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.

Where's the Shower?

I was in Isle of Conquest, having snuck up from the Quarry to the Hangar, when it happened.

The Horde had taken the Hangar and left, leaving a lone undergeared Hunter to guard the place.  By the time I'd arrived, a Worgen Feral Druid was circling his prey, waiting for an extra body to strike.  I closed and we struck, wiping out the Hunter.

As I captured the Hangar, the Druid whispered, "Can I ask you something?"

It's not the first time I'd gotten whispers like that, so I barely batted an eye.  "Sure."

"Can I have a touch?"

That wasn't what I expected.  Well, whatever I was expecting, it wasn't that.  Surely I was reading the wrong thing into that whisper.  "Um, what?"

"We're too undergeared to do anything, so why don't you pop out them titties and we can have some fun?"

No, that was exactly what he was thinking.

I snorted, both in-game and out of game.  "We can have some fun" really meant "I want a cheap thrill playing with the virtual breasts of a stranger."

Really?  We're in the middle of a battleground, we're actually in the process of capturing a base, and THIS is all you can think about?

I was about to say "You DO realize that I MIGHT be a guy," but stopped.  For this person, it probably wouldn't even matter, and it might actually encourage him further.

Before I could say a simple and blunt "No," he was jumped from behind by two Horde.

I crept away, leaving him to his fate.  Never had I been happier to see a Warrior and DK combo in my life.

***

I've been playing MMOs for almost four years now with a mix of male and female toons, and that was the first time I'd been propositioned like that.  My male Blood Elf bank alt had been wolf whistled at by female toons when he made the journey to Silvermoon, but this was something else entirely.

My first reaction to that encounter --aside from revulsion-- was bewilderment.  How on earth could that person think such a crude come-on would work?  His toon isn't in a position of power over mine, so what made him think he could attempt to dominate me like that?

Oh wait.  Real life.

We all bring our experiences to the table when we login to an MMO, whether we like it or not.  Some people take advantage of the anonymity that an MMO provides and use it to satisfy their own sexual urges.*    Just like how some people take advantage of Trade Chat to spew racist and sexist crap, others just wait for situations like this.  If you're on the receiving end of it, you simply can't win, either.  If you refuse, you're an uptight bitch who won't loosen up; if you report you're a crazy bitch who can't take a joke; if you say nothing that's tacit approval.

Four years without being harassed like this in-game is a fairly long time, but for my mind, not long enough.  My only regret was was that I didn't take down the toon's name so I could report him.  I know kids who play MMOs, and the last thing they need is an encounter like that one.




*In a mutually agreed situation, that can (probably) work out fine, but this was anything but that.

Not These Guys Again

Anybody remember when the Zandalari were the good guys?*

Now, they're reduced to the role the Nazis filled in the Indy Jones movies.

Zandalaris....  I hate these guys!

I reached the end of the "original" Pandaria quest chains, and I find myself...  Disappointed.  It seems that Blizz walked up right to the edge with the Mongols Mogu and decided that it was too risky to have new baddies out there all by themselves.  Therefore, they dug into their collection of past enemies and pulled out the Trolls.

Again.

I should have seen this coming; after all, both vanilla and every expac of WoW that has been released has featured Trolls as the baddies in some form or another:  Zul'Gurub and Sunken Temple (Vanilla), Zul'Aman (BC), Drak'Theron and Gundrak (Wrath), the 5-man Zuls (Cata).  While they don't get their own separate instance/raid, they are heavily featured in raids such as Mogushan Vaults and Throne of Thunder.

You can't go more than 100 feet in the Isle of Thunder without smacking into a Troll.  And if it weren't for a Rogue's stealth ability, I'm sure I would have.

I just feel like there was such a great chance to Blizzard to fully commit to the Mogu as the balance to the Sha in Pandaria, and they decided that the Thunder King and company couldn't stand on their own.  What's going to happen in the next expac, anyway?  Should they skip other baddies entirely and title it "Trollmageddon"?

