PC GameSource Blog

Let’s face it–whether or not you’re a fan, it’s hard to pass up all of the massively multiplayer online games both in beta and being released this season. Just to name a few, check the below lists.

Recently released MMOs:

• Champions Online by Cryptic
• CrimeCraft by Vogster

MMOs Coming Soon:

• Aion (Release: September 22) by NCsoft
• Fallen Earth (Release: September 22) by Icarus Studios
• Global Agenda by Hi-Rez Studios
• Huxley: The Dystopia (Release: November)
• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion by Blizzard
• Alganon by Quest Online

Other MMOs probably not releasing this fall:

• Star Trek Online by Cryptic
• Star Wars: The Old Republic by BioWare
• Stargate Worlds by FireSky
• A new Lord of the Rings Online expansion

As we have the chance to try out all of these exciting titles, we will post our thoughts, and eventually our full reviews here. Check back for updates!

It’s been several days since the start of Aion‘s Open Beta, following closely their highly-successful Closed Beta, and I must say–so far, so good! As is expected with an MMO launch, and even more-so a Beta launch, Aion has had, and continues to have, its fair share of issues.

The number of people pounding the game login servers, Aion’s Open Beta forums, and NCsoft’s Account site brought each of those services to their knees for a while. These issues were cleared up in a matter of a couple of hours for most people.

Next, there was random spikes of terrible and debilitating latency upwards of several seconds that prevented some users from playing the game for periods of time. Most of these issues have been resolved, but there are still reports of random lag throughout. I’m sure the developers will continue to tune their servers up until and continuing after the official launch in less than two weeks (September 22).

Some players were unhappy about some of the changes made to the game (PvP damage has been lowered significantly, many balance changes have been made, etc), but the general consensus is that almost all of them have made the game better and more fun overall.

In the Closed Beta I focused on the Asmodians, and thoroughly enjoyed leveling my characters. Now, in the Open Beta, I am focusing on an Elyos character, attempting to experience as much of the game as possible from the other side of the Abyss before the official launch.

I can’t comment yet on PvP or any sort of end-game experience, but working my way up to it has sure been a fun ride, and is thus far recommended for any MMO player looking for their next fix–especially WoW players wanting something a bit different that has a similar charm to it.

For years we have been enjoying a well-sorted list of Oblivion mods thanks to the wonderful BOSS (formerly fcomhelper). But Fallout 3 users have been left in the cold, with sparse, scattered, and/or conflicting information about where their mods should go in their load order.

Early on this year, the developers at our partner SingularityShift (eg. mostly myself) released the first pre-beta of FOMS, whose final version (0.6.6.1) was released in April. FOMS used XML templates to facilitate sorting and management of conflicts, dependencies, and related information for Fallout 3 mods. It was very basic with a very limited UI that provided just enough functionality to sort and manage mods, but it had some inherent issues in the fact that it was developed with hand-written tools in a scripting language that has some serious limitations.

Recently, SingularityShift released the first alpha (Alpha 1) of FOMS 2, which is a complete rewrite taking advantage of the robust features of the .NET Framework and WPF to provide a greatly-enhanced sorting experience, including a Template Manager to create and manage XML templates, live conflict/dependency/message tracking, robust backup/restore options, and more all driven by a flexible Preferences system that will ultimately allow users to customize many aspects of the application.

Given that it was a first release, users have uncovered many bugs and submitted many wishlist items and feature requests. Now, FOMS 2 Alpha 2 is nearing its release, and some of its new features that have been recently unveiled are:

• Refactored windows and unified resources for a smaller size, tighter code, and better performance and stability
• The Template Manager is being dumped and replaced by Template Studio, allowing much-enhanced functionality such as template downloads, backups, merging, cleaning, upgrading, and much more.
• Conflict/Dependency recommendations and resolving are now included, so you don’t need to hunt through your list to find and fix the conflicts/dependencies yourself.
• Many smaller fixes and improvements for a better overall experience.

Keep your eyes peeled for the new release!

As always, you can follow along with the software’s development at its project site.
You can discuss it with other Fallout 3 users at Fallout3Nexus and don’t forget to watch the official site at falloutmodsorter.com for release information and more details!

(If I have some shame, can it really be considered a shameless plug?)