Some Brief Musings

The more I see of the artwork from the new WoW expac Shadowlands, the more I think that it's a cross of WoW with Aion. Not saying it's a bad thing, but it does feel a bit weird.

From aion.mmosite.com via Pinterest.

From worldofwarcraft.com.

Unless, of course, it's a weird merging of WoW and Elder Scrolls Online....

Nothing says "Gothic Horror" like vampires.
From mmosky.com.

From a larger graphic from worldofwarcraft.com.

***

My push to gearing up properly appears to be bearing some fruit, just not in the way I expected:

This was a surprise, to say the least.

I joined an Ony pug headed up by a person relatively famous on the server for a) his devil-may-care attitude to pugs, and b) his steadfast refusal to use any form of audio communication. He considers using an application like Discord to be "for wussies".

Everybody knows what they're getting into when they join one of his pugs --myself included-- so I go in expecting to wipe at least once.

We didn't wipe on Ony, but I did die in Phase 3 when Onyxia moved out of range and I tried to get back in range. As I told a guildie --who'd also joined the pug-- later, the pug was pretty much organized chaos.

They decided to roll on the head first, and someone rolled a 95. I really wanted the bag, but I figured "Oh what the hell, why not" and decided to roll on the head anyway.

I got a 99.

"Dammit Card!" the person who'd rolled 95 said.

So I now get to coordinate with my server's Discord channel on when to drop an Onyxia head, something I didn't expect I'd ever get to do.

***

My oldest visited Minas Tirith in LOTRO for the Summer Festival, and she raved about it to me later. She also mentioned how busy it was, and that her laptop was struggling so much her FPS was down to 5 FPS. Given that her laptop was a fairly generic AMD processor that's now 6 years old, that didn't exactly shock me. Still, she went on for a while about how well done Minas Tirith was, which pleased me to no end.

MMOs still bring me and the mini-Reds together.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on a Saturday Night

You'd think that I'd have learned by now that a lot of MMOs are in "easy mode" compared to Age of Conan. Unless you're deliberately pushing to level through questing and you jump straight into a new expac*, the average MMO's quest mobs are easily handled.

But nooo...  I have to go login as my Barbarian and rush right on into the first mob I see.  Which, in traditional AoC fashion, will also cause a nearby mob to also aggro and swoop down on me.

Scratch one Barbarian.

What was that line Conan said when he was praying to Crom? "And if you don't grant me this, then to hell with you!"

Yeah, somewhere Crom is laughing at me.

***

After my previous post about the Love is in the Air event on WoW, I discovered that Aion has a similar event. Curious, I tried searching for info on it, and discovered that you can exchange gifts as well as buy items from the store. The F2P nature of Aion does make the promotion of buying items a bit more front and center than in WoW, but it isn't too badly done. Now, if they'd get rid of the spamming...

Anyway, why don't MMOs have some events like the Olympics? Sport is fairly universal, and PvP and other competitions would seem natural for an MMO's special event. As for those who would claim that you'd want a special event to be open to even the purely PvE people, I'd also point out that the WoW events haven't exactly changed much over the years. Given their prevalence and PvE orientation (with the notable exception of one item in Children's Week), it would seem that a PvP oriented event would be a natural thing. In pre-Cata times I'd have suggested races at the Mirage Raceway, but of course that's under several hundred feet of water now.

***

I was perusing the materials for the D&D Next adventure "Murder at Baldur's Gate"** when I was struck by nostalgia. The Bioware classics Baldur's Gate I and II invigorated the CRPG genre, and reading about the history of the city in the game materials was like a stroll through the past. I spent many an hour working my way through the game, enjoying where the story went, and I can still see the influence of this game on Bioware's later works (including SWTOR).

But seeing the statue of Minsc and Boo among the artwork brought a smile to my lips.

"Go for the eyes, Boo!"

From Murder at Baldur's Gate, Wizards of the Coast.

*This is what happened when I jumped straight into Mists of Pandaria when I hit L85.  I'd just entered Uldum at the time and had maybe a couple of pieces of gear that were better than Hyjal/Vash'jir greens. For an underpowered Rogue, jumping straight into the Jade Forest was a brick wall.

**It is not edition specific, so you can play it with D&D 3.x (and, presumably, Pathfinder), D&D 4e, and D&D Next.  D&D Next is still in development, and will be released officially later in the year.

They Keep Dragging Me Back In, Part Whatever

In between running BGs on WoW, poking around Makeb (finally!) on SWTOR, and some occasional forays into other MMOs, I felt a strange tug.

