MMOG customer service is getting better, right? Almost across the board, the experience of getting help inside your favorite gameworld is getting less onerous.

Well …

Herein lies the tale of one man in uniform who just wanted to get his Hero on while he was abroad, and has been given the run around for going on three months. I’ve done what I can to help without going public with this, and it’s gotten him nowhere. Soo … I hope this informs and entertains.

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I’ve been wanting to comment on my gameplay in CoH for a bit. Most of my thoughts are fairly standard stuff for everyone who’s played the game. This past week, though, Issue 10 dropped … and it’s a hoot and a half.

Massive cluster-death right outside the train stations, a brand new zone, higher drops on costume pieces … the new issue has stuff to like for almost everyone playing CoH. Some folks are even using the phrase “best Issue evar“, which I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say. (I’m still playing through the content from Issue 5.)

I’m something of a talker, so I’m going to go ahead and babble about my experiences both Issue 10 and otherwise; feel free to skip the bits about old content if you’re just interested in the new hotness. (sniff)

If you’re thinking of re-upping to check out Issue 10, I highly recommend it you have no excuse! They’ve reactivated your account through Sunday!

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Oh hell yes. Kill Ten Rats has the commentary on the … well, they say it:

Cryptic mentioned that they are looking at a potentially server-less [City of Heroes], in which you can team with anyone regardless of server. I imagine this could be done either as putting everyone on one big server or allowing teams to enter instanced missions from the doors on their respective servers. The follow-up clarified that this is a “maybe, someday” idea, not a “next issue, we promise!” idea. If they do it, not in 2007.

After my stint in WoW (still ongoing, but already tapering to the point where my account is closing up again next month), I got blindsided by a bunch of people all wanting to play the same game. It was absolutely thrilling to get in and dish it out again, as for various reasons we’ve been low on the EverQuest 2-playing recently. WoW is awesome to play by yourself, but not anywhere near as awesome as where I’ve been. Where’s that?

Take me down / To Paragon City

Where the thugs are mean / and the heroes are pretty

Please, won’t you please / let me 0wn, yeah yeah

My elec/elec Blaster Jacob’s Ladder has been dusted off and fully revamped in the wake of Issue 9, and thanks to a quirk of timing he’s now even the (temporary) leader of ye olde Super Group. My time in CoH has always been pretty awesome; it’s one of the few games that I’ve played extensively with RL friends (along with WoW and EQ2, now), and so I have lots of great memories associated with the game, as well as plenty of conversation at parties about our gameplay.

Who knows how long this jaunt will last, but so far I’m having a kickass time. I’ve been working a Invulnerable/Ice Tanker on the side with a group of lowbie characters also run by mostly rl-friends, which gives me three characters (including my scrapper Deft) within a wide range of levels to monkey around with.

The best part, of course: doesn’t matter what level avatars are! Yay! So refreshing after endless not-playing-with-people in WoW, and the fight to stay together in EQ2.

I know Issue 10 won’t be out for a while yet, but Rikti Invasion? C’mon! That’s awesome.

Our SG name is “Pants Are Not the Solution”, and our tag is P.A.N.T.S … meaning we have a recursive name, which is okay, because it was founded by nerds. Anyway, possibly the dorkiest thing I’ve ever asked a Massive developer to do is right here hosted on my personal blog. I felt the need to share. Thanks Jack! Sorry again! ;)

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the release of Prophecies, and the first anniversary for Factions. As such, there’s going to be birthday-stuff all weekend long. Yay cake!

What better way to celebrate a birthday than with an outdoor party complete with games, races, and contests to reward both the lucky and skilled among us. Back by popular request, the good citizens of Shing Jea Monastery will re-open their ever-enjoyable Boardwalk—to those who have access to Shing Jea, of course—for the birthday celebration. Whether you seek to increase your Luck or just kick back and have a good time, the games of chance along the Shing Jea Boardwalk will certainly have what you’re looking for.

In addition to the mini-games on the Shing Jea Boardwalk, you will also be able to compete at the Dragon Arena and race at the Rollerbeetle Track. These special PvP events will be accessible from Shing Jea Monastery and from the Great Temple of Balthazar. They’re sure to be fun for your whole family… of characters.

This time of year must be good for MMOGs, because City of Heroes’ third anniversary is right around now too. NCSoft’s Mike Crouch sent over some interesting stats about the game:

During the first three years of the game, more than 24 million characters have been created in City of Heroes and City of Villains with more than 102,000 of those characters reaching level 50, the game’s top tier. The game is also renowned for its ease of cooperative role-playing, resulting in the creation of more than 654,000 super groups, and the building of more than 66,000 super group bases.

Additionally, NCsoft has determined that of the 24 million characters created:

* 27 percent of the hero characters created were blasters, making it the most popular hero archetype.
* 26 percent of the villain characters created were Masterminds, making it the most popular villain.
* 32 percent of the characters with travel powers chose flight, followed by super jump at 28 percent, super speed at 25 percent and teleport at 14 percent.

