A Short Update

For the past two weeks the mini-Reds have gone back to school*, so there's been less time than usual for game playing. For both me and them, to be honest. We're also knee deep in university advertisements for the oldest mini-Red, and we've finally taken a crack at sorting the desirability of each based on some fairly simple criteria: whether they have a Music degree, and whether they have an oboist on staff.**

Needless to say, game playing has taken a real back seat.

I've kept up with some of the news, particularly the Wildstar F2P Beta. For some strange reason I never removed Wildstar from the main computer, even though I only tried out the original Beta. Perhaps it was me being cynical, but I figured that eventually the game would go F2P --after all, every other game not named EVE or WoW*** has-- so why not wait it out? For the record, I still have WoW files on my PC as well, and I do have a free DVD of RIFT lying around (courtesy of a Gen Con 2011 freebie), so I'm good there too.

While I haven't received a Wildstar Beta pass (yet), I'm definitely curious about how it has matured. If there's one thing that I've learned over the years of playing MMOs, it's that MMOs at launch aren't the same as they are a year or so in. The most famous example is Marvel Heroes 2015, which had a terrible launch, yet the dev staff worked tirelessly to completely revamp the game into its current incarnation. SWTOR is another game that really suffered from overinflated expectations, and when the game failed to deliver on being the WoW killer that EA promoted it as, subscribers abandoned it in droves. Like it or not, SWTOR has found its niche in the F2P realm. A steady amount of updates have also rounded the game into a form now that people were hoping it'd be at launch: robust starfighter PvP, player housing, plenty of Ops and Flashpoints to run, and a lot of story to cover.

Wildstar should be no different.

***

Aside from Wildstar, I've been only puttering around on SWTOR, avoiding making a decision on what to do about my Agent.

The completionist in me wants to go and do the Agent's story, but the moralist in me says "No way."

I'm not exactly sure how this battle will get resolved, but my money is that the completionist will eventually win out.

***

The mini-Reds, on the other hand, are still following the server shutdowns on LOTRO very closely, because they want their toons (and Kinship) to end up in the right server.

Not sure how it'll end up there, but I know they're definitely going to keep up playing the game.

*No, really. Yes, it's earlier than usual for our school district, but they've decided to hit Winter Break at the end of the semester, rather than have a short couple of weeks linger on into January. I'm fine with that, but most of the schools don't have air conditioning, and in the summer Midwest heat+ humidity it's not.... pleasant.... in the schools. (At least until mid-late September.)

**Music isn't the only major she's interested in, but it's the one with the most restrictions. I'm quite surprised that some universities, such as Marquette University, don't even have a Music degree. (You can minor in Music at Marquette, however.) Other universities have had news reports about cuts to the arts programs or facilities (such as at the University of Akron). And finally, oboists on staff are much rarer than flutists or trumpeters.

***I don't count the WoW token as F2P, even though people who play the economic game certainly think it that way. That's mainly because somebody had to pay for that token, even if it wasn't you, so technically it's more akin to "F2P only for the people who can afford the in-game token".

A Short Request

Due to EU rules, apparently Blogger has automatically posted a warning saying that Google Analytics and whatnot is being used on blogspot.com blogs, visible by viewers that originate from the EU.

It also says that it's up to me to determine if that warning (or whatever it is) is visible, a snarky way of Google being able to claim plausible deniability if something goes wrong and someone decides to sue Google for something that I wrote (or, likely, some malware that snuck onto the blog).

Anyway, if someone who originates from the EU (you know who you are) can comment as to whether this sort of warning/announcement/whatever shows up, I'd appreciate it. I don't feel like trying to cause security alerts by attempting to IP spoof my laptop just to find out if the damn thing is there or not.

Gamers, Ahoy!

No, we didn't use a ship to get there.
From the official Gen Con graphic for 2015.

Due to circumstances beyond our control*, we made our annual trek to GenCon on Saturday instead of Sunday. It was a (relatively) cool and clear day when we arrived at Indianapolis and walked from the Lucas Oil Stadium parking lot to the convention center.

