Making an MMO Better

So I've been thinking on this topic for a while.  Specifically I'd like to apply these changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic; I feel that if the following changes were adapted to the game in its current state, it would make SWTOR the best MMO out on the market.  Granted that's purely my opinion, but I've brought up these ideas with other gamers both in and out of game.

First change: Allow for more character customization.  Bioware/EA already have several different varieties of non-human "skins" both male and female for bots/sprites.  It seems to me that it wouldn't require much more work to code those skins over existing PC models so that players could play most any race.

Allowing players the chance to customize their characters even more is only a good thing from my point of view.  It keeps people interested in the game, and it would make players want to stick around and roll up a new 'toon to play as some other race they encounter that "looks cool".

Second: Allow characters to use any weapon.  Sure it makes sense that Jedi have lightsabers.  Sure it makes sense that Bounty Hunters have blasters.  However, there are some weapons that just don't see a lot of daylight in the game world because they are too specialized.  Like the Techblade, or the Techstaff, or the Scattergun.  If I had the ability to have a Force user with a techstaff, I think I'd enjoy the hell out of that.  Same for a Bounty Hunter/Trooper/Smuggler/Imperial Agent and any ranged weapon.  You can keep things somewhat specialized in that regard for PCs - Force users have to use melee weapons, and everyone else has to use ranged weapons.  Keep the companions the way they are; nothing there needs to change.

Third, and this one is a biggie: Redo the advanced classes/skill trees.  Anyone can look at the SWTOR skill trees and see that it's pretty much a direct clone of Blizzard's World of Warcraft.  I understand the reasoning behind that.  1) It's a format that players are familiar with, so it won't knock players out of a comfort zone, and 2) the model is already there, so why not use it?  The problem with this is twofold.  Initially, the problem is that it is a WoW clone.  The other issue is that there are abilities offered on both sides of the "Healer/Non-Healer" spectrum that would work for either side.  Let me explain my idea here; if Bioware scrapped the current skill system and looked at either The Secret World or Path of Exile for inspiration, the skill system would be much better.  You could then allow your players to choose what areas they want to spend skill points allowing for some overlap.  For Force users you could have three tiers: Melee, Force, and Healing.  For non-Force users you could have three tiers: Assault, Covert, and Healing.  Here is a link to the Path of Exile skill tree builder.   The builder is currently set up for the "Witch" class.  As you can see the player initially has two paths open for assigning skill points, however the skill tree quickly branches off into multiple directions.  Additionally, the player unlocks both passive and active abilities along the skill tree.  This allows for much more player customization of their character and helps to prevent the "use this build for tanking/DPS/healz" mentality that can be found in just about any MMORPG.

And lastly: make PvP worthwhile.  The best PvP systems I've ever seen in an MMO comes from Pirates of the Burning Sea.  PvP is initiated among the factions by killing NPCs of an opposing faction (not just a "neutral" NPC faction) inside the territorial waters of that enemy faction.  This begins to build unrest.  When a certain level of unrest is achieved, PCs level 10 and up are automatically flagged for PvP in their territories where unrest is very great.  Now, before you put the cart before the horse and whine about high level PCs ganging up on "lowbies" let me explain something; if a PC attacks and kills another PC and there is more than a 5 level difference between the characters, the faction with the greatest amount of unrest loses unrest. To try and make that clearer: lets assume Britain has gone on the offensive against Spain.  A British PC of level 30 attacks a Spanish PC of level 10 inside an unrest area.  The Brit loses unrest for his faction and now has to work harder to increase the level of unrest against Spain back to where it was.  The same works for NPCs as well.  If a PC of level 30 sinks an NPC of level 10, the aggressor faction loses unrest because of the level difference.  This was done to prevent high level PCs from just going around to the "lowbie" areas and corpse camping.  To continue: after yet more unrest is attained, the aggressor faction can start attacking cities of the enemy faction du jour and have the ability to go ashore and run missions/quests when normally you can't go to any towns other than your own faction.  After all of this is done, and one faction emerges victorious from PvP, the unrest table resets and the factions can go at it again.  During all this hullabaloo, the defending faction can work to ease unrest through crafting, through mercantile missions, and through kicking the crap out of the aggressor faction.  Other factions can join in on either side, but they don't gain anything by aiding one side or the other.