Perhaps it was me passing by a bunch of In Nomine RPG books when I was at one of our local game stores.  Perhaps it was watching the Doctor Who episode The Angels Take Manhattan with the kids. Perhaps it was me watching Illidan's "You are not prepared!" sequence on the BC trailer.  But whatever the reason why, I had a sudden hankering to see this again:

Nothing like a pair of wings to attract attention

Yeah, I know.  You'd think that after I said Aion wasn't for me that would have been the end of it, but like White Castle hamburgers, I got a sudden craving to login to the game again.

Instead of using my Elyos "light side" character, I created a "dark side" Asmodian just to see what that looked like.  To say that they appeared akin to darker reflections of Elyos is pretty accurate, plus they have a furry, almost tail-like growth on their backs.  "Oh great, they're "Furry Angels", I muttered and left it at that.

The Asian MMO nature of Aion means that you get creatures with names like "Sparkie" out there, but that isn't different than the Elyos side out there.  The major difference between factions is illustrated from the beginning questlines:  on the Elyos side you're defending communities from raiders, while on the Asmodian side you are the raiders.

Gold spammers were in full force in the chat areas, which once again rendered them practically useless.  This makes me wonder whether NCSoft actually encourages gold spammers, given how effective ArenaNet, Bioware, and even Blizzard have been at gold spam reduction.

I will freely admit that the best part of the game is the graphics, but still the immersion is ruined by the Nintendo factor:  the goofy enemy names, the tendency of some players to use mushroom heads instead of realistic looking designs, and the obvious JRPG nature of the female toons' graphics.

Part of the Aion v4.0 "Dark Betrayal" promotion pics.
A long time ago, I once had an apartment neighbor who wore leather outfits
like the woman on the right.  She was not one to be trifled with.

In the illustration above, the woman on the left makes me vaguely uncomfortable.  I don't know how such images are perceived in Asia, but over here she leaves the impression of a 12-13 year old dressed up in a sexualized outfit.  This creeped me out, given that I have kids in that age range.  I simply don't see the need to go there.  As much as some people complain about the Dragon Aspects' bikini looks, at least they dress like adults.  (And the Aspects give you the sort of look that says "if you piss us off, you're breakfast."  You don't get that in Aion.)

Aion is popular enough, given the number of toons online, but I wish it would take itself more seriously.

Oh, and I wish it would make the mouse selections the same as on (almost) all other MMOs.  Why decide to do things differently when all you did was kinda-sorta reverse some of the mouse functions?

I suppose I should be happy that Aion hasn't enraptured me, because the last thing I need is another MMO to split my time.  But man, Aion just feels so close to something I'd like, it's a shame that it doesn't.

Chit-Chatting Away

Gen Chat is an interesting beast.

Some games, Gen Chat is overwhelmed with gold farmers hawking their wares.  Other games, its dead silent.  And on still others, it can be a cesspool.

WoW's Gen Chat is decidedly schizophrenic.  In the capital cities, Gen Chat is active and reasonably well behaved.*  Outside of Stormwind and Orgrimmar (and Northern Barrens), Gen Chat is notable for its silence.  Occasionally you'll see the guild recruitment posts, especially in the starting zones, but for the most part Gen Chat out in the world is merely a marker to let you know when you left one zone for another.  Given that so few people actually use Gen Chat, its hard to tell if Gen Chat actually transcends the cross-server zones.**

In this post LFG/LFR World of Warcraft, Gen Chat's utility has declined.  Yes, there's Trade Chat and the LFG channel, but once the queues came along a lot of in-game chat activity vanished.

By comparison, Gen Chat in Aion is very busy, but unfortunately most of it is filled with gold farmers.  I suspect there are conversations in Gen Chat that are worth following in Aion, but they are drowned out by the flood of gold farmer spam.  I never thought I'd say this, but in the worst days of WoW gold farmer spam (in Wrath), we never even came close to what I've seen on an average night in Aion.  As much as some people gripe about the miscellaneous topics in Gen Chat, I'd much rather have that than gold farmer spam.

I think the only world where SWTOR's Gen Chat isn't that busy is on Quesh.***  Between the LFG requests and miscellaneous talk, Gen Chat in The Old Republic resembles a pub on a busy night.  I'm not sure how much of this is due to people who migrated from SW:Galaxies, but it doesn't surprise me that a game built on leveling would have an active chat environment in the various game zones.

LOTRO doesn't have a true chat channel marked General, but it does have Regional and Advice channels, which are what a F2P player will mostly see.  Like everything else about LOTRO, the chat channels are mellower than most.  Yes, there are arguments that flare up, but LOTRO chat channels reflect the player base.