The line for coffee at a nearby coffee shop was practically out the door, and we arrived too late to get a drink from Mayfair's free coffee van out front, so we went inside to get our tickets from Will Call. There, we were confronted with the first big difference between Saturday and Sunday at Gen Con: the Will Call line was 1/2 hour long. On Sunday, you could just walk right up without a wait and get your tickets, but a lot of people show up for Saturday and Sunday only, so the line is significantly longer.

This led into a (strong) suggestion of mine, which was that Gen Con LLC should look into making a "weekend pass", combining Saturday and Sunday. This way an attendee (or a family) could got to both days and be able to see everything in the main Exhibit Hall as well as catch a few presentations. However, as my brother-in-law pointed out to me, the cost of a Saturday + Sunday ticket is only slightly less than a Four Day Pass, and for a multiday pass it would only make sense to just get the Four Day Pass instead. Another thing he was concerned about was that the crowd would then swell to the point that the Indy Convention Center --one of the largest if not the largest in the Midwest-- would be swamped, and then Gen Con would likely have to move to one of the coasts. That would defeat the purpose of keeping the Con in the Midwest, which is the only really huge gaming con in this part of the country: PAX and PAX East are on the coasts, as is BlizzCon and E3, and San Diego CC and DragonCon are on the coast and in the heart of the South, respectively. Origins is the only other major gaming con in North America (based in Columbus, OH) and it is far smaller than Gen Con.**

Once we secured our passes, the mini-Reds took off with my brother-in-law for points unknown, and my wife and I were left to explore the Exhibit Hall on our own.

(Many more pics and commentary after the break...)

Legion-aires

So, the new WoW expac is called Legion, and will focus on the Burning Legion's massive invasion of Azeroth.

After having seen the highlights (Illidan?  Really?), I can only say one thing:

Why didn't they do this instead of Warlords of Draenor?

It would have made a LOT more sense to tinker with a few things and keep a normal timeline rather than going Azeroth-2 like they did with Warlords.

As it is, I do see that Blizzard seems to have finally gotten a kick in the pants as far as putting the story in-game as opposed to in books and other media. Still, the damage there has been done. They can't put old story back into the game, and since they're not interested in fixing the previous storylines it's kind of a moot point.

But I am still shaking my head, wondering at the change of venue for the presentation. Blizzard has always done their own thing, and their customers have loved them for it. Why decide to abandon their current business model now?

Perhaps there's more to the subscriber drop than Blizzard is letting on, but what I think is more likely is that the rest of the industry is threatening to pass Blizzard by. Blizzard finds itself in an unusual position with MOBAs in having to play catch-up, and they can't seem to get that mojo back in holding onto their WoW subscriber base. On the Activision side of things there's Skylanders, but Disney is muscling into that space with their own version*. I get the feeling that Activision/Blizzard sees the other game houses as more of a threat than before, and to stay relevant they can no longer afford to isolate themselves from the rest of the gaming populace.



*And they've got the Marvel and Star Wars properties to attract buyers of Disney Infinity as well.

A Post Gen Con Teaser

Gen Con 2015 has come and gone, and all I've got left are the memories.

And the abs.

What abs, you ask?

Oh, these abs:

The only thing that was fake was the spray tan.
That was NOT a body suit.

I'm still decompressing, and I've got another, longer post on the way, but I figured I'd at least provide the pic above and this one below:

And, naturally, I drew a blank at the name.
"You're that... that Brit woman from the new Blizzard game!"
I was grateful she was excited I knew she was Tracer from Overwatch.

Soon....

In a short time, this will be swamped.
From GenCon's Facebook page.

Unlike, say, San Diego Comic Con, Gen Con is all about the games.

I know that some people have been around since yesterday, playing games and going to pre-Con parties, but Gen Con officially begins Thursday morning.

There's a livestream set up for Gen Con, and Boardgame Geek/RPG Geek has their own streaming set up for Gen Con right here.

Time to play the games...



EtA: The GenCon livestream doesn't seem to be active, so I replaced it with the BGG livestream. I'll update that info as more comes available.

Happy Gary Gygax Day!!