***

As an aside, I had to wonder about the naming of Lei Shen's home.  Isle of Thunder doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but when I switched it around I realized one reason why it shouldn't be named Thunder Island:

I'm actually disappointed that nobody has created a WoW music video based on Jay Ferguson's 70's tune.  Of course, I don't think that you'll find people "chasin' love" out there on WoW's Thunder Island.

***

That does bring up another issue I had with the questing in Pandaria.  Blizz deliberately went for the darker feel in their quest writing, making Vashj'ir seem like a walk in the park by comparison.  But even then, they snuck in their traditional pop culture nods and humorous hijinks.  (Hayden Christophen as the Alliance Honor Quartermaster, for instance).  This time, however, I think that the humorous asides actually detract from the rest of the questing.  Like how Toshley's Station (and to a lesser extent Area 52) are jarring enough that you lose your immersion in the game, quests like the ones associated with the Grummies left me grinding my teeth.

At times like this, I wish Blizz would dial back the humor a bit and at least take themselves more seriously.  We already get tons of "kill ten rats" quests as it is, I don't think a spoonful of sugar humor is going to help that medicine go down any easier.

***

The ending to Dread Wastes, however, is right up there with the ending to Vashj'ir, where you watch what happens and think "Holy shit, we're screwed."**  That said you only get that sort of emotional punch out of an ending once, and if you mess it up you've lost a golden opportunity.  Blizz did a great job on that one.  And on the Jade Forest's ending as well.  For some reason, Townlong Steppes and the combined Krasarang Wilds/Valley of the Four Winds endings didn't have the same sort of punch.  And of course, Kun-lai Summit's ending is in an instance, so it gets an incomplete.

All in all, Blizz did some things right --a bit less quests on rails, although it is still quite noticeable-- which pretty much balance out the issues I had with questing.  I knew I was getting near the end when I kept saying to myself "Just hang in there, Dread Wastes has got to end soon."  The last time I was saying that, I was in The Old Republic and slogging through Belsavis.  And that's a shame, because the overall story behind Dread Wastes was very interesting.




*Or at least semi-good guys.  Hey, scholars are good.

**At least a real raid came out of this, compared to what happened in Vashj.


EtA:  I forgot Zul'Farrak for Vanilla.  That's what I get for hanging around the Eastern Kingdoms lately.

The Old Fashioned Way of Doing Things

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
--Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching


There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.
--The Jedi Code*

In what feels like a lifetime ago, I wrote about how corruption was a major theme in Blizzard's work.  A couple of expacs since that time, Blizzard hasn't really changed their tune very much.  In fact, you could argue that Blizzard is simply coming up with new ways to use corruption.

Okay, Twilight's Hammer was a gimme.  You're tempted by power and who looks like the winning side, and you join with Deathwing.  Even the Sha are pretty blatant.  You open your heart to those non-Zen Buddhist emotions such as fear, anger, and hate** just a tiny bit, and the Sha sneak right on in and corrupt you.  In a very real sense, the Sha are the ultimate excuse for bad behavior:  "I was possessed by the Sha!  They made me do it!  Somebody release the Sha that's inside me!!"

But the war between factions?  Garrosh?  Well, Blizz has gone on record for saying that Garrosh is simply a "bad egg".  Oh, he may eventually become corrupted by the power within Pandaria (/cough 5.4 /cough), but he was evil and/or power hungry to begin with.

O really?

Has everybody forgotten the kid in Nagrand who was so afraid that he'd turn out like his father that he let the Ogres and evil-aligned Broken walk all over his tribe?  The kid who only began to grow a spine when Thrall showed him how his father redeemed himself?

Even though that questline has pretty much dried up due to conflicts --Thrall not being Warchief these days-- that's pretty telling that Garrosh wasn't exactly a "bad egg".  He became a bad egg due to his experiences.  He saw when he first arrived in Orgrimmar that bluster worked.  That aggression worked in Northrend.  He took a strong offensive stance and freed the Dragonmaw from their Legion tainted leaders, learning that putting pedal to the metal worked.  He surrounded himself with "yes men" and marginalized those who would provide better counsel:  Saurfang, Cairne, Baine, Vol'jin, Rexxar, Eitrigg, and Lor'themar.***

In short, he became corrupted with power just like any number of despots.

