After recently purchasing my second lifetime subscribtion (to Star Trek Online, I allready own a lifetime sub to Lord of the Rings Online), I am really starting to think about cancelling (all) monthly subscriptions.

Lifetime subs, I think are really the way to go for MMO's.

Personally I really like the idea of paying once and just being able to play whenever i want/like without worrying on whether or not I payed my subscription.
Although you're paying a large amount of money at the start, I really think in the end it's worth it.

You're showing the Devs you trust them by commiting yourself to their game when it comes out and to trust their "vision" of the game in the long run.
It's also very save to say you're gonna be buying any expansions they'll put out in the future.

Now I know people are gonna claim that servers will have to be paid for, well look at Guild Wars, they seem to be doing ok with just the amount of money they get from box sales (and of course RMT) and their expansions. So there must be a way to make it work for MMO's as well.

I really think it's just a way of having an easy money tree.
Players are simply forced to pay up or they're not playing.

I think the way Hellgate: London did it was awesome (or at least better), you could pay for a subscription to play online, as in MMO, but if you didn't want that, you could still play the game offline as single player.
Of course Hellgate London also showed the risk of getting a lifetime sub, when the game shuts down, your lifetime is gone..

I finished Dragon Age Origins and i am kind of sad.
I really enjoyed the game but i am sad because you can't continue playing after you defeated the Archdemon.

According to my achievements i finished 75% of the game.

I can start up the game with my character that finished the game, but the only cities/regions i can access are the DLC locations, but since i allready completed those during the normal playthrough, there is nothing to do anymore, no fighting, no exploring.

Really wish i could just continue playing it, but i guess i'll have to start a new game..

I think this is a really bad choise, especially if it's such an awesome game.
You spend a lot of time developing/leveling your character and can't go back to play.

I hated Fallout 3 for it (although i still played it) until they changed it so you could keep exploring after finishing the main storyline, in fact i went out of my way to not finish it.

I also really enjoyed the fact that in Mass Effect 2, you can import your character from Mass Effect 1, so it kinda feels like you continue to play with your first character.

Now of course, Dragon Age Awakening is coming (and i allready pre-ordered), so i'll have something to look forward to, i (on purpose) haven't read or watched anything about it, but i do hope i can continue to play it with my current character..

So, yeah i've been playing LOTRO again, and checking out the official websites and i have to say i am very dissapointed in codemasters.
Compare the EU website to the Turbine (US) website...., i think the EU website hasn't changed since launch (it still looks the same to me) and looking at all the extra features the US website has, i mean the US website actually has news...

I mean the US website actually has (helpfull) content and event stuff, while all the EU website says is "i am LOTRO, i am great. Buy me".

And than of course, in the US, they have the very cool "My LOTRO", which in EU is not comming, as apparently codemasters can't be bothered by actually giving something cool to their subscribers (including decent support).

So when is Turbine finally gonna kick codemasters, take over and give EU players what they deserve, i really feel like EU players are getting the short end of the stick here.

Really wish i could move my EU lifetime sub to the Turbine servers, but last time i checked this was not possible...

In the mean time i keep launching that cool looking LOTROHerald iPhone app and pushing the "myLOTRO" button in the hopes of some day looking at my character instead of only being able to see if the server is online.

A recent comment made by Shawn on the Massively Speaking podcast (episode 84) about the Age of Conan character deleting thing, made me think. At first i really didn't care (and i actualy still don't) i am a paying subscriber so it doesn't affect me.
So what did Shawn say: "If you care that much about your character, you should probably subscribe again".

I couldn't agree more with that, if you do care that much you should subscribe and support the game.
In the past i have played many MMO's and to be honest i wouldn't care if they delete my characters, as i don't play them anymore and it is very unlickely i will.

I think a great example was Tabula Rasa (Shawn also mentioned this on the massively podcast), how many people didn't whine about it going away, yet never played it or made comments like ooh man i really wanted to play that game, well that game could have used your support and might have actually survived if many of those people subscribed to the game, afterall all these games are there to make money not to please you by keeping your stuff around forever.