Courtesy of D20 Monkey

Today is the birthday of Gary Gygax, who with Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons. Were it not for Gary and Dave, the RPG* as we know it would not exist.


Go out and play some games in Gary's honor today.




*Video games as well as pencil and paper.

Don't Blink

No, I'm not channeling my inner Whovian.

(But I couldn't resist putting this in!)

Okay, now that my computer seems to have recovered from a surprising crash, I can finish this post.

The week of free WoW came and went, and I really didn't end up doing much. I didn't check out the new areas because that'd take money, and I tried and failed several times to get into AV. After the 50 minute mark crossed each time, I would give up and start over.

I did mine some low level ore while waiting for AV to pop, but it never did.

After the week, I'd weathered the initial emotional surge of nostalgia and did some number crunching. The result: our budget really couldn't afford it right now.

So the week of Free WoW didn't have it's intended effect.

***

Instead of WoW, I decided to revive the long standing goal of finishing the (original) class stories for SWTOR.

As of this mark, I've got 6 of 8 of the class stories completed, having recently finished the Sith Warrior's story back in June.

I revived the Jedi Knight I'd created back in the first few months of SWTOR --and last seen somewhere on Balmorra-- and have pushed him along up into Chapter 3.

The Knight's story is interesting to me mainly because of it's eventual impact on the current expansion. I'd wondered a little bit about some of the storyline's direction with Shadow of Revan, and now I know where some of it came from. I guess from the big picture perspective you could say that the Knight and the Warrior are the two primary storylines for SWTOR, since much of the main storyline flows through them.

Obviously, not being finished with the Knight's story I don't know how it will eventually pan out, but I've my suspicions.

And when I've finished the Knight, I have to look once more at the Agent's story and decide what to do.*

***

Gen Con comes early this year, and next week the entire family will head over to Indianapolis for a day of immersion in gamer culture. If you happen to be there and see a brood of redheads around, it just might be us.

I'll file a full report when I get the chance.




*The chorus of people yelling "Do it!! It's awesome!!" notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, on As the World Turns....

Remember Colin Cowherd, the ESPN personality who got immensely ticked off by his network carrying Heroes of the Dorm?

Well, Colin Cowherd has now left the building. He quit ESPN for a rumored deal with FOX Sports.

Not that they needed his approval or anything, but having one less critic on staff means that ESPN doesn't have to worry about their own staff potentially sabotaging their eSports initiatives.

Cards vs. Raids

While it's not explicitly MMO related, Blizz is going to have a big Hearthstone announcement on July 22nd. The expectation is that it's more than just a card pack, and my guess is that it means an eSports deal with a league and/or television coverage (see: Heroes of the Dorm, broadcast by ESPN).

I did say "explicitly" for one reason: Blizz has a finite number of devs, and the more devs that work on other projects such as Hearthstone and HotS mean fewer devs working on WoW. Hearthstone and HotS are getting a lot of the press from Blizz these days, and for good reason: their customer base is growing and profits are up. Even Overwatch is getting a lot of love, given the videos coming out about gameplay and whatnot. But if the devs are working on these three titles, what about the others?

It's likely that the "big three" Blizz properties are on a much lower priority track these days.

Sure, WoW will have a new expac announced at BlizzCon, but that also means that people will have to lower their expectations a bit. With 6.2 the last major content patch of Warlords, Blizz is obviously shifting focus in-house.

And WoW just might be on maintenance mode for a while.

Unless, of course, Blizz can figure out how to extract the BGs and Arenas from WoW and make them playable in a standard MOBA format.

Rest in Peace, Iwata-san

Word has come out that Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, has passed away due to a growth in his bile duct.

He was a programmer first, working on games such as Earthbound, and went up the ranks. He's seen the highs and lows at Nintendo, the Wii to the Gamecube.

He'll be missed. We don't have enough programmers who can shape industry like he did.

EtA:  Dorkly has provided a link to a large amount of art honoring Iwata-san.
Artists Across the Web Pay Tribute to Satoru Iwata

Always on, I see

The first thing I noticed about logging into WoW after being away for a little over a year was that somebody was always on.

Whether or not people are actually logged into the game, they're never more than a smartphone away.