If he'd had different experiences, if he'd have learned something by the way he was duped into killing Cairne, or if he'd have learned something about power and responsibility after Stonetalon, Garrosh would have turned out differently.  But he didn't.

Seduced by the Dark Side, he was.




*Good thing that the Tao espouses a lack of passion, because some lawyer somewhere would have a field day on this.

**You can hear Yoda saying this, can't you?  "The Dark Side are they...."  That said, the one thing that TOR has that Blizzard doesn't have is romance in the questlines.  The world's biggest generator of fear, anger, and hate is romance/relationships, and Blizz simply refuses to examine that outside of, say, the books.

***I didn't throw Sylvanas into the mix because I'm not convinced she'd give good counsel, and she's also too far gone with her version of total war.  If Liadrin were not consumed with rebuilding Quel'Danas and managing the Blood Knights, I'd have put her in the list as well.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on the Cusp of the Weekend

Well, that didn't take long.

Somewhere in the middle of Kun-lai Summit my rogue dinged 90 without a single piece of heirloom gear on her (that was still active, anyway; I kept the Inherited Insignia of the Alliance just because).

This was the quickest I'd leveled to max level in a new expac area, and if I'd have been a non-stealthie class I'd have finished even sooner because I avoided a lot of mobs while out questing.  By comparison, I dinged L80 in Storm Peaks on Q, and L85 in Twilight Highlands on Neve and Tom.

And while it's going to be nice for questing, PvP just got a big punch in the gut.

I mean, really.  Most of my gear is in the L414 range; what do you think would happen if I got into WSG with that gear iL?

I considered running scenarios and/or instances, but really, they didn't appeal to me.  I didn't feel like dragging down a scenario with my (relative lack of) DPS, and while instances might work, if I'm going to be spending time getting badges I might as well get Honor instead.  Okay, I have to be honest:  I queued for an instance long enough to see the DPS wait time for a normal was 45 minutes, and decided I'd much rather get two BGs in before a single instance popped.

That said, just any old BG won't do if you're not geared up for it.  A rule of thumb of mine is that the more the players on a side, the lesss impact a single player will have.  Therefore, for an undergeared toon, my best bet is to stick to the 40 man BGs and ride on some coattails.

Oh hai, Vann!  Nice to see you!

***

It feels weird walking around Neverwinter.

The last time I was in the Jewel of the North was in the video game Neverwinter Nights, back before D&D 4E and the Spellplague.  Even though she is dead now, I keep expecting to see Lady Aribeth, Paladin of Tyr, wandering around the Protector's Enclave.

I also expect --as a Cleric-- to be managing my available spells and keeping an eye on balancing healing with utility.  But in Neverwinter, based as it is on D&D 4E, all of that is out the window.  Neverwinter is far closer to a Diablo-esque game than a traditional MMO in terms of gameplay.  The commands alone feel better suited to a gamepad than a keyboard.

Still, it is an addictive game, and I recognize the Forgotten Realms lingo in the NPCs you meet.

***

Kids and MMOs, Part Whatever:

I called the kids down to dinner last night, and as she sat down my youngest got a funny look on her face.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I didn't park my Smuggler before coming down.  She was in Black Sun territory."

I headed for the stairs.  "I'll take care of it."

After moving her toon into a corner, I returned to the table.  "Kiddo," I began, "Why is your Smuggler wearing a dress?"

"Um....."

"You realize you put on gear meant for a counselor, right?"

"Oh, so THAT's why she looked weird!"

An Embarrassment Of Riches

I was thinking about this last night, when I was goofing around on several MMOs.  While I'm sure that some will disagree, it seems that right at this point in time we've got a lot of really good MMOs that we can sample and play as much as we like.

From MMOs based on known properties (ranging from Star Wars to Conan to D&D) all the way to new designs such as The Secret World, it seems that we're in the middle of an MMO F2P/B2P explosion.  Yes, the basic MMO design hasn't changed too much since the EQ and early WoW days, but how it's implemented and for what property has.

