Some Ponderables

In addition to having an earworm from this:

I was really little when this show first aired.  

And yes, Wonder Dog's behavior was modeled after Scooby Doo.

I've had a bunch of nonsensical MMO oriented thoughts that I can't get rid of.  Therefore, I give you some MMO Ponderables:

• Do Draenei get sunburn, and if so do they end up looking like Eredar?
• Why do Sindorei --who often have names invoking their love of daylight-- seem to never get tan?
• With all the radiation surrounding Gnomeregan, why don't more of the Gnomes turn into mini-Hulks?
• How can some of the Imperial NPCs --the regular populace-- tell you that they're loyal servants of the Empire without breaking down into laughter?
• In Guild Wars 2, when you aggro an enemy bandit they say "Ha! You're kidding, right?"  Why don't they say as they die "I guess you weren't kidding..."
• When I see a quest giver in Neverwinter talk, why is it like watching a dubbed martial arts movie?
• Why do Gnome NPCs say "Daylight's burning!"  Shouldn't the Kaldorei say that?
• Given all of the terror that NPC necromancers generate in Age of Conan, why do the inhabitants of the cities never bat an eyelash when a PC necromancer walks by with a bunch of undead trailing in their wake?
• Why are Warlocks a playable class in WoW, anyway?  Aren't they supposed to be the bad guys?
• Why is the scenery so great in LOTRO, but the toon graphics so... blah?
• Is "multiplicity" Garrosh's super power?  After all, he's in Orgrimmar, he's in Borean Tundra, he's in Nagrand, and oh look he's over at the Argent Tournament Grounds and at Silverpine Forest...
• "Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb," says Dark Helmet.  Well.... let me introduce you to Darth Malgus....
• What do jawas/sandpeople look like underneath those robes, anyway?  On second thought, maybe I don't want to know; it could be Gargamel and the Smurfs.
• What sort of birth control do they use on those Bioware games?  Sure seems like you'd expect a lot more kids around than what you see in game.
• Why is it that the younger a player is, the louder they feel they have to be in BG chat?  It's not a perfect correlation, but it sure seems that way at times.
• How can kindergartners sit in "circle time" without any trouble at all, but a bunch of BG players can't stand within a circle in Silvershard Mines?
• Why do the WoW male human toons all look like they've got gas?

"Who Gives a @#$% About the Refinery, Anyway?"

It's been kind of a strange week in my neck of the woods.

I gained a few more streaks of gray in my beard, mainly due to taking my oldest out shopping for Homecoming dresses.  (I'm not sure I'm ready for her to go to formal dances just yet, but she is in high school* now...)

And I also gained a few more patches of gray dealing with random BGs, as well.  This post is dedicated to those numerous runs, trying to eek out enough Conquest points to get another piece of Grievous gear.

***

Signs Your Random Battleground Isn't Going to Go Well

• The toon with the highest health is a Rogue.
• You check out the list of toons in the BG and discover you have no healers.
• The other side has a premade and your side is already arguing over strategy.
• Nobody stays back on defense in Alterac Valley.
• Your entire team runs to the mid in Eye of the Storm.
• You're Alliance and you port into Strand of the Ancients.  (Nuff said.)
• The BG starts and half of your team is AFK.
• Nobody targets the enemy healers.
• Nobody stays back to defend the Farm/Stables during the initial rush.
• In a 10 or 15 player game, 5 or more of your players are Rogues.
• A player ports in and declares "You all suck but I'm here, so we'll win."  (Never tempt people to throw a game just to spite you.)

Oh, and the title quote?  That came from an Isle of Conquest game wherein a few of us were talking back and forth about capturing and recapturing the Quarry and Refinery.  The Warrior who said that also was bitching about the fact that the Horde was ahead of us in breaking down the gates, and he didn't make the correlation between the Horde having both the Quarry and Refinery and being 30% closer to breaking down the gate...



*For those not familiar with the U.S. educational system, high school or secondary education is Grades 9 through 12, roughly age 14/15 through 18.  Attending a college/university is technically optional, but highly encouraged.

My My.... Look at the Time!

This past Sunday, PC passed its fourth anniversary.

I knew that it was some time in September, because I'd only been playing a month when Deftig suggested that we start a blog, but I'd not realized our first post was at the end of September.

Deftig did a lot of the heavy lifting to get the site ready.  He'd selected Blogger over other options --my lone advice was to make it easy to modify-- and had prepped the site for publication.  We selected the name Parallel Context over the course of an afternoon whereas he and I would trade name ideas and he'd go out and see if it was available.  We ended up with Parallel Context simply because it was the first blog name that was free, not due to any clever desire to have our initials as PC.

Even though he hasn't posted in a while, the site still bears Deftig's fingerprints in layout and format.  I've done some mild tweaking over the years, but I've not felt the need to change things very much.*

Our first full year had a lot more posts than subsequent years.  Part of that was two --occasionally three-- people posting, but part of that was that I could post that much:  the kids were smaller and we weren't involved with (what often seems like) 50 million after school activities.  As time has gone on and my life has gotten busier, my posting has dropped to a more sustainable 1-2 times a week.

What has changed the most over the years, however, is the MMO blogging landscape.

When I read Righteous Orbs, the Pink Pigtail Inn, or Welcome to Spinksville!, I felt like I was at the watering hole for a lot of MMO bloggers.  All three posted often and engendered lively discussion, and the first two had enormous blogrolls.***  When Tam of Righteous Orbs dropped by and commented on a post of mine, it felt like a rock star saying hello.  And when Larisa of PPI added our blog to her blogroll, I felt that we'd finally arrived.

But the voices have gone silent.

Righteous Orbs and PPI closed up shop a few years ago, and Spinks has slowed her output tremendously over the past year.  (As of this writing, she hasn't posted in over two months.)  While the gigantic blogroll lives on with Rades' Orcish Army Knife, even the MMO Melting Pot is scaling back operations while Hugh takes a detour into his love of filmmaking.

***

Things have changed, yet people are still out there, writing away.  And so are we.

I don't see PC going away any time soon, and given my tendency to poke my nose into just about any MMO that strikes me as interesting, I'll have plenty of topics to write about.

Staying true to my Midwestern roots, I'm not going to turn PC into something it's not.  We're not exactly a backwater, but we're not trendy, either.  And that suits me fine.

/raises coffee

Here's to another four years!




*If I ever can get my WoW screenshot to work properly I'll get the title pic updated, however.  We're a bit behind the times.

**Yeah, like that never stopped me before.

***Spinks' blogroll is smaller, but for a former developer I find it very interesting reading.

Good To See You Back Again, NBI

It's good to see the Newbie Blogger Initiative make a reappearance.

Contrary to what some may believe, you can never have enough bloggers out there.  The blogosphere is in a constant state of flux as new blogs replace those that have gone silent, and in MMOs especially an infusion of new blood is always welcome.