Some F2P games tend to isolate players away from the "subscribers" Gen Chat, so I can't say how much different the subs have it.  Age of Conan is a prime example of the 'isolate the freebies' environment, and I can understand why.  By keeping the F2P players in a separate chat channel, that eliminates a lot of the fly by night gold farmer spam in the regular chat channels.  Throughout much of 2012, the F2P channel in AoC was very much dead.  There were people playing the game --just going to Tortage would show people that-- but they weren't saying anything.  In recent months, Funcom has done some server consolidation, and the formerly dead F2P Gen Chat is now active.  Topics in AoC tend to remain tied to the game, since that is the only outlet available to F2P players, but also because AoC's servers tend to have a more global contingent than most other MMOs.  I'm not sure why this is the case, but I've seen far more "pardon my English, it isn't my first language" in AoC's Gen Chat than in any other MMO I've played.

***

Why are some Gen Chats more active than others?  I've thought about this a bit over the past few months, and I don't believe there's a single item you can point to that explains the differences.  That said, here are a few of the ideas that I believe contribute to the success and/or failure of Gen Chat:

• Some of Gen Chat's activity is due to game design.  A game like TOR, which has a lot of Heroic group quests in each planet, encourages activity by forcing players who want to run them to ask the old fashioned way.  A game that has a strong RP player base, such as LOTRO and the WoW RP servers, will have more activity as well.  Those players tend to be interested in the social aspects of the game, and will speak up more often.
• Some games encourage self-isolation, and for a social person that can be grating at times.  While it can be fun to group up in LOTRO, a lot of content can be taken care of solo.  The same with TOR and WoW.  Blizzard used to have a lot of group quests in the Old World, but the Cata revision streamlined zone quests and eliminated most group quests.  LFR takes care of the need to see end game content as part of a guild, and LFG is famous for silent dungeon runs.  With TOR, you can solo quest all the way to max level and complete your class story without grouping once.  And without a burning in-game need to join a guild, the outlet some people have is to talk in Gen Chat.
• The need to join a guild also factors into Gen Chat activity.  Sure, guilds are optional in every MMO, but being guildless makes playing some games much harder.  However, other games (like TOR) make it very easy to play the game guildless, and those games have more active Gen Chat than others.  It may not be a direct correlation, since there are quite a few WoW players who create a guild just to avoid being pestered by guild invites, but the games that have huge guilds and emphasize guild oriented activity are also the ones that have the least amount of Gen Chat activity.
• Finally, in some games the argument could be made that Gen Chat has been rendered obsolete.  Look at WoW, for example.  You have so many methods of communication --both in and out of the game itself-- that Gen Chat is more a method of last resort.  Additionally, the game design in Mists has been pushing people into doing dailies --lots of dailies-- prior to any raiding, and there isn't a centralized chat that enables players out and about in various regions on a server to communicate together.  The mentality becomes "get the dailies done and then get on to other things," which isn't very conducive to chatting away either.  The old "standing around and fishing at the Dal fountain" design just isn't there anymore.  True, this isn't the only time that Blizz has put a lot of dailies as a gatekeeper for raiding --Quel'Danas and Firelands come to mind-- but those patches came later in each expac, not at the beginning.  Starting an expac with dailies as a gatekeeper is quite different, and sets the tone for the entire expac.

Some of the funniest as well as the most vile things I've read in an MMO came out of Gen Chat.  I once got into a discussion about the original Robert E. Howard short stories in an AoC session, and there was the "what events would a Star Wars Olympics have?" discussion during last Summer's Games.  I've learned a bit about theorycrafting in a WoW Gen Chat session, and I found out that some people who play LOTRO know far more Quenya than I do (which ain't hard to do, really).  The Gen Chat is the watering hole for an MMO, and when a Gen Chat turns toxic that's an indicator of larger problems in the game.

Here's to hoping your Gen Chat experiences are fun and interesting.






*Compared to Trade Chat, that is.

**It apparently does, but you'd never guess it.

***Okay, maybe Ilum too, but it's been a while since I've been there.

****The need to avoid being harassed also speaks to the importance of guilds in a game.

Every Time a Bell Rings, an Angel Gets His Wings

Even though I grew up watching Speed Racer and Starblazers, I'm not much of a fan of Anime or Manga.  I also never played an NES in high school, even though it came out during my sophomore year.  I've never played Final Fantasy, Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, the S-NES, the Wii, or a Playstation (1, 2, or 3).

Perhaps that explains my initial reaction when --on a whim-- I downloaded Aion and began tinkering around with the game.