Fueling the game’s economy is the more than 3 trillion influence (the game’s currency) in circulation, which will play an important part of the new crafting system and auction houses being added with the upcoming release of “Issue 9: Breakthrough,” the game’s next content expansion.

A full year has turned, and once again I’ve got an article in The Escapist. Last year’s Games of Christmas Past was a heartfelt effort that I was really glad I could get out there. This year, to be honest, my piece is just set dressing for the issue. It’s not a big deal, I don’t mind writing fluff. Unfortunately, there was so little room for my fluff this year that pretty much everything I was trying to say with the article was left on the editing room floor. The realities of a gaming magazine. No biggie. I still think it turned out pretty well.

During the holidays, when the games themselves change to reflect the season, it’s a great chance to reconnect with what makes them fun to play. It’s not the raiding, and it’s certainly not the epic loot. The reason we play World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies is the same reason we travel home for the holidays: We need to connect with people that can make a difference in our lives.

Thankfully, the realities of blogging means I can bring you the parts of the article The Escapist didn’t pay for. If you’d like to read the full version of my article, go ahead and open up a tab to the piece on the site: Going Home for the Holidays. Then, read on below to get the rest of the article. I hope you enjoy this ‘writer’s cut’ of the article, and are looking forward to a good Holiday season yourself. :)
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Van Hemlock (who I’ve been enjoying so much of late that I added him to my blogroll) talks a little bit today about the role of achievement in MMOGs. Specifically, he’s discussing the great support for that axis on the Bartle graph within Everquest 2. That’s hardly a surprise, given the tendency towards achieving the average MMOGer has, but it tied in interestingly with comments by EGM editor-in chief Dan Hsu. This past weekend he talked about how much he loves Achivements on the Xbox 360, and how surprising that was for him as a gamer.

I really like Achievements on the 360 too, and not just because I like flashing my epeen. In a lot of ways, I see the Achievements system as a spotlight. Good Achievements lead you to places you might not have gone before, or push you into experiences you may not have otherwise had. I like to think of them as the designer shining a spotlight on a part of the game and saying ‘Hey dummy, this is fun!’ This gets into a grey area with multiplayer games, unfortunately, as a lot of the Achievements in (say) Gears of War are all about killing a whole whole bunch of people; this is purely epeen territory and is kinda boring.

But, I digress. These two commentaries reminded me of my time playing FFXI on the 360 earlier this year. I loved FFXI all to pieces during my time with it on the PC, and getting to actually play it on a console with a controller (like it was more or less intended) was a smashing time. Even if, really, I didn’t understand why they were releasing it on the 360. Something I didn’t touch on in my review, as I was aiming for brevity, was the lack of Achievements for the game. In this regard FFXI is completely unique for the 360’s launch lineup. Every other game had Achievements, and subsequent game launches have proven out Microsoft’s intention for the vast majority of 360 titles to have Achievements.

This lack, then, is glaring and ultimately frustrating. I picked back up my FFXI account via the 360 (thanks to Square/Enix for doing the right thing there, btw), and my little Taru Black Mage began waddling his way around the world again. During the course of play, I actually dinged 40 … and was very disappointed when I didn’t get that very distinctive blip and notice on my screen. I’m sure there is a perfectly good (technical) reason why your character couldn’t be linked up with the 360’s achievement system; that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed. I know it’s a little thing, but … c’mon. I’m human! More than once I’ve lamented the fact that my time playing Oblivion was entirely on the PC. I would have loved to get some of those sweet, sweet Achievements for being an RPG badass. Anybody can frag somebody; how many people can claim to be a Dark Brotherhood Listener? I can, but I can’t ‘look back on it with pride’ because I don’t have it on my gamertag.

When other MMOGs reach the shores of the 360, this has to be corrected. It’s a requirement. Huxley, Conan … I don’t care how it is to hook your broke-ass character database up to Xbox Live, I want my gamer candy. I want a little popup for having whacked the foozles, and I want a popup for having FedExed. I’m a 360 owner, dangit, but I want my validation for camping a spawn, getting phat lewt, and not being a n00b.

I may be the only one, of course, but I may be the only one who liked the City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies badge systems too. At the time I left CoH I had every site seeing badge I could get my sweaty paws around. I also did the Imperial Theme Park when really the only reason to do it was to get the badge. Again, I don’t care if anyone else ever sees these things. I want to be able to look back at my badges and remember that awesome time I did the Trick or Treating missions at Halloween, or the time I helped a bunch of people find that place on Tatooine and earned myself the “Ben Kenobi’s Old Home” badge.

This is wandering off topic slightly (and has given me an idea for another post), so I’ll wrap it up with this: The 360 is going to be a platform for MMOGs. You know it, Microsoft knows it … so they’ve got to get serious with things here. As gamers we’ve come to expect certain things from Xbox Live, and if they don’t deliver we’re going to be frustrated. Given how new MMOGs on consoles are, I think it would behoove the Live team to get this part right. Make sure we get Achievements when we do cool things on your console, Microsoft; MMOG gamers need a little validation too.