Why  "MMO's especially"?  Because it seems that MMO blogs are on a downward spiral, with some long standing blogs going silent or taking extended leaves of absence.  We need new voices, new perspectives to step in and be heard.

Yes, it can be hard at times when you check your blog and see a big fat zero next to comments.  I'm not going to lie and say that it never bothered me, because it did, even when I knew that practically nobody was aware of this new blog of ours.  And when the search term that most frequently brings someone to your site is "retardin desensitizing cream", it can be pretty damn depressing.*  Blogging is definitely not for those who crave attention.  However, blogging is for people who like to write, have an opinion, and want to spend some time putting that opinion out there.

This is not the immediacy of Twitter.  Neither is it as voyeuristic as Facebook or LinkedIn or G+.  But blogging does provide a creative outlet to those who want it, and the best part is that your opinions can't be shouted down on your own blog.

And when you get that first real comment, the feeling is priceless.




*I'm sure that just by mentioning this name we'll get yet another wave of searches heading our way.  That's what I get for my one post way back in 2010 (or so) about the subset of Ret Spec Paladins derisively called Retardins.

Biddy-Biddy-Biddy... What's up, Buck?

Whatever gives someone the idea that botting is a good thing?

That question began turning over in my head the other day when I was in an Isle of Conquest battle.  As usual, I darted over and grabbed the Quarry, hanging around until the Alliance captured it and made serious inroads on blasting into the Horde keep.*  I then noticed that the Alliance grabbed the Docks, Hangar, and Workshop in short order.

"WTH is the Horde doing?" I asked in BG chat.  "Are they turtling?"

"No," replied a druid.  "They're all bots fighting in mid outside their gate."

"We've got a ton of them on our side too," a pally added.

I crept up to the Hangar and perched on a ledge to watch.  Sure enough, toons were emerging from the Horde Keep in a steady stream into a huge melee about halfway between the front gate and the Workshop. Nobody was even close to the Workshop or even bothering to go around to the Workshop or Hangar.

Okay, I'd been known to fixate on a fight in a BG before, but when the gates were breached into the Horde Keep, I ran in and found.....  Horde players rezzing and making a beeline for the front gate's portal.

Nobody bothered to try and defend the keep.

It was quite surreal, seeing a Lock and a Priest --both with over 440k health (I checked)-- run right by me and straight for the brawl outside.  Typically everybody on the other side gangs up on the Rogue if he's visible, so I was shocked when I wasn't stunned and feared all over the courtyard.

But why set yourself up as a bot?  Why run the risk of having your account suspended** for a few Honor Points?

Near as I can figure, there's three reasons why.  Feel free to add your own or dispute as you see fit:

• Keeping up with the Joneses.  There are players that, due to time crunch or whatnot, feel that they can't spend enough time grinding for gear as they should, so they decide to run a bot program to get the points needed to buy the gear.  The problem with that is the more bots there are on a team, the lesser chance you have of actually winning the BG.  If you've got a full Honor set already --and it's only a week or so's worth of running AV to get the points for a full set-- why bother botting when you need to actually win the BG (or Arena or Rated) to get the Conquest points?
• Beating the System.  Similar to the first reason, but instead of attempting to gear up due to lack of time, botting is done not only for gear but to give the MMO's devs the middle finger.  The "I'm so clever that I found a way to beat your shitty grinding game and get the points I deserve!" attitude isn't too far off the big ego driven attitude found in BGs, so I can easily believe this motivation.
• Boosting a Hacked Account.  Someone comes along and hacks into an MMO account, but the toons aren't completely up to spec to be useful for the hacker.  Therefore, they set up a bot to get them the necessary points/gear/mats/whatever.  This is the one that bothers me the most, because when I see such blatant examples of botting, all I can think of is that's some poor person's hacked account.

There are days when it sure seems tempting to login, set up a bot, and then go take care of errands for the day.  Or maybe set up a bot to run overnight along with any backups/AV scans that have to be done on the computer.  The "no effort and big return" carrot and stick is very powerful, and with botting software steadily becoming more sophisticated there's plenty of pressure on MMO admins to flush out bots and keep the peace.

Plus it'd be nice to not have about half of your team run straight to the mid in EoS and park there for the entire game.

***

In case you've not tried it or haven't purchased it yet, another Free Weekend in Guild Wars 2 started today.

And to answer your question, yes, I've already logged in.  My Thief is still there, and still getting killed off when he attacks enemies two levels higher than himself.  I've gotten too many bad habits on easier MMOs these days....





*So few people even think of capturing the Quarry --or the Mines in AV-- that I've kind of taken that on as part of my job.  It's a small thing, really, but can be vitally important in a fight that devolves into a war of attrition.  I find that the team that does the small things well will typically end up winning in the end.

**It used to be that way, anyway.  I'm not so sure now if you can be suspended for botting, because it seems so prevalent.

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.

A Miss in the Pattern

I find it interesting that we're on the last raid patch of Mists of Pandaria but we still don't know about the next expac.  Consider the following:

• Wrath was announced in August 2007, before the Sunwell and Zul'Aman raids dropped.
• Cataclysm was announced in August 2009, before the Icecrown raid dropped.
• Mists was announced in October 2011, before the Deathwing raid dropped.
• And now we have the Siege of Orgrimmar dropping, but no expac announcement as of this date.*

I presume that Blizz is waiting for BlizzCon to make the announcement on the next expac, but given that Blizzard likes to follow patterns, this isn't a good sign.

Unless, of course, the Siege of Orgrimmar isn't the last patch in the Mists saga.

If 5.4 is the last Mists patch, then Blizzard might be setting themselves up for a big problem:  a huge length of time where nothing is going on in-game.  Last time, Blizzard softened the blow to subscriptions by creating the annual pass, which included access to Diablo III.  What will Blizzard do this time?

1. Move up any release date to Q1 or Q2 of 2014.  This is the most likely solution, given that any expac Blizz is working on has been done in secret.  However, after the long lead in to Mists, including the massive beta, any push to release so early will be seen by some pundits as a sign of desperation on Blizzard's part.
2. Introduce a bridge raid (or two).  This is IMHO the second most likely solution.  The only thing that keeps this from being the most likely solution is the lukewarm reception the last bridge raid (Ruby Sanctum) received.  Blizzard would need to devote a lot of time to these raids, which would impact any release of the next expac.
3. Take WoW F2P.  An intriguing possibility, but one that I have to question in its soundness.  Blizzard makes a lot of money on WoW subscriptions, and taking WoW F2P would mean that they'd have to either eat that money or make up for it in other ways.  They'd have to severely restrict access to endgame content if they wanted to keep subs up, because WoW's model is based upon "the game starting at max level".  That would be at best a temporary fix, but an intriguing one nonetheless.
4. Announce Titan.  This is possible, but given the "back to the drawing board" announcement in August, I suspect this is the least likely of all options.