All of this gathering of unrest and PvP action typically takes about a week (or more depending) to culminate in a victory for one faction or another.  It is, in my humble opinion, the best PvP I've ever participated in, in any MMO I've ever played.

So how do I see this applied to SWTOR?  Well, I see adding new space combat missions.  Allow PCs to start gaining unrest against the enemy via space combat against NPCs.  From what I've seen/heard, most SWTOR players don't engage in much space combat.  This would change that significantly.  Also I would open up new planets/planet areas that are PvP only - that being said there would have to be balance.  Add a level penalty like I mentioned above to keep high level players from destroying "lowbies".  Or just put a level cap on the accessible area.  If you are above/below that level cap you don't get flagged for PvP.  Allow for special missions to aid in PvP, both group missions and solo missions.  Add gathering missions to gain unrest supplies that can be turned in to your faction to help disperse unrest.  Allow an NPC faction to randomly attack the Empire and the Republic and send either faction (or both) into unrest against the NPC faction.

These changes would make PvP more accessible to players without the need to form groups; without the need to be max level; without the need to have special gear; and would allow all levels of PCs to participate in gaining/dispersing unrest.

"So what rewards", I hear you cry, "do the winning faction get access to?"  Obviously there are the "planetary commendation" type rewards that you can currently earn through warzones.  I would additionally allow for mission unlocks depending on the level of unrest (for both factions) to increase/decrease unrest.  Have the loot tables increased for PvP missions - make the players feel that engaging in PvP is worthwhile.  If I can run a space mission and get credits that's great.  If instead I can run a space mission, get some credits, increase unrest for my faction and get a rare reward?  Incentive man, incentive.  Maybe it's a schematic, maybe it's a gear mod, whatever.  Maybe it's crafting materials in large quantities or crafting materials of better quality.  The point is incentive to run the missions.  Then there is the option to allow for a faction-wide buff/debuff depending on how your faction is doing in PvP.  And since SWTOR is Free/Pay to Play, you could limit PvP actions for free players and allow unlimited PvP to subscribers.  Cartel coins could be used to purchase PvP tags.


Just some musing that I've been doing and I needed to get it all down before I forgot it all.  If any of this actually happened for SWTOR I'd be ecstatic.  And again, it would make SWTOR the leading MMORPG in my opinion.

Playing More Star Wars: The Old Republic

So I've been slowly working through all the classes and storylines in SWTOR, and so far (unsurprisingly) the Sith Empire storylines are the most well written, and the best acted.  I enjoy the choices you have to make playing Empire side, more so than the Republic side.  This is mostly due to two things.

1) Playing Republic side, it feels as though the story writers went out of their way to make things as "black and white" morally as possible.  And while that might work in other settings, I think it fails here.  Playing both the Smuggler and the Trooper, you get to see more of what the Empire storylines offer in morally ambiguous choices.  You can kill/maim someone and earn Dark Side Points, but with that action you actually do more good than harm on a broad scale.  Or you could let that same person go free and earn Light Side Points and end up dooming a civilization.

2) The directing for the actors on the Republic side was just too overblown.  Especially with a Jedi character, the voice actors are just trying too hard to convey that they have such great inner nobility and purpose...even if you've gone completely Dark Side in all of your social interactions.  I actually had to stop playing my Jedi Consular and I deleted the character because I could not listen to the actor's voice any longer.  I don't blame the actors for this; I blame the voice director.  S/He is the person(s) responsible for such horrendous acting.  Shudder.

As it is right now, I'm enjoying the storylines (for the most part) and will continue to play SWTOR for a while until...Neverwinter Online comes out.

Legend of the Five Rings

So I'm apparently waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind the curve on playing this game/setting, but holy shit I'm having fun playing L5R.

Let me begin by giving a bit of info here.  Legend of the Five Rings is a feudal Japan setting tabletop RPG.  Your characters live in a land called Rokugon, and there are several main clans that comprise the Empire: Crab, Crane, Lion, Dragon, Mantis, Scorpion, Unicorn, Phoenix, and the Imperial Clan.  Each clan has a different specialty for its warriors, magic users, and monks.  One of the most delightful (IMO) aspects of the game is in character creation.  Your Advantages and Disadvantages seem to be the most important part of creating your character.  You only have 40 xp to use to buy/upgrade skills, katas, spells, advantages/disadvantages, and attributes.  So the points refunded to you from taking disadvantages are very important.  Not only that but the types of dis/advantages allow for some very interesting characters.  My initial character was designed to be nothing more than a brawler.  He is rude, contrary, obtuse.  He has no social graces to balance that out and his Willpower is not great enough to stop his tongue from getting him in to trouble most times.  Needless to say, what was initially a "cookie cutter" throw away character has turned instead in to a roleplaying savant.  His outlook and attitude are so very different from my own (most of the time) that playing him is ridiculously fun.

