Concerto Gate: Square-Enix's Foray into Free MMOs

Sexism in RPGs Exhibit 1: Girl is always the healer

It looks like Square-Enix have grown tired of its online cash-cow(?) FFXI and instead are venturing into something a little... cutesier. Except this time around, you don't have to pay the $11-15 a month. Yep, this MMORPG is completely free with the big-wigs banking on the fact that our impatient gaming senses will lure us into giving up the cash via microtransaction deals.

Concerto Gate takes place in the fantasy kingdom of Fahren to where you are transported and as one of the unlucky "heroes" that is totally rejected by the king, is forced to make a living in said magical land.

According to the preview at 1up.com, it looks like there are 15 job classes so far, split into four umbrella categories of combat, craftsman, gatherer, and special. The most interesting thing about this game seems to be its unorthodox treatment of the classes' roles: instead of having to grind your way to the top through combat regardless of your class, you can choose to chop wood for success.

So if you like fighting you can choose to be a combat class, but if cooking (chef) or drug-dealin' (pharmacist) is more up your alley, you can choose to be a class solely devoted to those skills. Depending on the class you choose, you might never need to kill a flan to advance. Every class seems to depend on each other, however, as combat classes need to rely on craftsman classes for equipment, who in turn rely on gatherers for materials, etc. No idea on what the "special" classes do yet... bonus points for Squeenix if they add Holy Swordsman as a class a la Final Fantasy Tactics.

Character creation in Concerto Gate... wait, are those my boxers?!

This unique job system seemingly allows for a robust in-game economy consisting of players who gather materials to trade for weapons made by craftsmen used by fighters! Essentially, it's the professions system in WoW... except that's the entire game.

The game seems like it could be pretty entertaining so I'll probably try it out when, and I'd definitely be up for some sweet online dealing-on-the-dark-corners.

Check out the link for more screenshots and the official preview from 1up.
[All pics and info from 1up.com]

Back from a Coma with Some Stealth Action

"Damn You Wal-Mart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes, your eyes fool you not; I have actually made my first post since October 17, 2007 (lulwut?!). For the few of you who may have stumbled onto this blog (none?) and shed a tear for yet another abandoned blog on the internets, I spit at your piteous mourning, because second semester was an unrelenting binatch. Luckily, that nightmare is over and for a lack of anything better to do at work, I am stealthily typing away regardless of whether or not anybody is still out there.

Speaking of stealthy, I finally broke down and bought myself a PS3 along with the recently-released Metal Gear Solid 4 with the moneys I've been making at work writing blog posts writing software with an obsolete language (you guys remember VB6?). As satisfied with it as I am now, the process of getting said bundle was a unbelievable pain in the bum.

Commence my story of getting this blasted bundle. I was actually waiting to buy this a couple months prior to the actual release week and I knew if I was getting ready only a couple months before the release, fanboys all across the country were twitching with credit cards in hand to get their hands on the bundle the moment it was announced last year. Knowing this, I made a reminder on my phone about the midnight release date last Thursday and proceeded to Google map my route to the nearest Wal-Mart, which ended up being an hour from where I lived.

Another thing was that I had to find a 24-hour Wal-Mart, because hell if I'm waking up at 4:00AM and staying awake at work for 9 hours. LULWUT to that one.

Before you start cursing me for selling my soul to the enemy of hard-working wage-earners everywhere, you have to know that Wal-Mart was the only place handing out $100 gift cards with the purchase of the MGS4+PS3. Call me a sell-out, but $100 is a LOT of money for a poor college student like me... which made me think twice about shelling about $500 just so I could play MGS4 and FFXIII, but then my gaming instincts kicked me in the groin and called me something nasty.

The problem was that I'd been reading online about the launch and how many they were going to have in stock, etc. etc. and the general consensus had been that there would be around 20-30 units shipped to each Wal-Mart on average. I felt pretty confident I would get one if I set out early and so I drove for an hour and arrived 3 hours before midnight, pretty good for an amateur of midnight releases, right? Apparently, NO, according to Wal-Mart, who had 6 (SIX? ROKU? SEIS? SINGLE DIGIT NUMBER??!?) units available for purchase at midnight. And even though there were only 12 people in line, because of this disgusting lack of supply, I wouldn't have been able to get one. Luckily, the guy I talked to told me this before I actually stood in line so I didn't have to wait three hours for nothing, but still I felt cheated.
Possible options ran through my head: was this a fluke at one Wal-Mart location? Should I wait in the morning to go to a non-24-hour store and see if they had one in stock? The internets said 20-30 units, was it all a GIANT CONSPIRACY??!

After the initial freaking out over nothing, I drove back down to my local GameStop to see if they had any more in stock. As I expected, there were more people, especially since it was only about 1.5 hours till the launch, but after checking with the clerk in charge (and getting dirty looks from people who thought I was going to cut them) I found out that they had 5 units in stock...

Literally 17% of Wal-Mart's stock of PS3 bundles... Marketing Genius

At this point, I felt pretty defeated by life and beat myself up for not just pre-ordering on Amazon like I originally planned in lieu of getting the midnight-launch experience. But then... I got a phone call from my good-ol' Dad asking me about the launch. Which is funny because video games to my Dad is like physical exertion to me as in the two NEVER come near each other, but I suppose it was fate that I told him about it the day before and he remembered that I told him I was going to stand in line for three hours to get a video game (system), to which he told me he had failed in raising a son who wasn't retarded (in a fatherly way).

So, after some begging, my Dad drove down to the nearest Wal-Mart in Littleton and found out they too only had 6 units to sell. But even though it was only 30-minutes to launch back in the CO, he was the sixth person in line... I was like OMGWTF, God indeed loves me. Apparently, there are no gamers in Colorado, or more likely, they are only lazy gamers in Colorado because a bunch more showed up after my Dad before midnight.

In the end, I did get my bundle, and I'm VERY glad I decided not to go to Kojima-san's launch party in Hollywood, but the sucky part is that I have to wait to play the game for another couple weeks until my internship's over and I go back home. Moral of the story: you are never too old to ask your parents for stuff. Now let's see if I can keep from watching any spoilers for the next couple weeks... T_T