Anyway, this is pure speculation until the announcement comes at BlizzCon.




*Ha!  "By the powers of Murphy, I summon the expac announcement!"

Don't Overthink This, Okay?

When you play an MMO, you have to just accept certain things.

Like when you kill an enemy and gear drops, it'll actually fit your toon.

Or that a kite will carry you great distances.*

Or that you can have almost nothing on and still be able to climb that frozen mountain peak.**

Yeah, I know, if you're playing a Fantasy MMO (or SF MMO, in the case of The Old Republic) it can be kind of silly drawing the line at whether armor fits your character when there are dragons in the sky. But still, I think it's a matter of risk/reward more than immersion.  If you were playing a Dwarf, for example, and you had to wait for Dwarf sized armor to drop, that could really suck if the drop rates were based upon the percentage of people playing a Dwarf.  It was bad enough waiting for gear you could use to drop, but having to add the extra problem of having it fit you?

Back in the day, the old Moldvay D&D Basic Set had a rule of thumb that any armor found was human-sized unless it said otherwise.  The reason was because there were level limitations on races other than Humans because those races had additional abilities that Humans didn't have.  (This was back when you could select "Elf" or "Dwarf" as your class, before AD&D introduced multiclassing.) 

Maybe I'm showing my age, but this was my first RPG.
Courtesy of a Christmas present.

If your DM were running a homebrewed campaign --which, back then, formulated the majority of such campaigns-- they would often generate treasure and whatnot randomly, but still they'd be careful to make sure you'd find gear your player character could actually use.  Even so, the published campaigns had gear and weapons that the enemies themselves would be wielding.  Unlike, say, Bronjahm when he drops Robes of the Cheating Heart in The Forge of Souls; you won't see him wearing those robes.***

But a DM can be picky, while an MMO has to handle a wide range of races and classes.  

Remember the "good old days" of Vanilla WoW, where you'd go on a 40-man raid of Molten Core as the Horde and you'd get Pally gear as the drop? MMOs have gotten better at the sort of gear that drops, tailoring it toward keeping the player going forward rather than wasting weeks at a time.

So, some of the immersion in the game suffers, but it is balanced out by enabling players to improve themselves in a matter of weeks rather than months.  And in an age when I can no longer devote a lot of time to playing video games, I'm grateful for that.

And could you imagine a female Night Elf trying to fit into armor made for a Gnome?

On second thought, forget I said that.

*Just the other day, I was taking a flight point to the Alliance's PvP vendors when my son stopped by to watch what I was up to.  "A kite?" he asked.  "How are you able to fly on a kite?"
"Just accept it," I said.  "Makes no sense, but just accept it.  If it is big enough, it could turn into a glider, but that kite is far too small to be a glider."

**Courtesy of Age of Conan's social clothing.

***Unless Bronjahm does a turn as the Preacher in Blues Brothers Goes WoW.  Yes, the Sex Machine himself was the inspiration for Bronjahm.

Waiting for Godot WoW-Cthulhu

To say that I'm disappointed the Big Bad at the end of another WoW expac is related to the Old Gods is probably an understatement.

Sure, it's Emo Guy Garrosh Hellscream, but come on.  It is yet another Old God-related ending to a game that simply can't move beyond the Old Gods as a plot device.  About the only expac that didn't have a heavy dose of Old God material in some form was Burning Crusade, and I've often suspected that if Kil'Jaeden wasn't around to provide a convenient villain in the Sunwell, we'd have seen yet another Old God pulling Kael's strings.

By my count, Mists' Y'Shaarj-influenced Siege of Orgrimmar will make three of the five releases (including Vanilla) that was overshadowed with an Old God-esque ending:  Vanilla, Cataclysm, and Mists.  You could also make an argument that the Lich King, while tracing a lineage back to the Burning Legion, is also heavily influenced by Yogg-Saron*; after all, what exactly does Arthas use as a metal for his devices and buildings but Saronite, the blood of Yogg-Saron itself.  And don't forget the Old God influenced quest chain in Icecrown where the ghostly child teaches you about Arthas and his heart; there's a reason why we found Arthas' heart in that strange area in the first place.

What makes the Y'Shaarj  tie-in so disappointing to me was that the entire concept of the Sha was so new and interesting that it seems a shame that Blizzard couldn't let it stand on it's own.  Just like how the Mogu had to have the help of the Zandalari Trolls, the underlying cause of the Sha just had to be the Old Gods.

I suppose you could say that Blizzard has an addiction to conspiracies.  The popular uprising in Westfall characterized by the Defias simply couldn't stand on it's own, it had to tie in to the Twilight's Hammer somehow.  The overeager and blind self righteousness of the Scarlet Crusade couldn't stand on its own as Garithos' racism and arrogance did in Warcraft III, it had to be tied back into the Dreadlords and the Legion.

Maybe that works for a while in a fantasy world, but the problem is that in the real world a lot of stuff just happens.  There is no dark conspiracy behind a lot of criminal activity; a lot of it is a crime of opportunity (or passion).  If there is a plot involved, it is very localized (one spouse hiring a hitman to take out the other spouse, for example).  Sure, there's organized crime, but you can't blame everything on the mob.  If there's a drug turf war, it tends to unfold organically, not manipulated by some master puppeteer in the shadows.

Fantasy lends itself well to that evil overlord, the shadows in the dark controlling our lives.  But when you dip into that same well too often, it starts to feel forced and loses its punch.  The most unique thing about Mists was the Sha, but it turned out to be just more Old God trickery, lessening the impact that it could have had. When all questlines lead to the same ending, all that's left for variety is the kill ten rats.

***

Perhaps that is why I've seen a lot of griping lately that WoW's high point was Wrath.  Wrath had one raid that was the culmination of a long questline that had absolutely nothing to do with the "Let's Get Arthas!" movement:  Ulduar.  Was it Old God related?  Yes.  Was it a big, tough raid?  Yes.  Did it advance the Arthas story?  No.  Not one bit.

Ulduar was part of a giant three pronged fork in the entire Northrend questline --Arthas and Malygos being the other two-- and it demonstrated that a story didn't have to be part of the main part of the expac to be meaningful.  Blizzard has gotten away from that with Cataclysm and Mists, and to add insult to injury they end up reusing the same old same Old (Gods) as a crutch.

I guess that we're going to be treated to yet another dose of Old Gods fairly soon, assuming that The Dark Below turns out to be the name of the next WoW expac.  After all, what tends to inhabit the dark places of the world but Twilight Hammer and their ilk?




*Certainly in hindsight people still talk about Ulduar as the high point of WoW raiding, and I have to admit I liked Storm Peaks much more than Icecrown.

Hanging Out With the Beautiful People

The free weekend for Guild Wars 2 ended, and my Thief* made it to Level 11.