As much as some people want to complain about how the F2P and B2P games make their money*, the fact that they not only are able to survive but put out new content has to be heartening.  Look at a game such as Age of Conan:  after a huge launch, it was pretty much written off and/or left for dead after the glitches and the "Tortage vs. the rest of the game" experience.  However, it just finished it's fifth anniversary after having spent the past few years as F2P.  The Old Republic suffered from the "nothing to do" syndrome after a toon reached max level**, but after it went F2P Bioware has not only provided new updates and content but has seen a stabilization in subs and a rise in players.

The F2P/B2P models aren't panaceas, and I'm not altogether certain they are the wave of the future, but what these two models do provide is choice.  Don't think WoW or Rift is brutal enough?  Go try adventuring in Hyborea for a while.  Need more Cthulhu?  There's an entire game devoted to that feeling of dread and despair (The Secret World).  Tired of killing Sith?  There's a Klingon D7 with your name on it.  Or maybe you want the feel of returning to an old haunt like the Forgotten Realms?  Or an even older haunt like The Shire?  Or maybe you just want to be an angel for a little while, such as in Aion.***

And that's not even touching games such as Guild Wars 2 (and the upcoming Wildstar).

I think it's pretty safe to say that I'd have burned out on MMOs in general if there weren't such a variety to play with these days.  It can cause problems for me when I get into an instance or a battleground, but in general I really enjoy the variety of worlds to play in.  My only regret is that I can't pay these companies more for their work (budget, you know).  But I do what I can.

Is it too much to have someone look at the old Darklands video game and create an MMO based on that?  Now THAT would be cool.




*I was thinking of the Ten Ton Hammer article on how much they hate the lock boxes for Star Trek Online, but the reality is that those lock boxes and those announcements in-game are no worse than seeing hundreds of sparkle ponies in WoW.

**As well as a lack of grouping tools, etc., that players had become accustomed to.  Remember, even Blizzard tried to mix things up in Cata by having players find the entrance to the instances before they were allowed to queue for them, but what happened was that players would simply avoid the instances they didn't like (/cough Stonecore /cough).

***Now that I think about it, an MMO based on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series would be pretty cool.  My kids are presently working on an RPG for Percy Jackson using the Savage Worlds system and the Super Powers Companion books as a starting point, and I'm sure they're not the only ones out there who have had that idea.

Oh, This is Gonna Hurt....

I was working on the Red Crane Temple area of Karasang Wilds with Anduin in tow* when I ran into yet another gearcheck wall:  the two mini-bosses in the separate wings of the temple.  What was more annoying this time was that I was properly equipped with as much green and blue quest gear as would be expected as someone attempting this.  If it weren't for the ads that show up when the sha bosses are halfway down I don't think there'd be as much a problem, but those ads force me to use up all of my CDs, and then I'm just a sitting duck in leather gear** trying to build up combo points.

I'd been chatting with Vidyala from Manalicious in-game, and hearing of my latest wipe offered to help.  (I'd forgotten about CRZ capability in Pandaria; it's there, lurking beneath the surface.)  I gratefully accepted her offer, and when her Mage Millya winged in, I crept around and assaulted the first mini-boss.  Two zaps from Vid and the mini-boss was a smoldering heap.

"Holy crap!" I said.

Vid laughed.  "You're still L88," she pointed out.

"Yeah, but..." then I noticed her health bar.  "You're more than twice my health!"

"Did I ever tell you about the time I tanked Elegon?"

"Yeah, but...  Wow."  I knew that she was on the current raiding tier, but this discrepancy was almost as much as the discrepancy between a fresh L85 and a Mists-geared L89 in a battleground.

We circled around to the other mini-boss --she flew and I crept over-- and repeated the fireworks.

"All I can think about is how it's going to hurt when I ding L90 and get into a BG," I said, awed, as I thanked her for the assist.

Even now, I can see myself as a smudge on the ground, with the "L2P Noob!" ringing in my pointy ears.  Just when you thought you made it to the top of the mountain....




*I'm already sick of that kid.  For a Mists release, he sure seems to be fighting with the punch of a Wrath-era toon.  I find even Corso (the Smuggler companion on TOR) less annoying than Anduin.

