lab allows in Second Life? Not from Sony, no, but there are a bunch of virtual currency brokers out there that will. The goblin lotto is very close to the ‘gambling’ that Linden Lab used to allow in Second Life. Is this the same as real world online gambling? I don’t think so, but apparently it Linden Lab felt it was and that decision changed the landscape of the business aspect interest for me with Second Life.

Anyway, no sense crying over spilled milk. I wish the rest of readers who still have Second Life premium accounts the best of luck. If you are keeping yours must admit I’m curious … why? If you canceled already, then why did you stop your premium membership? Anybody choose the more extreme cancel account route? Why?

Ick. Are you serious?

I mean who the heck would even approve of this project? It seems that Ernest & Young, Microsoft, Merill Lynch, and others are participating in some study where they can do audio/video conferencing in an online world. As much as I am all for telecommuting, and much of a fanboy of Sony’s more than anything else…. SERIOUSLY?!?!?!

Give me a break. In the corporate world, Cisco rules in the audio/video world because you need some serious bandwidth and understanding of that. Outside of that, there’s nothing that Home brings to the table that hasn’t already been done via voip. Believe me, when I say that I’ve sat on enough conference calls with Netmeeting while telecommuting to know that Home just isn’t it. Period. If it was, Second Life would have already had this sucker made when they released audio support.

Truthfully, these virtual worlds are just that. Virtual. It doesn’t help anyone any to have access to shop around, or what not when you’re trying to have a meeting. It’s just not made for that and it’s not work conducive. But dream on academia. I suppose one day we might want this, but not on this console and not until you can beat out the good ole’ web + audio conferencing one-two combo.

Is Mike Fritz the father of music videogaming? Back in the early 90s he was hired to write a script for a music videogame which had interest from rock sensation Aerosmith and was called Quest for Fame. This PC only game predates the 1998 Konami arcade game GuitarFreaks which I wrote about back in July and was nearly 15 years ahead of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith for consoles and the PC.

Boston.com has a good piece on Fritz recalling the Quest For Fame gameplay:

Players plug a "virtual guitar" into the computer to make music in the game. Fritz still owns a couple; they’re almost the same size as a real electric guitar and fairly heavy. Unlike the make-believe instrument in Guitar Hero, the Quest For Fame virtual guitar has strings, and there are no colorful push buttons on its neck.

Strings? Very cool. The whole five colored button guitar thing doesn’t appeal as much to me since I play a real guitar. And while I can play almost no songs on expert difficulty in these games I can play several songs on a real guitar. I guess this is one of those Virtual TO Reality moments where reality wins out.

I was intrigued by Quest For Fame and checked eBay to see if anybody had the game for sale. Indeed, there were two listings as of this writing with the cheapest buy it now price of $34.99, but CD only, no guitar. Apparently the guitar was sold separately with a serial port connection as gleaned from Wikipedia.

Another guitar-oriented videogame for the PC, one that allows you to be able to play using a real guitar, is planned to be released in 2009" called Guitar Rising.

Been keeping my eye on this one.

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Usually at $56.99USD, today only, you’ll find both versions for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 for $34.98USD. That’s a pretty great savings and you won’t likely to see this any cheaper anywhere else for a while until it becomes older and used.

I’ll admit that I don’t particular care for war games that much usually, but the Call of Duty series is actually pretty well done. In this next piece of the game, you’ll be able to wage war against the Japanese and the Germans in different campaigns. The different theaters offer features that were only in the multiplayer modes in the past games which brings a whole new level of game play. As with all FPS games, there is better lighting and more physics involved in the battles but it also brings in a great campaign mode called co-op campaign mode. This allows you to play campaigns with someone else and strategize and use two-player tactics that you weren’t able to before with these types of games.

Multiplayer wise? Same ole’ stuff as far as I can tell. Four player multiplayer or co-op split screen. Unlockable levels. But if you’re into the whole WWII type game, this will definitely be right up your alley. And it’s cheap only for today so strike while the iron is hot before it’s all gone.