It took me a little while to mentally adjust to playing L5R.  For one, characters die with apparent ease (despite the fact that my Crab Clan Bushi has yet to die, and he's had several opportunities).  Our first session, one of our party was playing a Phoenix Clan Shugenja who got killed by a water spirit.  Additionally, I am not that well versed with Japanese culture; so that occasionally creates problems.  However, I can't seem to stop thinking about where our adventure will take us as we explore Rokugon.

As an aside, there are several character generators out there for L5R.  I know I've posted previously about character generators for other systems, but since L5R is currently in the process of updating to a new edition I don't think we'll encounter the problem we had with the 4e character generator I mentioned several posts/years ago.  This is the website that links to the character generator I use.  It's very easy to use, and fairly user friendly.  And because I am "that guy" I have created perhaps 10 characters with it, for when my dude finally dies gloriously.

Yet More on: Path of Exile

OK, so I'm planning on pretty much ctrl-c/ctrl-v parts of this post onto the forums for Grinding Gear Games for my likes/dislikes/suggestions for Path of Exile.

Things I Like:

• Skill Gems: they enable your character to use spells/abilities.  There is no class restriction (that I have yest seen) on Skill Gems, so your Marauder can use spells like Frost Nova, or Fireball as long as he meets the usage requirements.  These are normally an attribute, or an item requirement.  It would be very difficult to cast Hail of Arrows without a bow equipped.  Also, the Skills/Spells in the Skill Gems will level with you as you run around killing things and gaining XP.  The skills/spells themselves may have leveling restrictions though, so be mindful of how you use the Skill Tree when you level up.
• Support Gems: can be linked to Skill Gems on items that have linked sockets.  You can tell because said sockets are tethered when you open your inventory and look at the sockets on the items.  Also, Support Gems do not have to match the color of the Skill Gem they are enhancing, you only have to match socket colors.
• Socket Slots:  All items in Path of Exile are socketed.  Some may only have one socket, but it's there to be used by damn.
• Classes are balanced.  Every class has its pros and cons, but they are all fairly equal in the damage dealt/damage taken category.  That being said, the Skill Gems you elect to use can make a huge difference on your mob fighting survivability, let alone rare/elite/boss mobs.
• The Skill Tree: Holy crap!  The skill tree very much reminds me of the skill tree from Final Fantasy X, if you are at all familiar with that game.  Your main stat (or two main stats depending on what class you play) branch off into this amazingly detailed map of passive/active stat/skill buffs, special skills you get to unlock, and some fairly amazing "ultimate powers" (as I call them).  Do not make the mistake of looking at the skill tree out in the wilderness...your character can get swarmed and die while you're busy plotting out what skills you want to increase.
• No Gold.  None.  Your basic currency in the game is "Scrolls of Wisdom".  These are used to buy other things like Town Portal scrolls, or health/mana flasks, or basic weapons and armor.  Other collectibles that you come across like Blacksmith's Whetstone, or Orb of Chaos can be used to purchase higher level items as your character increases in level.
• All the items used for currency can be collected whole, or as shards that will automatically combine into the full item when the collection threshold is reached.  Super nice.
• The music/ambiance: they are phenomenal!  Running around as my Witch over the weekend with my summoned zombies (that would occasionally rubber band from around a corner and then proceed to scare the hell out of me) in the various dungeons was fantastic!

Things I Am OK With:

• There are only five classes.  I have no idea if this will change in the future, but for now I'm fine with it.  Your current class selections are: Marauder - an Uruk Hai stand in from his body type; Shadow - a spy/saboteur/assassin; Templar - a militant priest; Duelist - does this really need and explanation?; and Witch.
• Pretty much anything else that doesn't get mentioned in the following section.