I'd read a few articles on Massively extolling Aion, and while I'll admit the premise sounded interesting --kind of a simplified MMO version of the In Nomine RPG and Exalted RPGs*-- the reason why I finally decided to give it a whirl were the magic words "free to play".  I'd seen the game at stores, examined the reviews online, and yet I didn't have the money in the budget to spend trying yet another game out.**

Well, I could handle 'free', and I could even shoehorn the MMO into my existing disk drive without too much pain.  Therefore, I set up NCSoft's launch software, clicked 'install' on Aion, and went to bed.

I'd have gotten things done without anybody noticing too, if it weren't for my youngest who wandered over when I was checking the weather forecast and asked "Aion?  What's that?"

"Just some maintenance I'm doing," I replied.***  When her back was turned I muttered and waved my hand.  "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Sometime later that morning the game finished installing and this evening I took a quick peek --four levels worth-- at Aion.

Okay, given the graphics at the NCSoft website, I expected a certain look.  No, not quite the Alexstraza bikini bottom + leggings outfit, but the "poofy upper-calf skirt that somehow manages to not actually move" clothing.  But what I didn't expect during character creation was to see either the "childlike body" or the "refugees from a Super Mario game" head.

Really?  I mean, really?

Who would think "You know, a game like this just needs a completely over-the-top head that looks like it came from one of those mushroom people" anyway?

Thankfully, I didn't see anybody in the starting zone who thought it was a good idea.

Another thing that bothered me quite a bit was that the character selection kind of left the concept of non-human race in complete limbo.  Oh sure, you can select something that looks kind of like an Elf, but it's never identified as such.  I stared at it for a bit, then saw it was "face selection number whatever", and then shook my head.  Of course humans have pointy ears that stick out perpendicular to their heads!  I should have figured that out!

Well, tinkering with the character creation options, I must admit that Aion got one thing absolutely totally right:  female breasts.  There's a slider (yeah yeah, insert joke here) to adjust the size of a female toon's breasts, much like the slider in Age of Conan.  But in AoC, where the size begins in the C/D cup range and goes from there to... well... huge, the slider in Aion starts in the A/B range and goes up to D/DD.  I don't know about you, but the Aion cup sizes are much more realistic than the teenage fantasy AoC version.

After I created a Scout toon, I pretty much jumped right into the game.  It starts out with a very brief overview of the fighting between the two celestial factions and their common foe, then your character wakes up.  Seems the toon has been napping on the job, and you'd better get going into the starting zone.

Questing is straightforward:  if you've played an MMO before, you know how it works.  Compared to other more recent MMOs, Aion takes a page straight out of WoW (and older console games) with the scrolling text for quest info.  The quests are mainly of the kill ten rats variety, so that's very familiar ground.  There's a quest log, a map that slowly gets revealed as you travel through the world, and oh yeah, there's gold farmers too.

But what's up with the mouse buttons, anyway?

Every other MMO I've played has the left button for window movement and the right button to move your toon and/or select things.  In Aion, it's almost reversed except for the left mouse button being unable to move your toon at all.  It's such a jarring transition that the next time I log in I'm going to see if I can keybind this sucker properly.

But my impression of the game?

Um....

It just feels so... Anime to me.  Perhaps that's not exactly the right word, but I can definitely tell that it was developed in Asia as opposed to the other MMOs I've played.  The feel of the quest text, the graphics, and especially the sound remind me more of a Super NES game than anything else.  There's a lot more that Aion has in common with Zelda than with Mass Effect; when I read that first quest text, I blurted out "Nintendo!", even though the thrust of the story was more adult than any of the games I'd ever seen my brother play on the S-NES.****

I can see where this game would appeal to people who grew up playing those games, but for someone who cut his teeth on Ultima and Baldur's Gate, it just feels too cutesy.  The toons and NPCs and quests may look adult, but everything else about the game just feels oriented toward a different demographic.

I'm still going to play it a little bit --free is free, and I might change my mind after a bit more time with the game-- but I can't help but think that Aion isn't really targeted to me.

But I'm going to tweak those key bindings, even if it kills me.




*In Nomine is a pencil and paper RPG, published in the U.S. by Steve Jackson Games, wherein players assume the roles of Angels and Demons.  As you may have guessed, it relies heavily upon Christian and other Near East sources for background material.  Exalted is an RPG put out by White Wolf --the Vampire: the Masquerade and World of Darkness people-- wherein the PCs are avatars of the gods.  They start out being pretty much badass from the beginning, much like in Aion.

**Which is why I've never tried Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2, in spite of them being single purchase games.  Okay, there's also the issue of disk space, but I digress.

***I actually was cleaning up some old programs that people hadn't touched in a few years, so it wasn't a complete fib.

****I'm kind of glad that nobody was within hearing range at the time, or I'd have had some explaining to do.