It seems that while Hideo Kojima is not going to be in the director’s seat for the Metal Gear Solid movie, he’ll be working very closely with those that will be to make sure that the movie goes within the realm of his vision. Personally, I’d rather see the guy in the seat itself since he does such a fine job with directing every single game. What’s also interesting is that he has voiced in the interview that it’s definitely a possibility that there could be a game that is linked to the movie and that he was very interested in it.

Seems to me that Kojima isn’t dropping Snake after all. Now if only we can figure out how to get him to hire Hugh Jackman in as Snake…

Update 1/5/2009 3:47pm PST: Since this post was originally published Ratosorf has moved from his first humble abode to a nice two room apartment at the Blood Haze Inn in West Freeport.

8 Indigo Road in Neriak on the Oasis server is the first virtual home chosen for my Ratonga character in Everquest II. In fact, it’s only the second virtual home anywhere for one of my characters.

Sony’s MMORPG Everquest II has been drawing the majority of my gaming time lately, pulling me away from the rock and roll fun of Rock Band.  My evil Ratonga Necromancer has also become my highest level character in any MMORPG.

Don’t laugh, level 36 (the card above isn’t completely synched as of this writing) is child’s play for hardcore RPGers online but for whatever reason with every one of these games to date – including the original Everquest - my interest hasn’t sustained long enough to level up this far. I’ll play for as much as a couple months and lost interest. Or maybe I’ll start over with different characters never giving the original character enough time to get into the higher levels. I’ve feel like I miss out on a lot of the fun thing that happen at higher levels because I don’t want – or have – the time to move through the lower levels.

Things have been different with Everquest II. For one, I’ve enjoyed the variety of things one can do in game besides just running out quests killing monsters. I’ve been looking forward to getting a house in Everquest II because having one enables you to have more broker slots so you can sell to other players through the EQ II broker system.

Getting a house doesn’t have to be a very expensive thing either. Just search for an “inn” in your home land. You need to be a citizen of the place where your home will be purchased. In my character’s homeland Neriak, I was able to visit the inn and pay a very reasonable 5 silver per week to keep my place that holds 100 items and has two broker slots.

After clicking on the door I now had a home and was given a few items. The NPC gave me an easy level 10 quest where all I had to do was click the door and “buy” the home. As you can see above there was no charge at my level for this inn home.  Every home has an upkeep fee. I paid for 5 weeks worth of upkeep (25 silver). I killed one goblin last night that dropped 35 silver, so houses in EQ II don’t have to be super expensive. Bigger homes can and do cost more. Some require guild factions and other requirements told you when you click the door.

The whole housing system is interesting to me because of the crucial and clever tie-in with EQII broker system. The broker system for those not familiar allows you to sell items to other players at prices you set. Say you are missing an item for a quest or want to upgrade your spells without having to search around tediously for the right NPC in world: just go to the broker and type in a search query for the item you want and you’re presented with results, if any and prices.

Another MMORPG first for me: selling my first item through an in-game broker system. I logged in and check the broker to learn two of my items had been sold totaling a little over 1 platinum. Again, old hat for veterans, but kind of fun. It occurred to me that one could just specialize in buying and selling through the broker system. Buy low, sell high, never kill any monsters.

That’s not what I’m planning on doing, but I’ve had fun with this feature and would like to see something similar available in all MMORPG. If I’m going to need a house, give me reasons like this that make sense.

Sony Station Cash

When logging into EQII recently Sony is pushing their new Station Cash. Players can use real world dollars to buy this station cash and use to buy special items. These items can’t be traded/brokered to cut down on “fraud” according to the FAQ.

Any Second Lifers having Linden Dollar visions? I wonder where Sony is headed with this Station Cash in the long term. Currently it’s only for Everquest and Everquest II, but would they consider making Station Cash available for Sony Playstation Home purchases someday? Time will tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Station Cash works out that they expand beyond EQ/EQII.

With the recent rips on Playstation Home, I decided that there was a couple things that I would love to see Sony do. Truthfully, having followed Sony’s marketing and design since the 1980s, I realize that they’re one of those companies that don’t really listen to what their customers want and barely fix what they have out there (I can name multiple devices that I’ve had faulty firmware that didn’t get updated for years on end).

So here are three ideas that blur the lines between virtual worlds and reality that would make Home a better place given the current framework.