Things I Would Like To Change:

• When switching between purchasing and selling items at a vendor, you currently need to exit out of whichever market you are in with that vendor, and then enter the other.  Granted this means you are only having to close the "Sell Items" window, and open the "Purchase Items" window without having to stop speaking with that NPC, but I would like it if there was a tab in whichever market you're in that would immediately flip you to the other without having to take those few extra steps.  I know, I'm just being lazy.
• I would like it if each class had a male/female version.  That is one of the few things that I feel Blizzard did right in Diablo 3.
• There are times (and I'm not sure if this is a sever lag issue) when I am attempting to kill an enemy, and either my dude won't hit him no matter where I am in relation to the target; or I will kill the target and loot drops half a screen away from where the corpse is.
• There is an issue I'm experiencing with barrels and chests, where the "interface zone" where my mouse highlights and enables me to open said barrel/chest is super small...especially in relation to the size of my cursor on the screen.  Again, I'm not sure if this is due to server lag.

So there are a few things.  Have you gotten around to downloading and playing yet?  Get on it!  If you're ever looking for a partner to run around with in game, please feel free to post a character name here in the comments section, and I'll find you in game.

-Bonzo out.

...Heartbeat?

So, I'm still here.

It was a very, very rough 2012 for me and I hope that 2013 will have a much better outlook as we move forward.

Some quick things of note from this past year.  We tried out a few different table-top systems, and we've enjoyed most of them.  I've found some old online MMOs that are perhaps better now than they were previously.  I just today discovered a Diablo 2 clone that is being produced by some fine folks down in New Zealand - and that is what I want to spend a little bit of time on right now.

Path of Exile is the Diablo 2 clone in question.  It's currently in open beta testing, so if you enjoyed D2 and you want to have that same kind of fun without all of the Blizzard BS, go download the client and get going.  I think the total amount of time it took to download, install, and update was about 20 minutes.  It's not like you'd be downloading/installing/updating World of Tanks for Pete's sake.    I've only been playing Path of Exile for a few hours and just completed Act 1, so I felt I could actually take a break and log out.  I'm very impressed with this game.  The UI is designed very well, with optimal user friendliness for the gamer in mind.  Hotkey bindings are sensible, and easy to find/understand.  The in game currency system COMPLETELY eliminates the problems that came about from Blizzard's complete lack of anything resembling intelligence concerning currency/auctioning items.  This game does feel more like D2.5 or 2.8 rather than Diablo 2 or Diablo 3, however I really like the subtle changes the lads at Grinding Gear Games made to the Diablo style format.  The classes are balanced, the game play is fun and intuitive, the music and ambiance are incredible.  The skill tree is very much like what I've seen from Square Enix with Final Fantasy X, allowing you to customize your particular character build to your preferred play style.  Again very, very impressive.

If you haven't yet gone to their website to look at the game, please do so.  And watch the introductory video!

-Bonzo out.

Star Trek Online: Supplemental

It's been about two weeks since I've returned to STO, and I wanted to go ahead and provide new links to some old information that is now very, very outdated for any new and/or returning players.  I'll also make some recommendations for new and old players in order to make playing the game a tad easier.

First, there is the shiny and new STO ship chart in all it's high res, rendered glory.  This chart is a huge step forward from the old wire-frame profile chart from about 2 years ago.  By the by, happy 2nd Anniversary Star Trek Online!  Also, for KDF players, here is the KDF version of the shiny and new ship chart.  Something you might notice on the Federation chart is a rather large ship for Vice Admiral/Lieutenant General (level 50) called the Odyssey Star Cruiser.  Everyone gets one as part of the 2nd Anniversary celebration.  (Hell yeah!)  You also might have noticed that a similar ship is conspicuously absent from the KDF chart.  Don't worry, they guys at Cryptic don't hate the Klingon faction; they just didn't have the designs for the Bortas (Vengeance) Class Star Ship ready for the latest graphical chart.  However I happen to have some images of the beast.  Many Bothans died to bring us...wait, wrong universe.  Here's the picture:

The picture isn't that great, however I can tell you from personal experience that while it turns like a wounded beached whale (just like the Odyssey) it's an amazing ship.  Like I stated earlier both the Bortas and the Odyssey are level 50 ships, so by the time you can use it you'll have the devices and console items necessary to make those boats real fighting machines.  And lets be honest; a free level 50 ship is hard to beat.  Especially when you look at the cost of the other level 50 ships.