Honestly, there's a lot to like in GW2.  The pay once, play forever idea is a great one.  The players move and attack and interact with the game world much like a standard MMO.**  Also, the graphics engine didn't make my computer grumble, like SWTOR has the occasional tendency to do.

And have I mentioned that this Old School RPGer loves that there's a class called a THIEF?  Takes me back to my AD&D (1st edition) days, it does.

And, thank goodness, the character options don't include those absolutely nutty mushroom heads and paeans to Super Mario that Aion has.

That said, the game is a lot closer to Aion and other Asian RPGs than American/European RPGs than you'd think.

For starters, there's the issue with NPC clothing.

While issues with PC gear --and particularly female PC gear-- have been around for ages, typically in the Western RPG you'd find NPCs wearing appropriate clothing for the task at hand:  armor for guards, work clothes for grunts, dresses and poofy shirts for nobility, etc.  Yes, Alexstrasza and Ysera (and Sylvannas) may wear bikinis, but they've got recognizably Frazetta style armor on.

But GW2 and Aion both have issues where you find female NPCs wearing wildly inappropriate clothing for their work.

So this is appropriate dress for farming?  Who knew?
(from dressessphotos.com.)

Now maybe it's just me, but I don't see a lot of people digging in their garden while wearing dresses like that. Hell, even a bikini would be more work appropriate than a short dress like this one, because you can at least work without worrying about getting your dress dirty.  But that's the thing: you see clothing like this on Human farmers at the very beginning of the game.

And pigtails.  These dresses always are worn by women in pigtails.

Just in case you didn't think the visual cues for some of the women were taken from JRPGs, here's the pic when you select a female Necromancer:

Right after raising some zombies,
I'm heading straight to the Dance!

Ironically enough, you can find plenty of NPC women out and about wearing practical clothing --pants, full armor, etc.-- but the "short dress" NPCs (and PCs) were enough to throw you completely out of immersion from time to time.

That leads into another distinction between GW2 and WoW/SWTOR/AoC/LOTRO/etc.:  the toons themselves.

Have you stopped to watch some of the NPCs around a town or village?  I mean not just look at them, but watch their behavior.  Normally, I don't think much of the NPCs in the background --they're the background, right?-- but when I saw a female guard stick her toe in the dirt and twist her leg as if she were talking to a crush, that kind of threw me for a loop.  She was standing at attention in Shaemoor, and then she did that, so it's part of the NPC's standard movement routine.  While it wasn't like the Night Elf's breast bounce, it was so unlike what a guard's behavior --while on the job-- ought to be that it left me scratching my head.

Finally, I noticed that for all toons --NPC and PC-- everybody is perfect.  Smooth, flawless skin, perfect complexion, unchanging and unflappable facial expressions, and immaculate clothing were the hallmarks of all toons.  I thought of the toons as "being on botox for the entire body", and I'd probably not be too far off. The toon graphics were such that even the NPCs stood out as being a little more perfect than the background graphics, so when I passed by a wounded Seraph*** it looked more like he was lying on the ground having a picnic lunch instead of looking, well, hurt.

***

You'd think I'd not be so enamored of GW2 after all that, but I did like it.  I do like the change from the traditional "kill ten rats" questline.  I also like what I've seen of the main questline so far, and moreover, I really enjoy how they went about customizing the main questline.

When you create your character, after the typical graphical adjustments (which includes a nice height slider) you are then asked a series of questions.  These questions include personal motivations, including things like a regret you have.  The answers to these questions provide the particular path your character will follow in their main/personal storyline.

While to the average player this seems like a need customization option, I saw it in a somewhat different light: as an attempt to bring aspects of pencil-and-paper RPGs into a computer RPG format.

Games that follow the FATE system, such as FATE Core, FATE Accelerated Edition, the Dresden Files RPG****, and Spirit of the Century RPG, have a similar mechanic.  To take the simplest of the bunch, FATE Accelerated (or FAE for short), you start of a character by creating a "high concept" and a "trouble":  two items that you write down to describe some of the motivation your character has.  High concept is pretty straightforward, as it can be anything from "Captain of the last outpost on the edge of the Great Wasteland" to "Mechanical genius who wants to be a superspy".  It's the "trouble" aspect that is what might throw people at first, because it's something that causes issues for your character, such as the following:  "The Necromancer won't leave me alone", "Ooo, will you look at THAT!", or "I will not be outdone by those punks at XXY Corporation!"

These aspects are used to help drive the RPG's story forward by enabling the GM and the player to use them for both campaign hooks and to add flavor to the campaign itself.  For example, a character with "Ooo, will you look at THAT!" as a trouble has issues with being distracted at inopportune times.  Like, say, when your character is trying to find a bomb hidden in a lab.  A GM can use such an aspect to make things a bit more difficult for a character, but also allow the character to catch little details that other, more focused characters might miss.

When I saw in the Human creation the question "What is your greatest regret?" my first thought was "Hey, they took the Trouble aspect and stuck it in an MMO!"  And, surprise surprise, GW2 actually uses this aspect in the main questline, too.  It's a great idea that somebody finally added into an MMO.

***

One other item of note that I absolutely wanted to point out was that there was no gen chat spam whatsoever in game.  I see that on SWTOR, but WoW, Age of Conan, and especially Aion have gold spammers in abundance.  Aion is so bad that I felt the need to have to actually turn Gen Chat off, and to be honest contributed to my decision to abandon the game.

But I do have to give kudos to ArenaNet for their job at keeping GW2 spam free.

***

Now, for the big question:  will I play GW2 again?

Yes, but not immediately.  I've got other things to take care of --outside of gaming-- before I can pick up yet another MMO.

I do like what I see overall.  The story is good and not too cheesy, although Scarlet Briar has the overall feel of a Supervillan from a Superhero comic, but in general there's enough for me to like --and ignore the immersion issues-- for me to want to continue playing.  I don't think I'll proceed at the same pace as I did this past weekend, since I had a limited amount of time to take the game for a test drive, but I can see it filling in some time between other MMOs I play.

***

If you're curious about FATE but don't want to plunk down any money on it at first, you can visit the publisher of FATE Core and FAE --Evil Hat Productions-- and download the electronic versions of both FATE Core and FAE on a pay what you like basis.  (I helped fund the Kickstarter for FATE Core, so that's how I got my print copies.)  Even if you're an avid roleplayer and don't end up playing FATE, it makes for very good reading.

*So, I created a toon that mimicked my current WoW toon, so I could have a more direct comparison.  Plus, I'm used to playing Thieves these days, and I didn't want to get wrapped up in the whole "YR playin it wrong!" crap that I'd get if I started out as a Guardian like my first impulse.

**Unlike, say, Aion, where the mouse buttons are reversed.  Or Neverwinter, where you use the AWSD keys to move around and the mouse to point and attack.