That was somewhat unnerving, as I first logged in to discover that yes, Azshandra, Tomakan, and Co. were still part of the old Alliance guild. I'd logged in extremely early in the morning as I used to do, not expecting to see anybody online. Well, that wasn't the case as there were a few people who were logged in via smartphone to guild chat.

And I expected to find myself sitting atop Honor Hold in
Hellfire Peninsula when I logged in. Silly me.

Nobody said hi, but I was perfectly fine with that. I hadn't thought ahead of what to say should somebody yell "RED!" or something; after all, I was pretty sure I'd been purged as would have been expected after that length of time of inactivity.

I did some puttering around on old toons**, mainly checking to see what was there and how the toons looked after the "graphical upgrade."

Barkeep, hit me again and put it on the Archaeologist's tab.
I've spent a long day working on portals.

I realize that comparisons between before and after pics happened a year or so ago, but one thing that struck me is not the cleaner lines in the facial features but how similar the toon design was to the original WoW toon design.

If you look at the clothing and cloth armor shown above, they're still stretched across the basic graphical frame. No amount of extra polygons could change that basic design of WoW toons, where the cloth --and to a lesser extent the armor-- are placed on the skin of the frame and not around the frame.

To change that, I think, would require a complete overhaul of the graphical engine, and would likely cause some issues with players on older and slower machines.*

***

It felt, well, eerie being back.

Have you ever gone away to college --or your family moved away from the neighborhood where you have your earliest memories-- and then you come back to visit later? That feeling of not quite fitting in, but-everything-looks-so-familiar-and-yet-I-hope-nobody-recognizes-me-and-wants-me-to-talk-about-things-I've-not-thought-about-for-years?

Yeah, that feeling.

The one thing that is a truism in MMOs is that you're anonymous. Sure, some asshat might give you some grief for not doing it right***, but nobody is checking you out through your webcam. In theory that affords the squeamish --or the reluctant-- a bit of freedom.

Blizzard did take away the ability to be anonymous to an extent by the Battle.net friendship listings, and I understand what Kurn was concerned about when she felt she had no control over her ability to "be anonymous" in a Blizzard game. In a very real sense, it pushes you away from playing a Blizzard game when you just want to be alone in a crowd after a long day at work.****

The funny thing is, Warlords is designed for more solo activity than social activity. I didn't even need to purchase the expac to know that; tons of electrons have been spilt opining on the solitary nature of Garrisons. But while you may do your thing inside a Garrison, there's still plenty of social connection possible in a guild (courtesy of Guild Chat and Vent) and via the Battle.net friends list. It's this weird dichotomy that I can't seem to wrap my head around.

If you want peace and quiet, a Dalaran bank will do nicely.
Tomakan must be some sort of pensioner, waiting for his monthly allowance.

Maybe my big issue is that I'm concerned I'll get sucked back in when I'd decided that I was going to give the game up. After all, that's a (potentially) $180/year commitment, and it's not like Blizz is going to finally fix the holes in the storyline continuum from post-Cata Old World to Outland and onward.

I did see that they created a specific "pre-made" PvP selection, but that doesn't preclude premades from invading casual BG runs. I'm not so foolish as to believe that BGs have suddenly skewed away from Horde dominance, either.

But still....

I spent time reading some quest text. Played around with zapping a few neutral animals in Darnassian Forest.***** I essentially got my feet wet, and memory took over. I stared for about 5 minutes at the keystrokes for my Dwarven Ret Pally on Moonrunner-US, rearranged a few things, and then decided I could brave Alterac Valley. (And, naturally, the wait time was 38 minutes, out of my range.)

What started as a simple matter of logging in, making sure my toons will live another couple of years, and logout, and now I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to end up doing.





*Even with the upgrades that Blizzard did to the game's graphical engine, it still takes much less oomph to run than, say, SWTOR or GW2 does.

**And in the process I actually did miss a "RED!!!" from Ancient. Um, sorry about that, Ancient.

***Or be hit on or something like that. I've thankfully not had to worry about that in MMOs since I dropped WoW, but you never know.

