I’ve been trying to not pay too much attention to Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, so as to not get caught up in the incredible amount of hype surrounding it, but I have to admit it, this video makes me really excited.
What excites me most in this video is the way that lightsabers appear to be synchronised with everything else that is going on around them. They seem to really clash, and block incoming fire. If that is truly how it will work ingame then I think it is a massive step in making MMO combat feel genuinely immersive.
My main worry is that they may have made lightsabers so awesome-looking that nobody wants to play any of the other classes. Flamethrowers and bombs have their own coolness factor, of course, but I didn’t spend my childhood making their sound effects while whirling sticks around at great risk to all nearby eyeballs. It was lightsabers all the way.
We’ll almost all want to play a Jedi or Sith. Such is our birthright. But we’ll still probably be annoyed by how many Jedi there are everywhere.
A couple of weeks ago, many players of Mythic’s games found themselves billed multiple times, in some cases racking up hundreds of dollars worth of payments. Needless to say, they were not best pleased.
Today the Executive Producer of DAOC and WAR released letters of apology, and detailed the compensation that players will receive.
The DAOC letter.
The WAR letter.
The letters are the same until you get to the bottom, and the game specific compensation. The shared portion of the letters is as follows:
Hello everyone,
Two weeks ago, a serious event occurred which resulted in the unintended billing of some of our customers. For this and any difficulties the event caused, we are truly sorry and today we wish to explain what happened, and to make a renewed commitment to your trust and security. We have taken this very seriously. In our 15 year history, trust has been the foundation of our relationship with the gaming community and we intend to rebuild that trust.
Between March 18 and April 7, our payment gateway, experienced a processing flaw that was beyond the scope of our control. Instead of being submitted for processing once, some transactions were submitted multiple times, resulting in some people being charged multiple times. On April 8, we determined what had happened and acted with urgency to arrange for bulk reversal of all erroneous charges. The majority of players saw the refund within 2-3 business days. Some banks did not post refunds until a few days later, a delay that was contingent on the banking institution. We worked quickly to inform affected players of the situation and understand the frustration this waiting period may have caused.
As a result of this event, we significantly increased customer service staffing who have been working with all impacted subscribers to waive any overdraft fees. The majority of the banks have waived these fees as they recognize the unusual nature of this event. In the rare cases that the banks have not reversed the charges, EA is covering the fee.
Once the corrective action was completed, we turned our attention to analyzing the problem in more detail. We determined the root cause, developed a definitive fix and implemented monitoring precautions that will allow us to prevent similar situations from reoccurring. These steps have been in place since April 13 with no further issues.
To be clear, at no point during this event was there a security breach or was subscriber account information compromised.
For both games players will receive double xp, renown, realm points, or bounty points (as appropriate for each game) for the next 2 weeks. Each character you have will receive two tokens that they will be able to redeem for in game items. This will apply to all players, not just the ones affected by the billing issue.
For Warhammer Online the choices will be:
* Bottomless Chaos Black Dye
* Bottomless Skull White Dye
* Imperial Griffon Mount (Order)
* Enslaved Manticore Mount (Destruction)
* WAR Tract – earn a free level
* Choose from any of these pets – Order: Imperial Hunting Hound or Dwarf Keg Handler; Destruction: Warlord’s Fell Hound or the Goblin Bar-Back.
* Change your appearance with any of these illusion items: Skaven Skin Cloak (skaven), Kossar’s Helm (bear), or the Signet of the Cursed Company (skeleton)
For Dark Age of Camelot they’re:
* Bottomless Black Dye
* Bottomless Crimson Dye (Albion), Hunter Green Dye (Hibernia), and Royal Blue Dye (Midgard)
* A selection of rare mounts: The Fire Steed, Clockwork Steed, and Storm Steed
* Choose from any of these pets – Clockwork Cat, a Mini-Dragon, and a pet of your realm.
