Tagged News: jr sutich

Avast! Pirates of the Burning Sea launches tomorrow and I've been playing for the last two weeks as part of the pre-order head start. The first MMO from Flying Lab Software seems to be a game that will soon be taking up all of my free time. To find out why, read on.

Graphically, PotBS looks wonderful. The amount of detail on the ships is simply amazing and has almost resulted in me getting my ship shot out from under me because I was oohing and ahhing instead of paying attention to the large French frigate with 34 guns trying to make large holes in my pretty boat. The avatars and land based environments are well done. However, there is one detail in some sea battles that I cannot fail to mention, and that is waterfalls. Some of them are quite beautiful and looks like they should be in the ads telling you that it's better in the Bahamas. It's little details like this that make the game special for me.

The client also has a lot of sliders and can be scaled back for those who don't have the latest and greatest video cards, which should open it up to a wider range of systems than many of its competitors.

For the full preview, click below.

When the first anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach ticked by in February, our own JR Sutich decided to take a second look at the game. While it had launched originally to less than rave reviews, after a year, many MMOs hit their stride. Find out if DDO is one of them in our review.

One of the detractions from DDO that I found was the necessity of repeating quests. The quests are fun and interesting the first time, but after the fifth or sixth time I ran through them, I began to lose my sense of fun. It became even more evident when I found groups and they were just running straight through them without pause and I didn't get a chance to really enjoy much of the discovery elements from being in them for the first time.

Read his full review after the click.

JR Sutich on the Razorwire got to peek at the upcoming changes in Issue 9 of City of Heroes. He filed a preview on his site for everyone to enjoy.

Costume pieces aren't the only thing that players can make however. Enhancements that are better than Single Origins and Temporary Powers can also be invented. The cool part about the Enhancements is that there will be named sets. These work to give additional bonuses the more pieces of the set you decide to put in your slots. That's right, it's like player-crafted raid gear.

Of course, once you make this stuff, you may want to sell it. What better place to do so than in the new Auction Houses for Heroes and Villains. Sure the Villains get their stuff off the back of a truck, but that's where I get most of my best deals anyway.

Check out the full article here.

JR Sutich has spent the last few weeks in the Lord of the Rings Online beta and emerges today with our exclusive preview of the game. Doing his due-diligence, Sutich tried a variety of the game's core systems and reports back on some of the finer details many prospective players are craving.

Crafting is fun. And for me to say that means something, since I usually loathe crafting in MMOs. I think it has something to do with grinding 9,887 rifle barrels, or getting killed by a Forge in some other games. The crafting system is interesting and not too complicated. After choosing a set of professions, you are able to start making things that you can actually sell! There is a level of interdependency between Crafters which will also help a player driven economy. One of the great features is that once you master a level of crafting, you can then get critical successes which will result in improved products, some of which are better than epic loot of the same level range. This also applies to the tools that are used to make these products as well. I think that having the better gear possible to be made by players will add a level of commerce that hasn't been seen for quite some time.

Resource gathering is also refreshing in LOTRO. There are plenty of resource nodes to be found and they do not have static spawn points, but rather random within an area. This means that you won't be able to set a bot program to go to specific coordinates, in theory. Anything that hinders farming of this nature is a good thing.

You can read more by clicking here.