***I found it interesting that the Seraphs --and even the Ascended in Aion-- have those wings on them that are hallmarks of some JRPGs.  Considering that the Seraphs are an obvious derivation from the Seraphim of Judaic and Christian tradition, I'm still pondering how the angelic imagery managed to sneak into JRPGs (and JRPG inspired RPGs) so much.

****Yes, an RPG based on Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books.  The game allows you to "Dresdenize" your local community, so that you've got a game world that you can work with without having to necessarily play in the world of Harry Dresden's Chicago.  Of course, if you really wanted to play in Harry Dresden's hometown, you can by picking up the companion volume to the RPG.



EtA: Had to change the formal dress from a URL.

Friday Musings

Right before I left for Gen Con, I received a mysterious e-mail from Syl of MMO Gypsy, which contained only a URL and the line "There are no excuses now!! :-D"

The URL pointed to a Guild Wars 2 free trial weekend, which runs from August 23rd through August 25th.

I'd been hemming and hawing over purchasing the game for a while now, and I figured that since Gen Con has come and gone it'd be safe for me to consider purchasing the game this fall.  Well, ArenaNet took that out of my hands by offering me a chance to give the game a spin before purchasing.

As of this moment, GW2's game client is busy being downloaded onto the main PC, so by the time I get done with work for the day it ought to be ready for me to try out.

And to be honest, if I get more game time out of GW2 than I have Skyrim, then the game will be worth a purchase.

***

Until GW2's trial dropped in my lap, I figured this weekend's MMO playing would consist of chain running Alterac Valley --it's AV Weekend in WoW-- and working on finishing up my Trooper's story in TOR.*

Among other interesting items is that Neverwinter added a mini-expac concerning the Feywild, which I'm curious about.  In D&D 4e cosmology, the Feywild is the home plane where all sorts of Fey creatures live. A PC can only cross into the Feywild at certain locations and/or certain times of day/month/year.  Think of it as the mythical Realm of Faerie placed into D&D.  The Feywild is also home to the three branches of Elves: Eladrin, Elves, and Drow.  The Eladrin still remain (primarily) in the Feywild, the Elves have long ago migrated into the normal world, and the Drow betrayed their brethren and now inhabit the Underdark.**

I'll freely admit that I am more interested in the D&D 4e setting than the 4e game mechanics itself, so the fact that the Neverwinter MMO is moving in this direction is a boon to me.

***

Since this is a Friday, and Saturday is usually a gaming day around the house, I'll leave you with a link to Wil Wheaton's Tabletop.  In this episode, he and his friends play Settlers of Catan.  You know, that "wood for sheep" game that drew some laughs on an episode of The Big Bang Theory:

You could have been videocapped better, Wil.  /sigh

*She's in Ilum right now, which is "the crystal planet" as my kids so aptly put it.  Yes, they are devoted fans of Star Wars:  The Clone Wars.

**And worship Lolth.  See my last post for a pic of her in her drider form, which is half human, half spider.

Two Sheep, Some Goblins, and a Whole Mess of Whovians

Gen Con 2013 is now in the books.

As we've done the past two years, we made a trek up to Indianapolis for Sunday's Family Fun Day.  For $30, a family of four can get into Gen Con and wander around, the entire area.  If you wanted to play any of the events on Sunday, you have to pay for the tokens, but I've found that you get to run enough demos and talk to the vendors in the dealer hall without needing to join in a scheduled game.*

Two Pirates, a Klingon, a Belly Dancer, and a Wookie
start a band....

Before we even got into the convention center, Mayfair Games was hosting Free Coffee just across the street along with their sheep mascots, Bob and Angus.**  Alas, we just missed the last of the coffee, but since we'd bought our badges online we breezed through Will Call to pick up our badges.  Good thing too, as the line for purchasing badges was incredibly long even early in the day.

We roamed the con with my brother-in-law, who has been coming for years and typically shows up on Wednesday --yes, before the con starts-- just so he can hang out with his friends.  We stopped by the Paizo booth, and the kids got to meet Sean K. Reynolds while he was out and about.  There were goblins everywhere in the Paizo booth, and even goblin masks to wear.  I think if we'd had more time the kids would have probably rummaged through all of the Pathfinder material a bit longer, but Paizo was truly busy the entire day.  Having Ed Greenwood and other authors nearby signing copies of their work certainly didn't hurt either.

Ruling over the D&D Ballroom was Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders (and Drow).
And no, a +5 Roll of Newpaper won't help you much with her.

Other places, such as Mayfair Games and Fantasy Flight Games, were running a lot of demos in their spaces.  My wife and I tried a Eurogame, called Planet Steam, which a very heavy economic game.  Heavy doesn't begin to describe it, really; if you like games that have LOTS of functioning options, and then throw in a few things like an auction or two each turn, then maybe you'll like it.  All I can say is that I don't have an MBA, so this sort of game didn't appeal to me.

While I got a chance to slip out and look around***, the rest of the crew tried out some family oriented games such as Spot It! Party Edition by Blue Orange Games and "Run for Your Life, Candyman!" by Smirk and Dagger Games.  Neither would be confused with a deep boardgame, but they were fun and engaging.  I could easily see the Spot It! games being "modified" for use as a drinking game, which would really cause trouble if you get a few beers in you.

The kids just about went bananas over the Who North America booth, complete with TARDIS and a Dalek.  I was actually quite surprised when they decided not to splurge on the Doctor Who - Adventures in Time and Space RPG by Cubicle Seven, but I was informed that since they could get it at one of our local game stores, that wasn't a high priority for them.  But getting a soundtrack was a bit more important.

What, you were expecting River Song?

While I perused the RPG areas****, I discovered that the gaming community has changed.  Even in the past three years, the number of women and families attending Gen Con have gone up.  Yes, I realize that with a name like Family Fun Day you'd expect to see families there, but the sheer number of families keeps on an upward trend.  Just like how the old myth that only teenage boys swilling Monster and Red Bull play MMOs has been pretty much busted, the belief that only nerdy guys who live in their parents' basement play RPGs (and boardgames) has been shattered by the attendees at Gen Con.  

This is a good thing.

There are a lot of fun games out there that people can get together with friends and spend an evening playing, but the stigma of who and what are gamers can turn some people away.  Just like how we MMO bloggers by our mere presence fight the stereotypes that you see splashed all over the media, pencil-and-paper gamers can fight their own stereotypes by welcoming the next generation into the fold.

Besides, these games are a lot of fun, and it's a shame to keep them to yourself.

*That said, the Sagamore Ballroom was filled with people playing Paizo's Pathfinder RPG, and the D&D Hall had a lot of gamers trying out D&D Next as well.  We didn't make it up to the Games on Demand area, but I was told that the place was packed all weekend long with gamers trying out all sorts of different RPGs.

**Never played Settlers of Catan?  Go hence and track down a copy.  You can find them all over, and even in discount stores in the U.S. (such as Target).

***And meet up with an author friend of mine who was in for the Writer's Symposium.  After having talked with him over the past several years, it was good to finally meet up with him in person, if only for about 15 minutes before he had to leave for home.