Use the friend communication system for a Roger Wilco type of channel for ANY game
Having been in a Team Fortress and Weapons Factory Arena clan that were ranked, I can tell you that pretty much every single team based game has practices and run offensive and defensive voice channels. Well, here’s the thing. Why can’t Home be a place where you start out and go to whatever game. It would bring a whole new level of gaming with your friends and very similar to team based gaming. I think it actually would also make a lot of sense for games like mmorpgs (think WoW raids) where you need coordination. Voice channels are perfect for that, and Home could definitely exploit it.

Movie rentals, but everyone splits movie rentals
Think about it. When I rented a movie in college, I would want to watch it with my friends. We would probably settle in with some microwave popcorn and get a bunch of beanbag chairs and such together and split the cost of the movie and drinks and such. Why couldn’t a group of friends split the cost of say…. a HD streaming rental? You couldn’t do a 24 or 48 hour one but more of like… it’s a split cost and you had to all be in the same Studio or private area and watch from the “big screen” that someone had in their home. That way, you couldn’t really cheat with the rental costs and would only truly have friends there. If you come late, you enter the movie from wherever they were streaming at. Overall initiator has control to pause the movie and such, but that’s about it. I think that would be definitely blurring the lines of reality and virtual which would be really interesting concept for Sony.

Food Delivery
The one thing that I always though was missing in Second Life as far as the large branding campaigns were the issues that arose with virtual and reality. Sure you saw Geek Squad there. But so what? The big disconnect was trying to play the virtual world into your actual reality. But what if you could order in Home just as you do online? For pizza, wings, or whatever else that delivered? That would not only be blurring the lines between a technology and current, but it would make it so that brand recognition and marketing a brand is actually a useful commodity within Home. This provides not only Sony with just a development role, but also it provides their brand partners with something more than just a “virtual presence”.

Overall, I think that these three things would not be far fetched to actually accomplish given the current framework of Home. There’s a lot more that can be done actually. But it would definitely be a start to making Home actually worthwhile.

In the comments to Darius post on Sony Playstation Home now in open beta Eric Rice asks a great question:

Are you approaching this with a virtual worlds mentality first, or a gamer mentality? The contextual difference and expectations are vast. Sony has a great framework here to a) create mini games in a social/waiting space, b) social spaces around brands (there are others built, not released yet: Watchmen, Red Bull, Warhawk), and c) a tremendous catalog of media between movies and music.

Eric is a smart guy who is well traveled in the virtual world and MMO gaming space. When I saw his comment I nodded thinking yeah, I see where they could go too, but we’ve been down this road with other virtual areas. Kaneva? Lots of potential there too. Don’t recall that materializing yet.

Eric nailed a big problem with Second Life perception that has always plagued them. Interesting noting he also commented on a recent VTOR post saying he was selling “the last of” his sims in Second Life and getting out too. I think patience only goes so far and the amount of time people are willing to give companies who are working on something virtual is shrinking not increasing. Show me how it’s useful now, show me why I spend any time here now, not how you think it could be cool someday. Maybe.

Who does Second Life appeal to? Is it the virtual world crowd who wants limitless creativity? Gamers? Or both? When I got into Second Life I wasn’t thinking of it like a game platform although I went on to create games on it. One of the other VTOR authors ran a casino in world for a little while and became a good customer and supporter of a game I had in world. Success was fairly short-lived there as Linden Lab declared casinos in world as a form of gambling and goodbye to all that. But the point I’m trying to make was Second Life to me was about making it easier to customize a virtual world. While there were other attempts at doing this, Second Life has done the best at this to date.

HOME should promote playing games on the PS3 and it doesn’t do enough of that yet

Conversely, I went into Playstation Home with the impression that it would be more gaming focused. Sure, I expected some commercialism. Nothing is free in the real or virtual world.  I hoped to find a cool, in my dreams revolutionary, interface to replace the somewhat boring but functional Xbox dashboard. As I wandered around Home and saw tons of beautiful scenery that I couldn’t interact with and a store in the mall that had a messages like: “nothing available yet” (the Stuff store) and a scattered few extremely simplistic games (breakout? lol, come on), I could only shake my head.

