Vibora Bay, coming to Champions Online soon!

The apocalypse is NOW in Champions Online's new free expansion which is expected to be released mid-March.

Champions Online is an MMO based on the Champions tabletop roleplaying game. It's a game that I beta tested and was interested enough in it that I bought myself a lifetime subscription. Mainly because the combat in it was so interesting that I found it quite enjoyable even if there was a considerable lack of endgame in my opinion at the time of release.

Currently the game is beta testing a free expansion coming this March called "Revelation." The name is quite fitting considering this expansion is about a literal apocalypse. The antagonist is a terrifying creature called Therakiel, a fallen angel who refused to join the legions of hell and instead hates both angels and devils.

As I'm writing this article I'm currently sitting in game, waiting for customer service to get back to me so I can continue playing through. So far I'm intrigued because the story is quite interesting but now I'm stuck because of a bug so it seems I'll have to wait before finishing a review of this. In the meantime, I leave you with a beautiful piece of eye candy... Is it weird that I find a burning city beautiful?

What's your game?

A serious problem a lot of people have in today's MMO market is finding a game that is best suited to them, especially with a severe stagnant supersaturation of the same thing with different titles. World of Warcraft has set precedent with it's popularity and as a result other developers are bending over backwards trying to imitate and not emulate.

What really depresses me about the state of the industry is that when a game tries to be unique and break off from the clone-pack they try to be too unique and not take the GOOD features that World of Warcraft has. WoW revolutionized character control with incredibly smooth movement, mostly seamless interaction with the environment, and reactive ability usage.

Going back to the subject at hand, there's a wide spectrum of MMO games and lots of people have trouble deciding what game to play. You may like fantasy, but not like a "cartoony" style like WoW. The trick is finding a website that has a wide variety of games listed with comprehensive lists of games.

On that note I would like to refer you to www.mmorpg.com with one word of advice... don't go near the forums. The forums are full of imbeciles of the highest caliber and listening to their mere words is a disease that will make you more stupid for having been exposed to it.

Welcome!

Welcome to the opening post for Trials and Tribulations. Trials and Tribulations is a blog about online gaming which will feature me playing through a different MMO at least once a month. The name for this blog comes from the idea that some free trials to MMO are just that, trials. However some MMOs have free trials that are so aggravating that the word tribulation would be a better description of what they're offering.

I mention in the description that I'll discuss a little general gaming on top of MMOs and this is because lots of non-MMO games have great concepts that could and should be applied to MMOs. Soon I'll be writing about an MMO that looks like it'll be doing just that. This post however is just an introduction.

My name is Stephen B. though you may know me by my gamer handles Jargo or Jargonecius. If you want to contact me you can call me Steve or Jargo, whatever you feel more comfortable with. I am a long time gamer, ever since I was little I have had a love for games, the stories they portray and the lessons they teach.

In terms of MMOs you could say that my first real MMO was Asheron's Call in 1999 but I'd say this is the case because before this online games weren't really all that massive. I can think of a few smaller games like Legends of Kesmai which I doubt had much of a server capacity for a thousand players, let alone 8 million like World of Warcraft. If I had to name my oldest online game I'd have to say it was a little known game called The Odyssey online. This little game was a pet project by a man named Justin Schumacher aka Bugaboo and was made to prove that it was possible to make an online game with Visual Basic and prove it he did indeed. As far as I can recall the servers could only hold 54 people before they got unstable. This little game built in VB inspired me to work towards my goal... I want to design online games.

To wrap this up I thought I should post this for people who are wondering "What the heck is The Odyssey Online?" Some people did a remake and they're pretty nice guys and constantly adding content onto the classic. It's free except for the cash shop for optional powerful items which is a huge pet peeve of mine, but I'm willing to let it slide as it's not a huge game.

http://odysseyclassic.com/