GatheredMyst

@cingeto

Yes, they are. This has to do with the broadening of the genre, and more people who were in the console era playing by themselves getting into MMO's i'd guess. Less social. More about getting things done. Goal oriented. Etc.

This varies by game though.

It could be a lot worse. It could be Champions in its current state of Development. The players there are starving for content and new features. CoX is getting them. While they might not be getting uber presences at PaX, i suspect that Freedom will make a pretty large splash.

It's about how the game presents them, and then, how people play them. it's not the race itself that's a problem. There are people that have strange attractions to high heel shoes and women's underwear. Should we think poorly of these things? There are also, by the way, more people who over-sexualize elves than there probably are people who do so with stuff like this.

There are also people who play things like werewolves in Champions, Iksar and Vah Shir in EverQuest/EverQuest II, and Worgen in World of Warcraft, and do a good job at portraying the race as it was creatively designed. There are also companies that put a lot of rich history and backstory in their races, and people who like to play them because it gives them a little more "different" when they dive into their fantasy world. What's wrong with that?

We're getting into the dangers of stereotyping here. One cannot paint with broad brushstrokes. There is nothing wrong with these animal-hybrid races, just as not every elf is a raving cybersex fanatic. Judge by individual, not by something as silly as "Well, they play a cat person, therefor..."

@Germaximus

That's the point i'm trying to make. If they had improved the character creator? They would have created a titan of a game. Instead, they settled for less, and people (bloggers and writers included) still make excuses as to why it is the way it is.

I will remind them, again, that even with the dropped pieces, their character creator is not near as up to date or on par even with a game that is dated back to 2004.

City of Heroes and Champions Online. Great instanced content with overland missions, and CO's character creator. A match made in heaven. It would make the best superhero game to date.

Why do writers keep making excuses for the character creator? It is a huge step back in practically every facet possible. Even with all the unlockable costume pieces, the amount of flexibility that the costume creator has is leagues behind Champions Online, and still a step back from City of Heroes.

They are adding in one new costume set per update, and not improving the baseline character creator, which needs a lot of work. I can only imagine the kind of attention they would get if they were to expand on this alone.

But i'd seriously like to stop seeing people defending what was a bad decision to begin with. The entire game seems to be centered around the fact that you aren't wanting to walk in and create your own hero. You're wanting to create a hero that looks, acts, thinks, and worships the DC Comic Book heroes. If that's your cup of tea as a comic book fan, then that's find, but those of us who have always loved building unique heroes that look and are shaped different from the usual spandex wearing superman wannabes, SOE really let us down, and continues to let us down.

Which is such a shame too. Is DCUO worth picking up? Not for those people who play other superhero games, because they failed to implement a system that draws in people who play other superhero games. A largely untapped market with one aging product and one product that lacks content... and SOE missed the bar, terribly so.

Shame, too, because I was really looking for another superhero game. But I play superhero games to make my own, awesome, unique superhero. Not a tights wearing Batman worshiper. (Even though I love Batman)

Whoa, whoa, whoa... Classism? What the heck kind of nonsense is that?

As someone else pointed out, 15 dollars a month is a whole heck of a lot of nothing in the grand scheme of things. The correlation between a standard 9-5 job and time to raid/group all night long might be correct, but i'd be seriously careful when talking about people equating class warfare with freemium games vs subscription games.

It has nothing to do with that. Never has, never will. Freemium players, typically, are younger, and thus there is a stereotype of immaturity that goes with them. Also, when a game goes free to play, there is a sudden surge of population that brings in all manner of people from the ridiculously immature to the greatly mature. That's just how it works. And yes, usually, younger audiences follow stereotype a lot easier than those who are older, and thus are more subject to causing griefing; younger audiences that go hand in hand usually with freemium games.

That's just kind of the way it goes.

This is not to say that there aren't adults who don't enjoy these things too. But account for both sides of the spectrum. This in and of itself has nothing to do with the state of the economy. Calling out classism in this sense is a huge fallacy. Shame on you.

But what about Werewolf: The Apocalypse/Forsaken :(

Color me a little disappointed. That was by far my favorite series from White Wolf. I was expecting them to put both of them in this go-around.

So...

From their website: "Rift: Planes of Telara provides many playable races to choose from."

Two elves, three kinds of humans, and a dwarf. That's racial diversity?

Right...

Disappointing.

But it's not a graphics "downgrade". Less is not necessarily more. The AMOUNT of particles was toned down. The effects themselves are, however, larger in their effect size. They are also higher in resolution, meaning they aren't as fuzzy when rendered in comparison to some of the older effects.

Yes, they can turn down the effects if they want to, though nobody should have to turn them down on modern PC's. That's the way it was shaping up with the old system just due to the sheer amount of particles that were being rendered by the old system to create a single effect. This was not smart art!