****My current non-online game of choice: Civ IV. No CD or DVD needed, and more importantly, no Steam needed either.

*****For the record: easier to kill than Flesh Raiders on Tython.

Well, whaddya know...

Remember this post??

About how I saw that Blizz was doing a naming purge and I'd considered subbing for a month just to keep the names alive.

Well, guess what appeared in my inbox a few days ago:

No electrons were harmed in the screenshot of this e-mail.

Sometimes you just can't make this shit up.

I mean, if I were to write this sort of coincidence in a novel, people would say "Hell, Redbeard, at least be realistic every once in a while!" But I've still got the e-mail to prove it exists.

What have I done with this opportunity?

Not much, if you consider accepting the free trial and keeping an eye on the PC as it downloaded 11 GB of updates "not much".

I've not actually logged in or anything. That also means I've not

• found out if I've been purged from the (mostly dead) Alliance guild my toons were in. It has been a year since I last was subbed, after all.
• discovered what my toons actually look like since they've been redone.*
• checked to see what my (miniscule) friends list is up to.
• ventured into a BG to watch the Alliance lose.**

Will I end up doing much of anything with this free time? Not likely, no. I doubt my frustrations with BG imbalance have suddenly changed, and if I were serious about returning to the game I'd start over with a new toon and level to 90 before buying Warlords, and by the time that happens Blizzard would be ready to drop their next expac.

But at least my stable of toons will survive the next purge, which is fine with me.

*Seriously, Turbine, you have to get better looking toons for LOTRO. At least make the toons look as good as the background scenery, please.

**Come on, some things never change.

Teaching kids the basics of PvP since... oh.... A month ago

For the past month, the most popular game on the Wii U has been Splatoon, Nintendo's answer to multiplayer PvP games. 

And, naturally, what our youngest got for her birthday was Splatoon.

"You're a kid now, you're a squid now..."
From forbes.com

Splatoon is the first new Nintendo property in what feels like ages, and it has been a big hit.

The basics are pretty simple: you're a squidling, which is (effectively) a squid that switches back and forth between squid form and a humanesque form. The squidlings love to have "turf wars", which are 4x4 PvP matches where they try to cover the playing field with their color of ink. The players are selected at random and then assigned randomly to two different teams, so you could have a big bad veteran in one match and find that same vet on the opposing side on the next match.

The games may be a variation on area control PvP games, but they're still fun.*

Of course, along the way the mini-Reds are being introduced to PvP in a slightly more forgiving environment.

Slightly.

From forbes.com.

"AAAAAAAAHHH!!!" My oldest screamed. "I HATE THEM!!!!!"

She stormed over to where I was working.

"Do you know how some people will hang out at your respawn point and wait for you to respawn and then kill you?"

"Graveyard camping? Sure. I've played Alliance in Warsong Gulch, so yeah, I know graveyard camping."

"THEY'RE DOING IT TO US RIGHT NOW!!!!"

"Ah." I considered putting on headphones but decided against it.

The match had ended in defeat, but my oldest ranted for a few more minutes. "AND THIS IS WHY I DON'T PLAY PVP IN MMOS!!!!"**

A half an hour later, she'd recovered and the games went on, but yeah, they're learning about PvP.

A lot.

Maybe they'll have some battlegrounds in their future. But excuse me, I'm going to put on some headphones.





*I still have issues playing due to headaches even though it's in 3rd person viewing angle, but in general the game is a lot of fun.

**And several less PG variations on the same point.

Fading Away....

It's been a slow week.

Not much gaming going on, a whole lot of work going on, and no truly funny stories to mention.

Outside of the mini-Reds attempting to take down some bosses in Fornost in LOTRO, and on the first boss they did the exact opposite of what they should have done, which was to kill the adds. Even then, it was one of those "you had to have been there" moments.

I did think long and hard about potentially resubbing to WoW, however.

It feels odd that even after nearly a year away from the game I still think about it as much as I do. I'm not sure if that's necessarily a good thing, as it could be pointed out that's a sign of an addiction, but it is also likely that WoW is a game you simply can't ignore. It still is the reigning heavyweight champ in terms of MMO subs, and in my (extremely) unscientific survey the WoW blogs outnumber all of the other MMO blogs combined.