**With a conspicuous opening right between the breasts.  Reminds me of the old Female Armor Sucks comedy skit that Collegehumor put out a while back.  Yes, go watch it through the link; it's a classic.

Hellooooo! Anybody home??

Such was my feeling working my way through Pandaria.

I'm already on my third zone, Krasarang Wilds, having completed the first two.*  While I know two things --cross realm zones are turned off for Pandaria and I've already passed one of the big "dailies" hubs at the Tillers area-- I'm still surprised at how few toons are out and about in Pandaria itself.  I've seen more toons in Hellfire Peninsula than in the first three Pandaria zones, and that's kind of scary.

There's obviously players out there, as Cynwise demonstrated in his class distribution post, but wherever they are, it's not in Panda-land.

I am not going to jump to conclusions here, but I suspect that people like me who took their time to level a new toon are outliers, and most of the utility in the new zones is already spent.  As the "game starts at max level" people will tell you, that's not a surprise.  But think of all the effort it took to generate the data in those new zones, and you'll understand why I'm more than a bit concerned about the future of WoW.

Just like in Cataclysm, Blizzard expended a lot of effort to create new content (and a new continent), but the usefulness of that content evaporated once the big wave made it to L90.  I suppose you could make the argument that 2 years of development was useful for the majority of players up until patch 5.1 dropped, only a few months worth of playtime.  That's not exactly fair, but the dearth of characters out in Pandaria feed the perception that Blizzard would be better off spending time devising new raids and BGs.  (And pets.)

For those people (like me) who have complained about Blizzard's use of the WoW novels and short stories to advance the lore rather than develop it in-game, this is a pretty damning result.  If you were a bean counter at Blizzard, which would give you more bang for the buck:  a novel or in-game content?   And what's more, if you knew the in-game content would be tossed aside at the earliest opportunity, where would you put your development dollars at?

It's a shame, really, because when Blizz' development staff take themselves and their topic seriously they can create some really good content.




*Given my current leveling rate, supplemented by BGs, I'll be at max level by the time I'm finished with Kun-Lai Summit.  That's great for entering the Dread Wastes, but for a BG-er, that's going to be painful.

There's Klingons on the Starboard Bow, Starboard Bow, Starboard Bow

McCoy:  Go?  Where are we going?
Kirk:  [gestures at the console] Where they went.
[Saavik punches in the coordinates to the transporter console and steps onto the pad]
McCoy:  What if they went nowhere?
Kirk:  Then this will be your big chance to get away from it all.
--from Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan


This is an overdue post, since I'd been playing the game for well over six months now, but I thought I'd use a quote from The Original Series movies to sum up my feelings of Star Trek Online.

When you think that you've got the MMO style down pat, a game throws you for a bit of a curve.  STO is definitely not the same MMO that you're used to seeing.  Oh, there's a toon that is the center of your universe --whether it be Federation, Klingon, or Romulan*-- but the gameplay is a bit different than the standard theme park MMOs out there.

For starters, there's your starship.  Yes, you get to captain your own starship, and judging by the plethora of starships that hang around the Sol Starbase, the starship you pilot is the e-peen of STO.  to be honest, I felt pretty humbled in my tiny Centaur Class starter ship being surrounded by all of these other ships.

Unlike The Old Republic, your starship is integral to the game.  In fact, you could say that's the difference between the two games in a nutshell:  The Old Republic is a Space Opera about you as a character, while Star Trek Online is about you as a starship captain.

STO is set in the Next Gen universe, and the Romulans home planet of Romulus has exploded.  (Sound familiar to you reboot fans?)  The Klingon Empire decided it was time for a land grab** and broke its alliance with the Federation to expand its territory.  Therefore, the stage was set for two factions:  Federation and Klingon.  STO added the Romulan faction within the past few weeks to spice things up, but I think it's too early to tell how things are going.

The Federation's intro questline starts you off with needing to beam down to a planet's surface to save some colonists from the Borg.  (What, you thought they weren't going to be here?)  You're introduced to movement and fighting as a leader of an away team, and then you're beamed back onto the ship where the captain didn't survive an attack.  You're in charge, so you learn a bit about how your ship moves, interacts, and attacks/defends in space while teaming up with a lot of other ships to beat off the Borg.