* Vegas Round Table Trophy
* The Old Dragon Head Trophies of Smoldering Golestandt (Albion), Frozen Gjalpinulva (Midgard), and Glimmering Culldurach (Hibernia)
Some pretty awesome sounding goodies there. For folks who weren’t affected by the issue, it’ll be like Christmas day. I wonder though if those who were affected may have preferred some real world compensation for something that caused them very real world problems, or at least some game time. In-game rewards are only really much use to you if you didn’t stop playing as a result of having your bank account plundered. In the case of those who had more than $500 taken out of their account I’d suggest never billing them again, by giving them a lifetime subscription.
Interesting to note is that the Warhammer compensation items are recycled from other rewards schemes, or elsewhere in the game.:
* The Kossar’s Helm was from a code that came with Red Alert III.
* The Skaven Skin Cloak was a reward for attending Games Day 2008.
* The Signet of the Cursed Company was given to the 200 most active participants in the Road to War viral advertising campaign.
* The Imperial Hunting Hound, Warlord’s Fell Hound, Imperial Griffon Mount, and Enslaved Manticore Mount are rewards from the Recruit a Friend program.
* Dwarf Keg Handler and Goblin Bar-Back were rare drops during the Keg End event.
 WoW jumps the shark. Update: This confused the heck out of a non-MMO playing friend of mine. Sometimes I forget such people still exist. My lovely drawing was a reference to World of Warcraft’s new 25 dollar Celestial Steed which is making the MMO news at the moment.
My views on this sort of thing are pretty well known (hint: I dislike them profoundly), and I’ll resist repeating them again, today at any rate, especially as I don’t actually play WoW these days.
What the arrival of the $25 mount says to me is that Blizzard have decided that WoW’s best days are behind it, and are moving on to milking their players for all they can, until their next MMO is released.
I cancelled Star Trek Online during my free month, mostly because I thought the game was not very good.
Imagine my surprise when leafing through this month’s bank statement, I saw that I was still being billed.
In fact, I was billed twice. On the 5th of March they initially billed me 30 dollars. Then they billed me another 15 dollars, just for fun. Then they refunded the thirty dollars. Of course, they didn’t refund the international transaction fees I paid on any of them. Given that my account was still active when I logged in today to cancel AGAIN, they will have billed me for April too.
This is ironic timing, considering Mythic’s billing woes this week. At least I didn’t get billed for a thousand bucks. Probably.
I want my money back. I am entirely certain that I cancelled my subscription to STO, and have obviously not logged in since my free month was due to lapse. I would write a ticket to their billing department, but “create new ticket” button on their website does not appear to actually work with any browser at my disposal. I’m not going to do it from ingame, as that would give them ammunition to say that I had been playing.
The events of this week are a lesson to us all. Watch your bank statement carefully, as I doubt I am the only one affected by Cryptic’s carelessness with OUR money. What’s worse is the thought that they might have considered my subscription to be a vote of approval for their game.
It appears others have had a similar experience, though Cryptic is denying that there is a problem.
Just in the interests of reducing FUD, I checked the records and without mentioning any specifics there has been no billing error. All is well in the state of Denmark.
– Coderanger, 4th of April.
Which I take to mean that he’s saying that the people complaining are making it up. Because it couldn’t possibly be their pathetic excuse for an account website. Apparently I need to start taking screenshots when I cancel games. Either STO reactivated my account, or it never registered my cancellation properly in the first place. Neither are unacceptable to me. I am very angry.
A quick followup to yesterday’s post.
Respeccing to carpenter went without a hitch. You become a level 9 artisan, ready to pick your first specialisation of scholar, outfitter, or craftsman. Some relatively painless levelling later, and Maltheas became a level 20 carpenter.
The Shady Swashbuckler did indeed change which “Shadows of the Betrayed†reward he offered, and the legendary Sculpting Hammer of Twiddy Bobbick now rests in Maltheas’ backpack. As Fiddy Bobbick was also a keen tinkerer and famed explorer, he has always been a source of inspiration to Maltheas, so it seems appropriate that our Ratonga friend now wields his favourite tool. Maltheas can’t actually use it yet, of course.
 I's gots a hammer! Now I's needings the bell! It occurred to me that if I was feeling particularly keen, I could have respecced and quickly levelled for each of the professions, getting myself a complete set. Obviously not too useful for wielding, but they do also convert into very nice looking furniture items, and are steeped in Everquest lore. I’m going to resist the temptation, mostly because I’m a bit crafted out right now.