****Some of the RPG vendors I checked out and talked to included Troll Lord Games (Castles and Crusades), Catalyst (Shadowrun), the Indie Press Revolution booth (including FATE Core and Dresden Files from Evil Hat Games and Dungeon World from Sage Kobold Productions), and Green Ronin (both the Dragon Age and the Champions RPGs). Wizards of the Coast didn't have a vendor area, but had their own section near the main exhibit hall where they were running massive playtest games of D&D Next.  The so-called "grumpy game owner" of years past has begun to give way to a more business savvy and customer friendly version.  Really, you pretty much have to be friendly if you want to stay in business for any length of time. About the only exception to that rule was Steve Jobs, and he could get away with being obnoxious because he was Steve Jobs.

Don't Mind Red, He's Got a Headache

I finally started group content with the kids.

Since they only have one account that they share* between them, the best we could do alone was a 2-man instance.  Luckily for us, The Old Republic has a perfect introduction to an instance with The Esseles, a 2-person Flashpoint designed for L10-12.  No other players in the area, no competition to complete a Heroic 2+ first, and we've got plenty of time to finish without rushing.

The Esseles has the bonus of being one of the best of The Old Republic flashpoints for story, so I knew that'd keep them attracted as well.

So, I pulled out the Old Man, reacquainted myself with how to play a Scoundrel (aka "get up in people's grill and blast them from behind with a shotgun scattergun), and sauntered off to take a trip to Coruscant aboard the Esseles.

My oldest had the first run, and to be honest, that was the smoothest of the bunch.  I told her straight up to let me maneuver into position first, and then backblast to start the fight.  Typically I'd end up taking out a regular enemy, leaving Corso to round up the Strong and/or Elites for us to attack afterward.  While the fighting went well enough, I had to explain the TOR method of choosing who gets to speak in a cutscene**. There was also the little matter of me playing the Old Man as more a devil-may-care type than my original Gunslinger, so I got to see some wording out of him that I ordinarily wouldn't ever see out of Dalaak.***
I heard a "Daa-aad!!" from upstairs more than once, but I shrugged it off.

But there was one problem:  the Esseles crashes at the end on our desktop computer.  Ironically enough, not the laptop, so I was able to restart SWTOR and get back into the Flashpoint before it ended, but still it was quite annoying.

Next came my son, and he was just as wisecracking as I was, but he reserved it more for the group chat. He was a bit overeager at times, but luckily it wasn't too big of a problem.

But my youngest....

I told her at the beginning to let me lead.  I told her that during the flashpoint, too.  Several times, in fact.  She's ten, and I know she can read.  But she still kept running ahead, running the wrong way, running into a boss fight before we cleared out the trash, and in general acting more like someone half her age.

Finally, her behavior caught up with her.  She ran off the edge of a platform and disappeared into space.

I said a silent prayer of thanks that SWTOR flashpoints still let you do that, whereas you're hard pressed to do that in a WoW instance.

"Now," I said as she respawned, "Will you cut it out?"

"Oops," she replied.

"If you pull stuff like this in a regular instance, people will let you die to teach you a lesson.  It's called 'You yank it, you tank it,' and the real tank would get really pissed off at you for this.  Behave better, and let the person who has been here before do the leading."

After the lecture, she shaped up.  I'd rather she get the lesson from me than finding herself vote kicked or being the reason for a wipe.

She also learned that --as a Gunslinger-- her abilities are best when behind cover, whereas my Scoundrel is built to get in the baddies' faces.  She saw me at work and tried to imitate it, but I explained that her best abilities, like the Charged Bolts' bonuses and other assorted goodies she gets in her talent tree, are made for long distance.

By comparison, these runs ended better than the Hammer Station run I had the other day, where the Commando Healer didn't heal and the tank would rush in before I could CC a droid.  By the time the Healer began to get the hang of things, the tank decided we weren't going to live through the first boss**** and dropped group.  In spite of my encouragement, the Healer dropped too, and then after that so did the other DPS.  These people were too willing to throw in the towel rather than try the hard work of actually making it through an instance slowly, grinding out a victory.

Maybe they could have taken a few lessons from some kids.




*My rules.  I get to control the MMO accounts --LOTRO and TOR-- that way, and I also keep track of any activity within the toons.

**TOR has each person select an action and then a random (virtual) dice roll determines who gets to speak.

***I decided to have the Old Man play dumb with Beryl toward the end of the class questline on Taris. Kind of unusual for a guy who flirted with Grand Master Satele Shan in the closing cutscene to the Athiss Flashpoint, but I've decided that I want him to pursue a romance with one of the female companions later, so I want to minimize any repercussions later.  Sometimes it helps having done the Smuggler class story before.

****Nobody had the ability to pick up the canisters, so he decided he'd rather drop instead of actually, you know, TRYING.

Blizzard Announces More Info on "Connected Realms"

...which are sounding exactly like server merges.  They're just not saying that because, well, saying "World of Warcraft to Perform Server Merges" is a way of getting a LOT of negative press.

Patch 5.4 Feature Preview: Connected Realms

To be honest, it sounds more like what has been implemented for The Secret World and is being implemented for Age of Conan than anything else.

Still, they're server merges.  No way around it.  I've been perusing some online listings of active accounts on servers --I still wonder how they manage that-- and I've found that Ysera has dropped quite a bit over the past few years (down to something like 1/4 the size of Area 52), matching what I've noticed in game.  I do wonder how this is going to work long term, and whether a Horde-heavy realm will be matched up with an Alliance-heavy realm to balance things out.

But the merges have begun.  (Just don't call them that.)

Like the Corners of My Mind

I was doing a little cleanup on the blog tonight when I came across a couple of things I knew were coming but still were a punch in the gut:  the domains for The Pink Pigtail Inn and TankingTips.com were gone.*

Going through the list, Voss' Sword and Board and Cynwise's Posterous Field Notes have also vanished into the same ether that claimed Tam's Righteous Orbs and Lara's Root and Branch.  Still, the PPI especially was the great watering hole that not only had Larisa's posts, but also had the monster mess of a blogroll that people could use as a master reading list.  I know I used to use PPI to find new blogs to read, and I could trace a big spike in PC's readership to the week when Larisa added us to her blogroll.  Even up to a year after Larisa stopped posting at PPI, we'd see more people following a link from there to our blog than just about anywhere else.

Now, outside of Rades' huge blogroll, there's pretty much Hugh at the MMO Melting Pot keeping the blogroll flame alive.  WoW Insider doesn't bother with posting interesting blog links anymore, and truth be told I've not really ventured over to WI in quite a while.

