Instant Adventure, You Do Love Me!

Yesterday I was carping a bit about Rift’s Instant Adventure.  There are some issues.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t run the regularly.

I have a warrior, Sanperre, whom I decided to level up… just because.  It might be nice to have more than one character at level cap when Storm Legion comes out.

So I take him out most evenings and run him through “do seven” Instant Adventure quest.  I also run the crafting related quests just to get him some of the currency for buying recipes.  He crafts both armor and weapons at this point.  So he has been building up levels and various currencies.

Last night though was extra special.  After hitting one of the boss kill segments, I got a purple equipment cache drop which, when opened, ended up being a server first item.  I don’t think I have had a server first of anything since the early days of EverQuest II.

First one on Shatterbone

This was a great drop.  First it was a serious upgrade over the weapon I had been wielding, giving me a 5.2 DPS boost… which is actually pretty huge.

Serious upgrade

Second, I love weapon upgrades in general, so this was a double win.  I will go through a game and forget to upgrade armor pieces, enchantments, and so forth, but I do tend to obsess about the weapon I am wielding.  This one will probably cover me until I hit level 50.

And the second, blue equipment cache drop wasn’t so bad either.  It wasn’t epic or a server first, but it was a good upgrade to my main chest armor… which, as noted above, I had neglected to upgrade despite being at least a tier above what I had been wearing.

So a good night, though I still ended up in the Freemarch Instant Adventure.  Again.

Somebody Thinks MMOs Still Have Value – CCP Raises 20 Million in New Funding, Talks IPO Again

With Star Wars: The Old Republic pretty much failing to meet expectations all around, there has been a lot of talk about the death of many things: Monthly subscription MMOs, big budget MMOs, and well… MMOs in general.

Aside from a burst of asylum level crazy talk about SWTOR somehow claiming as many as 10 million monthly users once it goes free… which I am going to guess is what they will need to make it profitable in that mode… to whatever, the news seems to be grim.

Then there is CCP, which seems to be bucking the trend… as usual.

It still has a the subscription model going.  And while it has eyed the cash shop idea longingly at times, it really hasn’t gone very far in that direction, barring some useless cosmetic items.

And they continue to buck the trend by getting $20 million in new funding in these dark days, according to Tech Crunch.

Of course, this should not really be news.  CCP was talking about more funding and an IPO back in February when they announced that they had not only defied some dire predictions about going bankrupt, but actually made a handy profit for 2011.  This despite the whole Incarna thing.

What will a publicly traded CCP mean?  Is that even a good thing?

I couldn’t tell you.  Then again, I live in Silicon Valley where IPO generally means “screw the company, I’m cashing out!” so I sometimes have a dim view of the whole process despite having “cashed out” at least once myself.

But somebody out there thinks there is value to be found in MMOs.