What made me think about resubbing? News that Blizzard was going to free up some more toon names that haven't been logged into since December 7, 2010.

None of my old toons would have been affected, but the thought of potentially losing them forever gave me pause.

Can't I at least get to keep Quel'delar?

I should have known this would happen. WoW is large enough that there's potentially truckloads of idle toon names out there, and a periodic purge would free up a lot of potential names. (Even the overused ones, such as 50 different iterations of Legolas for a Hunter's toon.) But as somebody who occasionally runs across his old character sheets from college, I find it hard to give up a toon that I've played for any decent length of time.

I think it likely that I'd have subbed just for one month, just to login with the various toons, and then let things be.

Then again, I didn't need to let things progress that far, so I don't know if I could simply keep it at that. And that is likely for the best.

There may not be a free lunch, but there are some free RPGs

It's that time of year again.

Right around mid-June, a group of gaming companies band together to promote Free RPG Day.

No, really.

FREE.

Even have the logo to prove it!

The Free RPG website even has a Retailer Locator, where you can find game stores providing the Free RPG Day games. Odds are also good that those game stores are promoting gaming all day* by running demos and hosting game groups.

If you're not close to a game store, you can even find some freebies on RPG website DriveThruRPG.com, free for the downloading. 

I've spoken of them before, but Evil Hat games has PDFs of their FATE Core rulebook and the FATE Accelerated Edition available at their website in a pay what you like format. Try it out, and if you like it you can shell out a few dollars for it. If you want a game that's quick to pick up and try out, FATE Accelerated is likely the one for you.

So get out there, roll some dice, and hang with some friends!

Sometimes victory or defeat comes down to a single roll...
From The Big Bang Theory

EtA:  NOTE:  This is not restricted to the US. I punched in Vancouver BC, London UK, Munich Germany, and Singapore and got results.

*Not as if they don't do that normally, you know, but....

Knights of the Fallen Empire, or Don't Mess With THIS Emperor

Well, SWTOR's moment in the E3 presentation has come and gone, and while the trailer isn't out on YouTube (yet, wait for it on this space), but there's a few things we do know now courtesy of the Knights of the Fallen Empire website:

• The expac starts at L60, and includes Nine Chapters starting at that point. These are all new chapters, not continuations of the old ones. Now, I'm not sure if that means that the old game disappears or whether the old game remains*, but this expac seems to be much much larger than what we've become accustomed to with SWTOR.
• The new faction, the Empire of Zakuul, has an Immortal Emperor (Valkorion -- which is uncomfortably close enough to Vitiate's name to make me wonder), and is the dominant faction in the game. 
• The Sith and Jedi have retreated to their homeworlds, so this is essentially a reset of what things were like at the beginning of SWTOR with the Jedi having retreated to Tython.
• How this meshes with the new LucasFilm canon is unknown, but I assume that LucasFilm does have some approval process in place.

Am I intrigued? Hell yes.

I am what we Cincinnati Bengals fans call "cautiously optimistic".** It looks big --very very big-- and I don't think that anybody who plays the game expected this expac to be as big as it is. Between what happened on Ziost and this....

Well, it looks like Bioware might just have some mojo back.

And no, I don't mean the teaser reveal of Mass Effect Andromeda.

EtA:  And here's the trailer:

EtA: A much better trailer:

*Unlike Cataclysm's rewrite of Old Azeroth. I honestly hope that's the case, because I really do enjoy the original class stories.

**One of our two favorite phrases, right up there with "wait 'till next year".

How'd I Miss this Noon (EDT) Press Release? Oh right, work....

Okay, NOW I'm curious.

EA's press release ahead of the E3 presentation promises a major new expac for SWTOR:

Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ – The largest story-driven expansion to date, Knights of the Fallen Empire, marks a renewed focus on cinematic storytelling in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The expansion will deliver on the hallmarks of what makes a great BioWare™ game: new worlds to explore, new companions to recruit, and a dynamic story that players will be able to shape based on the choices they make.