Change is the only constant in the blogging world.  Keeping up a blogging schedule is not an easy task, and real life has a way of interfering with both blogging and game playing.  When we started PC almost four years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into.  If I did, I might not have committed to it.  Yet at the same time, I'd not have traded the experience for the world.  I've met fellow bloggers around the world whom I'm happy to call friend, and the schedule of writing a blog has pushed me (and my writing) in directions I didn't think I could go.**  the MMO blogosphere can be sniping and backbiting at times, but we all have the same interest at heart:  a love of the weird wonderful worlds that inhabit a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG.

This blog, while ostensibly about "all sorts of games", really began as a WoW blog.  And it remained that way for well over two years, with occasional forays into other MMOs.  However, as I've moved from one dominant MMO (WoW) to several MMOs, the blog's feel has changed to reflect that.  I suppose that going forward you can expect more change, but what it will entail I don't really know.

I'm not the gamer that some people are; I don't have the experience in electronic gaming that Spinks has, for example, or the endgame experience that many other MMO bloggers have.  While I realize his hiatus was for medical reasons I still miss Cynwise's PvP posts, because compared to the master I'm merely playing at PvP. There are others who write great fiction, like Rades or Akabeko (The Red Cow), and many others whose humor and wit bring cheer to an otherwise dreary morning reading work e-mail.  However, it is the thoughtful blog posts, the ones where people bare a little of their souls, that I cherish the most.  It's the equivalent of sitting out on a porch with a beer or two, shooting the bull, while the sun goes down and the fireflies dance in the yard.

But I hope that as the blogosphere changes, one thing remains constant:  the camaraderie of the bloggers themselves.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a beer that's getting warm.



*The Pink Pigtail Inn goes to another blog entirely now, and the domain for TankingTips.com has completely vanished.

**Now, if that will only translate into getting a novel written to completion....

The Stuff of Nightmares

Have you ever had the dream where you're trying to outrun something --a train, a car, or Usain Bolt-- but you feel like your feet are made of lead?  You're trying desperately to get around a corner before you get run over, and you can feel the rumble of the steam engine in your bones as that train gets closer....

Closer....

Closer....

And then you wake up, your heart pounding in your chest.

Yeah, I've had that dream a lot recently, and it involves Deepwind Gorge.

On the face of it, Deepwind Gorge is a lot like Arathi Basin and Battle of Gilneas, with the additional part of having to capture the other faction's gold.  The BG is more compact than either AB (by a lot) or BoG (marginally so), but the line of sight issues make it seem larger than it is.  But the biggest differences between the prior two and DG are the locations of the respawning points:  each faction's home base.

That alone changes the dynamics of the BG, because if you're assaulting a mine and you can kill off another faction's toon, that pretty much guarantees that toon will be gone for more than twice the normal amount of time it would take to run back from a localized spawning point.  We've all been in the situation where you're in AB assaulting the Gold Mine, and you kill off a toon just to see it make a reappearance from the GM spawning point 10 seconds later.  That won't happen in DG.

But what the respawn points also do is make Rogues' biggest advantage --stealth-- their biggest weakness.

No matter how fast a Rogue can run while stealthed, except for a few short bursts they can't move fast enough to get back to a base in peril.  You are trying to get back as quickly as you can, or to get anywhere as quickly as you can, and you feel like your feet are in mud.

There is an option, of course, which is to summon your mount and ride back, but for a class that's bringing up the bottom in terms of survivability in BGs, that's akin to jumping up and down and yelling "Free HKs!!" To ensure survivability you have to ride in a pack, and that isn't playing to a Rogue's strength either.

Rogues are at their best when they can strike when you least expect it.  They don't have the plate (or even the mail) of other melee classes, and they don't have either tanking or healing capabilities.  They also don't have a (seemingly) neverending font of mana, either.*

What all this means is that a Rogue's best bet while playing Deepwind Gorge is to either play close to your home base --defending the gold-- or spending time as part of a bigger effort.  Solo work is a risky business for a Rogue in general, and solo work in DG is potentially very nasty indeed.

Oh, and try not to have too many nightmares.



*I once hid in Icewing Bunker with another Rogue, watching a Mage spam Arcane Explosion and seeing the Mage's supply of mana creep downward like a snail.  "They need to nerf that," I whispered.  "There's absolutely no downside to spamming that for minutes at a time."

"Yeah," the other Rogue replied.  "That and a Lock's Hellfire and Rain of Fire.  When a Lock can dump Rain of Fire on the run...."

WoW Weddngs are Alive and Well

I've known people who play MMOs together who are married, and even some of those who met in game (WoW or some other MMO) and married before I met them.  But in-game weddings?  I've not known any myself.

However, Navimie of The Daily Frostwolf is a bit luckier than I, and last Wednesday attended an in-game wedding up in the Grizzly Hills.  Her adventures of getting there as an L1 alt are worth the read alone, but the picspam of the ceremony itself are really cool.

If my wife and I were to get married now, we'd not go for an MMO ceremony --she doesn't play-- but we most likely would have something like this at the reception hall:

Yes, that's a Settlers of Catan wedding cake.
(From forgoodnesscakes.net.)

Or maybe this:

Of course, I usually lose at Scrabble.
(From casasugar.com.)

Who Needs Coffee on a Friday?

I had pretty much written off this week's post because of work and the Summer blahs, but then Blizz drops this little nugget:

Activision Blizzard to be Bought from Vivendi

Looks like current CEO Bobby Kotick has decided to buy out Vivendi's share of the company, which means they'll be out from the massive conglomerate's thumb.  Not sure what that means as far as Blizzard's games, since it's far likely that the Activision bean counters would be more involved with decisions than Vivendi ever was, but it could mean that they'll look into monetizing WoW more.  (Read:  more cash shop stuff.)

However, the big stir has been in the MMO community that --according to Blizz estimates and the link above-- WoW is now down to 7.7 million subs.  As much as people would like to spin this, that can't be good.

World of Warcraft is now down 36% from it's peak number of subs in early Cataclysm.

It also highlights the driving force behind Blizz's push for a cash store in the game.

***

I also wanted to use this news to point out one item from the current patch.

I've taken to flying across Kalimdor and the Northern Barrens while I wait for a BG to proc, and let's just say that the Northern Barrens seem just as empty as before the patch dropped.  Wagons needing escorts are empty, just as the Grummies in Kun-lai Summit go unprotected.  Back in Wrath --and even in Cata with the Firelands-- you could find toons scampering about even when the content wasn't the most current.  Now, however, it's crickets.

A symptom of the overall problem, I suppose.

Various and Sundry in July

The summer doldrums are in full swing.

Outside, the heat has climbed into the oppressive levels, with the humidity to match.  Con season is in high gear, with SD Comic Con this week and less than a month until Gen Con, with PAX Prime at the end of August.

And right on cue, an update on the Pathfinder Online sandbox MMO surfaced:

Not a lot to find interesting; there's background and there's some buildings, but only a few seconds worth of actual figures.  The concept of a sandbox fantasy MMO is interesting, so I'm wondering about the details that weren't shown in the video clip.