          ____________________________________________________________________


Second, I want to talk about a tool that I loved back in the day that some wonderful lads over at Star Trek Online Academy have revamped to keep it updated to make it useful for players.  I am talking about the Skill Planner.  I cannot stress enough that if you're planning on creating a new character, or you need to respec an old one you need to visit the Skill Planner to make leveling your character up as easy as possible.  Now in the last two years, the folks at Cryptic have made changes to the skill tree; making it more streamlined and more user friendly...but the problem remains that if you aren't familiar with what abilities you're going to have access to at maximum level, you're apt to make mistakes on assigning points to the various skills you have to choose from.  This is where the Skill Planner comes in..or at least where it should come in.  You should spend some time familiarizing yourself with the three classes available to play and the basic roles they each perform.  Tactical officers will focus primarily on dealing out massive quantities of damage, however Tactical officers cannot take massive amounts of damage.  I often refer to them as "glass cannons".  I don't play as a Tactical officer with either faction.  I find that the inability to take hits from large groups of enemies is a huge drawback...because I like to solo!  It's a personal choice.  My brother, Fred, started playing when the game went f2p, and he runs a Tac officer.  He enjoys it, but he likes it better when we're teamed up because I can take attention away from him.  Engineering officers fill the "tanking" role that is familiar with most MMO players.  This class is what I would recommend to all new players because when you solo, you have the highest chance of survivability.  Finally there is the Science officer which focuses on buffs and debuffs (or you could call them expose attacks/abilities and exploit attacks/abilities).  Sci officers are not nearly as robust as Engineers, but with their enhanced shield abilities and enhanced shield recharge rates they can take slightly more damage than Tac officers, but they still don't do as much damage as Tac officers. 

To summarize, each class is superior in one of three areas: Damage, Defense, Expose/Exploit.  Tactical officers are superior damage, moderate defense, weak expose/exploit.  Engineers are superior defense, moderate expose/exploit, weak damage.  Science officers are superior expose/exploit, moderate damage, weak defense.  Yes, I said weak defense.  And I'll tell you why.  With the way shields behave vs hitpoints for your ship, shields don't really fall in to a defense category.  Science officers get more access to abilities to buff/enhance their shields than any other officer, but other than those abilities shields are the same for all classes.  Defense comes from the ships you pilot.  And Science officer ships have the least crew and hitpoints.  As soon as a Science officer's shields are down, the ships they are in tend to explode quickly, and beautifully.

Now that I've said all that, let me continue on with my point.  My point is that after you decide what class you want to play, you ought to spend the time looking at all the abilities your class is granted, and what abilities your class will allow you to train your Bridge Officers with, and plug all that information in to the STO Academy Skill Planner.  The important skills for your planned build will be marked with star in the upper right-hand corner of each skill, and those you'll most likely want to have at least 6 ranks in each skill in order to unlock trainable abilities.  Each skill will also tell you what player/bridge officer abilities it affects (if any), and what power/damage/defense/shield bonuses it provides.

Unfortunately I don't feel that this is a game you can just jump in to blind.  Star Trek has always been the "thinking-man's sci-fi" and as such, I feel it needs a more logical and objective approach than other MMOs where you just roll up a character that sounds neat and hit the ground running.  Think of it like this: you're playing a character than is a graduate of the Starfleet Academy (or Klingon equivalent).  In that time, your character would have taken coursework leading him/her down whichever career path was best suited for the character.  The character would have the grounding in all those abilities that the player knows nothing about.  Everyone knows what a "fireball spell" is and how it works; regardless of what MMO you're playing, if you can cast a fireball they're pretty much all the same.  But who knows exactly what a Photonic Shockwave is and how it affects objects in space?  I didn't before I started playing, and really I should have taken the time to figure all that our before I fudged up my characters back with the original release 2 years ago.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of "d'oh!" when you realize you effed up your character 20 levels ago, and you haven't earned a respec for your character yet.  So your either scrap the character and start over, or you resign yourself to buying a respec...because playing a flawed character just hurts.

Live long, and prosper.

-Bonzo out

Hello 2012

I believe this is my official first post for 2012; so happy new year and all that jazz!