I know EA has taken their lumps --and deservedly so-- over the years, but maybe they're actually learning something from what their customers are telling them.

And here all I was interested in at E3 was what Nintendo had up their collective sleeve: a new Zelda game (likely), another major property (given the success of Splatoon), and some other new games for the Wii U. I don't have an XBox or a Playstation so their press conferences don't interest me, and anything new from Blizzard (likely) will be announced at Blizzcon.

Now, if some other MMO companies can get out there and generate some buzz, I'd be fine with that too...

The Return of Attunement (sort of)

Apparently while I was away on vacation*, Blizzard backtracked and decided to allow flying in Warlords.

BUT.

You have to do a few things, first.  Like gather an eye of newt and have Birnam forest come to Dunsinane, or something like that.**

Seems like they're saying "FINE! You can have your flying, but you'd better be willing to bust your ass for it." Which means that all of those who run straight to L100 and then want to raid will actually have to go out and do some of this "out in the world" stuff.






*NO, I WAS NOT BLOG FADING!!! I went on a real vacation for the first time in ages, so that's that.

**According to the Dev Watercooler post, the requirements for the Draenor Pathfinder achievement are:

• exploring Draenor’s zones
• collecting 100 treasures in Draenor
• completing the Draenor Loremaster and Securing Draenor achievements
• raising the three new Tanaan Jungle reputations to Revered.

And please tell me that they still teach MacBeth in high school.

Wildstar Going F2P Soon

This Autumn, actually, according to Massively OP.

The real question for me is whether they waited too long to go F2P and save the franchise. That, I'm not sure of, but I'd be more than willing to check it out again when it does.

SWTOR was almost too late in its timing, but Bioware was able to staunch the bleeding and actually bring the game back from the brink. Now, I'd say that SWTOR is steadily thriving; it has found its player base, built its brand, and is adding new content on a regular basis.

Star Trek Online followed a similar trajectory but without the EA brand name behind it. Same with Rift and LOTRO. So, it can be done, and more importantly HAS been done before.

Good luck, Wildstar. I think you're going to need it.

I Knew This Day Would Come... Eventually

The other day I was printing out some documentation* when my son spoke up.

He was somewhere deep in the bowels of the Dune Sea on Tatooine --if you've played the planetary story there for SWTOR, you know exactly what I'm talking about-- and apparently something had occurred to him.

Turning to his older sister, he said, "Say, what level is your Jedi Knight?"

"The one on the shared account is in Alderaan," she replied, "but my new one on my own account is only on Coruscant."

"Oh," he said, deflating a little. "I was wondering if you'd do a group quest with me."

My ears perked up. I knew what was coming next.

"How long do you think it'd be before you got your Knight to Tatooine?"

"Really? I've got all this homework to do and you want to know when I can get on the game?"

"Oh, okay." He swiveled his head around until he saw his younger sister on the couch, reading with her headphones on. "Hey," he called to her, "what's your Smuggler's level at?"

"Um, about 14," she replied.

"Oh man. I guess I'll have to wait."

Hello, I thought. I'm right here!

"Dad..." he began.

Finally!

"...I noticed that the free account's XP rewards really cut down after L20. It's taking me longer to level up than I expected."

He then turned back to the screen and kept playing.

I blinked twice. That's it? No 'can you help me out, Dad?'

"You know, I could help you out with some heroics."

He kept playing. "Um...." he said, drawing it out. "Okay, I guess."

***

Apparently, the older two decided to visit the younger one while she was working on her Consular on Tython.

Without telling her, naturally.

So, they snuck up behind her and kept following her around. She was so focused on the story, she didn't even notice them there for 15 minutes.

Then, hilarity ensued.

"What are you--"

"HA!! YOU DIDN'T SEE US!!"

"I was jumping around and saying 'Hi!' all this time!!"

"I didn't SEE you at all! How long have you been there!"

"Forever!!"

Ah, Fridays.





*Paperless office, my ass. I've printed out more documents for work these past few years than I'd done in the decade before it.

Happy Anniversary, Leeroy

The infamous Leeroy Jenkins Upper Blackrock Spire YouTube video is 10 years old.