Anyhows, thats all done. Now begins the slow slog back up to 90. I think I’ll wait until I have some crafting vitality for that!
Today, after five long years, Maltheas became a level 90 Weaponsmith. It was a fine moment of celebration, as he reached the very peak of the profession he chose, so long ago, back in Temple Street.
So this evening he will be respecing to Carpenter, beginning again as a newbie crafter.
There are a number of reasons for doing this:
1. Primarily, there doesn’t seem to be much point in actually being a weaponsmith these days. Back in the day, you could make a good living from making fine weapons to order, but in recent years it has become very rare that Maltheas, or anyone else, actually wants anything he can make, apart from for the “Proof is in the Pudding” quest. The best craftable weapons in the game are general recipes, rather than weaponsmith ones, which he can just as easily make as a carpenter. Until recently, weaponsmiths did also have access to some special adornment recipes, but they have been moved to the new adorner craft.
In addition, the recent stat changes have lead to an awful lot of completely useless stats on crafted weapons, and they lack the ability modifiers many looted items have acquired. Anyhows, as Maltheas levels at Extreme Quester speeds, he has plenty of time to find the best equipment, and that is not usually crafted.
2. As a templar, he can only use crushing weapons. The reward for weaponsmiths for the “Shadows of the Betrayed” quest is piercing. Now, I know that it is supposed to just be ornamental, and I shouldn’t worry about it, but look at its stats.
It has over double the DPS of the awesome weapon Maltheas is already using. To a low level adventure who is also a high level crafter, the Ethernaut craft-weapons are like lightsabers. I am hoping that once Maltheas respecs to Carpenter, the Shady Swashbuckler, who sells rewards from quests you have completed, will offer him the carpenter’s hammer version. This is not really why I decided to respec, but it did get me thinking about it, questioning why I was a weaponsmith, and influence which craft I chose to change to.
3, Carpenters have all the fun! They, and Provisioners, are the only professions that do not have to compete with item drops or quest rewards to any significant extent, and game balance is mostly irrelevant to furniture, so they will never end up in the situation of not having anything worth selling or getting nerfed. Admittedly, this fact has lead to there being a whole lot of carpenters, but even so, I’m looking forward to decorating the house with all the things Maltheas will make as he levels. Even if he never sells anything, at least he can actually use the stuff he levels up on to good purpose, which has not been the case with weaponsmith.
4. Quests. Mmmm, quests. He’s completed all the weaponsmith and outfitter specific quests. Becoming a carpenter will open up the carpenter and craftsman specific quests. Having said that, respeccing tradeskill is not something I plan on making a habit of, and the intent is that Maltheas will remain as a Carpenter for the foreseeable future. While the quests are nice, I am not sufficiently hardcore a crafter to be hugely looking forward to levelling him again.
5. To stop him singing this at me.
 If Maltheas had a hammer. Respeccing Maltheas’ tradeskill obviously has a few downsides. He will not be able to use his Earing of the Solstice, or his Jin’Tu’s gift until he has gotten back up to level 80. That will probably take a rather long time at the rate I work. He’ll lose all his weaponsmith-specific recipes of course, but that is a loss I can stand.
He gets to keep his tinker skills, or else I wouldn’t be considering this at all. He also will keep his harvesting skills, and any non-weaponsmith recipes, such as the Far Seas ones. To that end, before the respec, he’ll be trying to max his harvesting skills out. It should be done tonight, so I’ll let you know how things turn out.
 You can rolls abouts as much as you likes, but don't be smashings the 4th wall! Behold the mightiest of artifacts, the Stone of Gygax! Not only a house item, but a roving housepet that is sure to critically hit its way into your heart!
The Stone of Gygax is available for today only, from a nice Sphinx by the name of Imenand, sitting near the Enchanted Lands docks. Her quest, “Riddled throughout the Land” involves a fair bit of travel, but using the conveniently located spires to the south will help speed things up. No spoilers here, but the usual suspects have a write-up already.
What home is complete without some polyhedral dice? Not Maltheas’, that’s for sure! It is a fine tribute to a man that helped shape a generation of fantasy gamers.
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