Kicking off the new year I want to address a trend in the MMO world that I'm becoming more a fan of every passing day.  This trend is the "free-to-play MMO".  Developers are aware that we're still in a down economy with little to no end in sight, and as such more and more f2p games are coming out all the time.  I'm going to take some time to talk about a few that I keep coming back to, and one MMO that I used to play quite heavily that has just recently gone f2p.

As players have known for quite some time, Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) has been f2p.  Turbine has a fantastic model for game developers to follow on how to make a free MMO work with balanced play and for-sale content.  I've stated in previous posts that Turbine allows all players (free and subscribers) to earn the currency that you can spend in the DDO store so there end up being few differences between free and subscribing players. Which is nice.

World of Tanks started out, and remains f2p for the player base.  And as previously stated, while I have enjoyed playing WoT quite a bit, Wargaming.net restrict some of the in-game currency to RMT (real money transfer) thereby limiting their player base on what the players have access to.  As I've pointed out before this is essentially selling power.  Despite that, I still play the game because it is fun.  Well Wargaming.net have recently announced that World of Warplanes will soon be available for closed beta testing.  Should their model for WoWP follow the model of WoT, WoWP will be in open beta not too long after the closed beta beings.  Needless to say I am waiting for the beta signups to start.  Wargaming.net have announced both the American and German Flight Trees, and have shown a few glimpses of the aircraft available; they have yet to announce what the third (or fourth) flight trees will be yet: Russian, Japanese, British, etc, and I am very excited to find out.  There have been rumors that since both WoT and WoWP will share account information and the "world" that when clan wars begin any clan with a success in WoWP will have an airstrike available to them in WoT.  I have no idea how feasible this is, but it is interesting.  I also have no idea if Wargaming.net will continue to feature the three "classes" of craft.  In WoT you have tanks, tank destroyers, and Self-Propelled Guns aka artillery.  I can see having fighters and bombers filling the tank and SPG roles, but I really can't think of any aircraft that would fill the tank destroyer role.   Additionally, if the Brits don't have a substantial amount of warbirds in WoWP I may have to go with the American tree for two reasons: the F-4U Corsair and the P-51 Mustang.  Yummy.  As a final notation about the games Wargaming.net have, they already have a website set up for World of Battleships.  I could easily see how the three "classes" of craft would fit in here. Battleships would be tanks, aircraft carriers would be SPGs, and submarines would be the tank destroyers.  There is almost no information available on WoB yet, but I'm sure you can tell I'll be on the lookout.

A new (to me) MMO that I've encountered is this fantastically amazing game called Vindictus.  Nexon have done a fantastic job with the graphics and the physics in this game.  The game currently features four playable "classes" that are gender locked (currently 2 male, 2 female) but despite that they are all pretty fun to play.  The storyline in the game is very well done, and the NPC interaction has been done in my opinion, brilliantly.  Only the players, and monsters in dungeons are fully rendered.  NPCs are simply 2D pictures that display different facial expression depending on the tone of the dialog.  Picking up new quests and turning in quests to/from NPCs is incredibly simple compared to other MMOs in a similar genre.  Take the time to play this, it is fantastic.  I'm on the West Server.

Finally this morning, I want to mention that Star Trek Online (STO) has finally gone f2p, with the official announcement this week.  Perfect World have a series of f2p games that I have tried out about a year ago and never bothered to post about because while they were graphically very pretty, after leaving the starter area and getting out into the rest of the game worlds, it felt like I was being forced into purchasing content in order to complete quests.  However very little has changed in STO since I last played.  Cryptic had made several updates to the game to make it more enjoyable and they increased the level cap (which is nice).  A note for anyone interested in playing STO now: after downloading the game and installing the game, it will auto prompt you for a CD key.  Do not fear!  Close down the installer at that point since it's complete and go create a log in through Perfect World.  You can get the link from the website for Star Trek Online.  If you happen to already have a Cryptic sign in, you can use your old username/password and log in to your old characters.  With a new account...well you know what to do.  Since so many changes have taken place during the time that I was away, I have elected to restart with some new characters, and I have to say that the game is just as, if not more, fun than when I played the first time.


I'll leave it at this point for now, but I want to encourage you to look at f2p MMOs, and to not just discount them because they are free to play.  Game developers are people too, they live in the same economy as the rest of us, and for the most part understand that gaming can be expensive - they're looking out for us too.

-Bonzo out