So fact, if you like a game, support it by subscribing, otherwise don't whine about it.

< /rant>

I have always been against forced grouping in MMO's, however i have to say the way Star Trek Online does it, i actually like.
It's no like they force you to group up, but when you enter an instance to do a mission, you're automaticly teamed up with other players doing that same mission, so if no one else is doing that mission you're still flying solo, the same thing applies for the "open encounters" where you're sometimes pulled in, if enemy ships get close to you in sector space or when you innitiate contact.

Missions do seem to get tougher if there are more players in the instance (as in more enemys spawn), but i found it a lot of fun when there are a lot of allies with you, it gives a feeling of a fleet battle and especially if you coordinate the attacks it becomes a lot easier.

And the best thing about this grouping feature is you can turn "auto grouping" off if you want to fly solo.

So i really think they did the right thing, to automaticly group you up with other players, but i f you don't want to you can turn it off.

Finally i wrote something positive about Star Trek Online :)

Now for a bit more negative, i do seem to get a lot of computer lockups (and i do mean complete computer/Windows lockup/freezing) when i set my graphics to "recommended" or high, since i have set the graphics to the one below recommended (can't remember what it said) i have no more lockups, in space it still looks pretty good, but it looks awefull with ground combat.
Personally i think it has to do with a memory leak as i had similair experience with Age of Conan, whatever it is i do hope they're gonna fix it.
Right now i am slowly turning on the graphic setting one by one in the hope of finding the culprit..

So i got home from work all excited to play some Star Trek Online, fired it up started on a quest, finished the first part of a mission chain to shoot down some patrols in different systems, went on to the second system and..... yep booted out of the server, again the server went down without any notice, so i figured screw it and went on to have some fun in Fallen Earth instead.

At first i didn't do much, just went out in a random direction and started scavenging for some time, until i came close to a quest objective, so decided to go questing instead and after finishing a few quests around Oilville i reached level 10 on my main, Cynfull.

So in the end a fun evening gaming, although not what i had planned/hoped for, but then again i allready have a lifetime sub for Star Trek Online, so i'll probably be playing it more than enough, but if they don't start getting their stuff together soon i doubt i'll be helping out much in the beta, afterall launch day is approaching fast..

Personally i always enjoyed Hellgate London (according to my Xfire i played around 95 hours of it, i was even in the beta), but somehow never got a subscription for it, once i wanted to get a sub for it they actually had stopped taking new subscriptions and of course shortly after that they shut it down.
Luckily the single player part of Hellgate London was still playable.

The recent news about Hellgate London returning to the west got my curiosity going, i am definatly going to follow this game to see what's gonna happen, to see what they're gonna do with it a i am really interrested in this game.

I really enjoy the setting in this game and think it's a great franchise, really hope they're gonna do things right this time and not screw it up.

I've been using Steam for quite some time now, and have to say i am really beginning to love it more and more.
I do sometimes hate the fact that steam can be quite expensive (i have bought games on steam that i actualy could have got cheaper in a store).

Recently i went on vacation, which usually means no gaming, however this time i brought my laptop with me, with steam installed.
I actually played quite a bit of Torchlight and currently steam offers the "steam cloud" with Torchlight, which basicly means all my game data (saved game) is stored online, so when i got home and fired up Torchlight on my PC, it instantly synched with steam and got the latest saved game, so i could continue where i left the game, without having to move saved game files around.

Another thing i really enjoyed just in the last couple of days, was the fact that i installed Windows 7 on my gaming rig, which meant losing a lot of games that were installed on Windows XP, but first thing i did when i got things running was, installing steam and it showed all the games i owned and i could immediatly start installing them from steam, just f'ing awesome, no messing around with installation discs, no downloading patches, nothing. Done in no time, just wish i had more of my games on steam and i truly wish there was a way to have all your saved game files "in the cloud" as i did loose quite a few saved games..

Damn why is steam so awesome..