***

Another thing I've wondered is whether the next gen consoles will push MMOs away from PCs and into the console format.  Blizzard could be getting some valuable development time in that regard with porting D3 to the XBox360 and PS3, but the major stumbling blocks are XBLive and PSN.  Without the cross platform connectivity, that seems to ensure that MMOs' major selling point (the massively multi part) will be balkanized.  However, I would never bet against Blizzard being able to figure something out in this regard.

***

Heard around MMOs:

In Age of Conan:

[In Eiglophian Mountains, a female toon wearing almost nothing runs by up the mountain path]

Female Toon (in Gen Chat):  Wooo!  I'm invisible!
Me:  Is this Order of the Stick or something?
Third Toon:  Is [toon name] naked again?
Me: Yeah, just ran right by me.  Because, you know, a frigid mountain climb goes better without clothing.


In World of Warcraft:

[In Alterac Valley]

Warrior:  We need a tank here by Drek!
Mage:  WTF, man.  You're marked AS a tank.
Warrior:  Oh.  Whoops.


In TOR:

[On Taris in Gen Chat]

First Toon:  Where is it?
Second Toon:  What?
First Toon:  That wonderful Tarisian beachfront property that the Black Sun sold me!  They said the view was breathtaking!
Second Toon:  Can I have what you're smoking?  I can sure use some.


EtA:  "is"..  "are"...   I are a writer, right?

WoW Cash Shop Opening in Asian Realms

Yeah, you heard that right.

WoW will be taking another step toward having a cash shop like (just about) every other MMO out there by opening up an In-Game Store for Asian realms in patch 5.4.

Considering that the majority of their subscription loss has been in Asia, I'm sure this was a move to directly counter it.  However, unlike other MMOs out there with a cash store, Blizzard will not drop subscriptions.  Instead, they're going to offer XP buffs via the store.

Given that Blizzard has shown a) no desire to destroy their cash cow and eliminate subscriptions and b) this is at present only implemented in Asia, this sounds like a non-starter.  It seems that Blizzard is hoping that people will open up their wallets a whole lot wider and not only maintain a sub but pay for items out of the cash store.

I do have to wonder about the primary reason subs are dropping in Asia, however.  If it's strictly an economic issue (cost of internet time vs. time to play), I can understand giving a new player a boost to get to L90.  A new player won't have access to heirloom gear, and believe me, I lamented that way back when in 2009 when I was struggling to get to L80 in Wrath.  There is also the issue of trying to level a lot of alts, when most heirloom gear doesn't work in the Pandaria range of L86-L90.

Still, I wonder whether Blizzard is reading the tea leaves right.  This entire focus on XP buffs enforces the notion that the important part of WoW is raiding at Endgame, when WoW has thousands of quest between L1 and L90.

Even then, I don't see how an XP boost is going to help a player that much.  I got to L90 in the middle of Kun-Lai Summit, and I still had 3.5 zones to go.  My gear wasn't even close to being able to get into LFR (if I wanted to), so I would have to grind dailies to get raid ready.  There's not much around that, unless they provide a buff for dailies.  (And I don't see that happening, either.)

My last concern is whether Blizzard didn't get the various Asian cultures well enough in Mists.  Every time I was impressed about something they stuck in --some of the tales echo stories about the Monkey King, for example-- they'd have a quest name that made a joke using the differences in Asian pronunciation (substituting Pei-Back in place of Payback, for example).  If you turn off players because they feel you're making a joke about their culture, they're not going to be coming back.  Before you ask, no, I don't have any data.  But when I read that it was Asia --where Mists was marketed heavily-- that had the largest drop in subs, this was the first thing that popped into my head.  If Blizzard is fighting this problem, then putting in a cash store isn't going to help.

A Short Bump

I don't often read Kotaku, so I missed this.  There's a Gamers Against Bigotry pledge making the rounds.  (I had it pointed out to me by a friend who is a non-gamer blogger.)  It's pretty much tantamount to the D.A.R.E. pledge to avoid drugs for those of you who went through that sort of thing*.  It's also a no-brainer if you don't do that sort of thing in-game anyway, but still they're struggling to get 10k pledges by August 1st.

Perhaps it is a small victory if they can get even as few as 10,000 gamers to sign up.  I'm also under no illusions that it's going to suddenly make Trade Chat a happy-happy place to hang out, but the more people that stand up and say that this sort of behavior is NOT okay, so much the better.

*I didn't, but when I was in high school we had Nancy Reagan's Just Say No week long campaign, which D.A.R.E. evolved out of.

Some Brief Monday Thoughts

I was up late working last night, so if you saw me on WoW, that was me trying to stay awake while waiting for the "all clear" signal.  (Flying mounts are great for temporary parking.)  Regardless, my brain is in a bit of a fog, so I'm keeping this post low key.

***

For those people who are interested in that sort of thing, the new Dragon Age 3 trailer was released the other week.

It's for mature audiences only, kids.

No, I've not played the Dragon Age games (I know, I'm a baaaad CRPG player), but I do have the Dragon Age RPG box sets from Green Ronin Publishing, and I do enjoy the setting a lot.  In fact, if you're into pencil and paper role playing games as well as computer games, you might want to check the Dragon Age RPG out.  Wil Wheaton even did a play through of a Dragon Age RPG adventure on his Tabletop YouTube series:

Part 1...

...and Part 2.

***

When slogging through yet another teleported area of Belsavis, Elara expressed her frustration by pointing out that this prison complex keeps going on and on.

(You and me both, Dorne.  You and me both.)

But at least the ending to Belsavis is in sight, for which I'm eternally grateful.

I know I'm in the minority, but I still think that Taris is my favorite Republic zone, with Nar Shadda as my favorite Imp zone.  Taris just has that mysterious "what the hell are we doing here anyway" and "OMG we're all going to die!" feel to it --plus TOR Undead-- and Nar Shadda has the sort of double crosses that you'd expect out of the Hutts.

***

You can tell that Star Trek Online and Neverwinter are both Cryptic games, because the cash store design is similar.  The difference is that Neverwinter was designed from the beginning to be F2P, whereas STO endured the switchover from subscription to F2P.  However, the "success" of STO's store definitely influenced Neverwinter's design; people complain --often rightly-- about the invasiveness of the STO online store, but if it weren't for people lining up to buy items from the store Cryptic wouldn't have copied that design into Neverwinter.

Likewise, it's not a surprise that TOR's cash store has evolved the way it has.  Bioware is merely responding to what sells so they can keep the game afloat, and if people had bought different items, the TOR cash store would look quite a bit different than what it does now.

I was thinking about this when I logged into WoW and saw the latest pet for sale in the Blizzard cash store.  Sure, Blizz doesn't call it that, but that's what the store is:  a store to maximize Blizzard's profit by selling in-game items.  They don't need it like the F2P games do, but it serves a similar purpose.