The most excitement found in my first experience with Home may have been awkwardly searching for ‘secret’ keycodes to enter into some areas. So secret that one could easily find the codes on the web and other people in the area pushing and shoving their virtual avatars to enter the door key codes. By the way, here’s a tip: just have a friend invite you into these secret rooms and then add to your favorites and access without the key codes. You’ll skip the rush.

Someone in the chat suggested you might also receive those codes by playing the game in the area, but I didn’t try that game (they were all being played, naturally). What I really wanted to do was be able to put some arcade game machines, pool table, air hockey, heck, why not a mini-bowling lane in my apartment and invite friends over. Nope, can’t do that. So instead you are supposed to wait in line for what, a small few crowded bowling lanes? Not even the PS3 faithful think that’s enough bowling lanes for the masses.

With that said, I still think there is potential here to do what is described above. This would be cool for gamers, especially if the games are exclusive to be played inside Home that would drive people to their home virtual space. I hope that’s where Sony is headed. Crowded public areas do not appeal to me either virtual or real world. I was impressed with how many avatars were in these public area without any slowdown or lag. Linden Lab needs to contract with the Sony scaling engineers because they got this part figured out. That said, it wasn’t easy or smooth logging into Home with the massive onrush of people checking it out, so that’s where the bottleneck is happening. Once logged in my experience from a lag standpoint was unnoticeable.

Also was able to chat with Darius via bluetooth headset while navigating different menus and even separate areas. You want to “call” your friend to enable that type of persistent chat. That is a useful function but didn’t test to see if it was possible to have multiple people. A keyboard is a necessity in group chat if you can’t do voice. The whole push R2 trigger to talk thing has to go too for phone conversations with friends. I can see the R2 thing making sense in open space conversations but it should be non push to talk in phone calls.

Darius lamented there not being enough brands represented yet. Two games with areas? That’s all? I would have thought they’d have a space set aside for every game in the store. No, not a detailed walk around area, but at least a generic room as a placeholder space.

In these spaces you could teleport in and find a link to the store to download add-ons or trailers and perhaps some Home-only downloads. I see the potential here but they are missing a golden opportunity with the number of people eager to see what they are up to showing them an experience with too little content. I know, I know, it’s open beta, it’s not finished. Guess I’m saying with as long as they’ve been working on this, they should have had more.

Effort feels rushed for holiday season 2008

The Home open beta feels too rushed. Before you say, wait, how can an open beta be rushed? Well, just login and see for yourself.

It’s like the dev team needed another year in closed beta to get this thing closer to the way I described but executive pressure and their own timeline goal of releasing it in the Fall (which they missed anyway, December not Fall) made it a necessity kicking something out now. As much as I was eager to see this – yes, even in beta form - they should have put out a statement saying they were increasing private-only invites but it was still way too unfinished to make it an open beta. I would have been frustrated and maybe even bitched about this in a blog post saying what’s taking so long but you only get one first impression.

I realize this is open to debate. Let people in and test the mass scaling capability. That’s an important part of the testing before adding too much more content, but many of those who see this won’t be as excited about coming back because there wasn’t enough to see and do.  You have to weigh these concerns when rolling out an open public release. Sure, you can chat and pay to setup some virtual club. Whoopie, you can do that from a website for free.

Where does Sony go from here? I hope they stay game-focused with Home. They don’t appear to be going down the Second Life open virtual world path which is good. If Darius somehow did think – and I doubt he did - he was entering some Second Life-like world, he would have been hugely disappointed there too. But if he was looking at it as a cool interface to enhance gaming on the PS3 it’s a bust there as well.

Snake eyes either way

More work needed. More effort. Maybe in a year if Sony doesn’t pull a Google Lively and unplug, we’ll see something useful. I can’t see logging into this game UI to view movie or game trailers in the theater or walk around my apartment that has no games in it or go shopping with real world $$ regularly for fake clothes and furniture. Now if they put games in that Stuff store or create more mini-games that can be playable among the crowds, that changes things.

There is something to be said about making a social area to find people to play games with but they could have done that through their website much more inexpensively. You can’t even go out of Home and do much in the Playstation dashboard while in Home, why not? All the flash, all the cash in an open launch beta decision that was rash.

There is potential here as Eric suggested but it could be so far off from becoming a reality that it will be too late.