Now, that all sounds like pretty standard MMO fare, but things begin to deviate a bit when you report in to Starfleet.  You're given command of your first ship and you have your first officer as a member of your staff, but you quickly find out that quests are designed differently in STO than the traditional theme park model.  The standard model is to daisy chain a series of quests together, forming a questline, but in STO a single quest may or may not spawn subquests --which are required, which is different than the Bonus quests in TOR-- and the single quest itself is in reality several quests all wrapped together.  STO pretty much eliminated the quest turn-in format by going with one long quest instead.

And that's just the format.

There are several different types of STO quests:  the straight ahead "talk to someone and acquire a quest" variety, the "Admiral hails you and assigns you a quest" type, the random "world boss" incursion type (like, say, the Borg popped up in a region of space and all ships available in the quadrant are summoned to fight them off), the PvP variety (which appears when you get close to a PvP area), and "explore strange new worlds" variety, which you're never sure what you're going to get.

That last quest type is a new idea, and it caters to the Star Trek universe.

As any old time trekkie will tell you, the whole point of the Enterprise being out there was to explore uncharted space.  There are specific regions in the galactic map where a player can go and investigate various anomalies out in space.***  Sometimes these anomalies yield planets and other adventures, sometimes they're pretty mundane.  At first I thought these areas were like the materials rich areas in Age of Conan, but I quickly learned that you can have plenty of adventures exploring.  Oh, and some of those adventures can last as long as, say, a full clear of Stratholme in WoW.

A lot of quests will strictly be limited to you interacting with things on your starship, but other ones will have you beaming down as head of an away team of up to five people.  Your officers will accompany you if you want them to, but any extra slots are filled with the traditional Red Shirt cannon fodder.  By the way, you can equip your officers with good equipment too, much like the companions in TOR.****

Fights, encounters, and other interactions with the world will yield skill points, and you train by turning in those skill points for better skill rankings.  Yes, you do have levels too, and that governs your rank and what ships you can captain (and what skills you can train), but skill training itself is vitally important.  Make sure you train as much as you can.

As a starship captain, you also have to take care of your crew.  While you don't have companion stories like you do in TOR --the difference in focus between the two MMOs again-- you train your crew, make sure they are properly geared, and when the time comes, you can promote them too.  I presume at some point they may leave your ship, and if that happens you have other officer candidates to choose from.*****

This only scratches the surface of the game itself, because it can be as complex as you want it to be.  Sure, when a fight is happening you turn into a button masher, but the rest of the game is pretty expansive.

The game is very true to the Star Trek universe, and for those trekkies who want to play around in an MMO, STO is very much built for them.  Yes, I'd have preferred TOS myself, but going with Next Gen made sense because more people are used to the Next Gen universe.  There's also that little matter of TOS being boxed in the timeline by both ST:E and Next Gen, so if STO wants to expand the Trek universe, it can by going with Next Gen.

The space graphics are great, and the planetary graphics are good too --on a par with TOR-- but the toon facial graphics are, well, very similar.  The faces all have a similar, distinctive look, and while it's not bad per se, that sameness can get to you after a while.  And I also have to admit that I expect my crew to come and talk to me from time to time, but this isn't TOR.

STO's biggest positive is that it remains true to the Trek universe but allows you inside to feel like you're really a part of your faction.  The Leonard Nimoy vocal commentary is a big win too.

It's yet another F2P offering out there, and one worth a look if you want to scratch that Star Trek itch.





*Romulans are a brand new third faction to the STO MMO.  I haven't made a Romulan character yet, so I can't say much more than that.  However, you can't miss all the Romulan ships out and about in space.

**Or whatever you'd call it in space.  Territory grab sounds so.... sanitized.

***Examining anomalies themselves is like farming mats in most other MMOs, but with a twist.  You're given a set amount of time to match the waveform that pops up on screen, and if you do you get bonus materials.  You can in turn use those materials to craft items.  There's an entire questline associated with Memory Alpha to learn how to craft items.

****Both you and your officers can train as well, and you'd better take advantage of that opportunity as much as you can.

*****I haven't gotten that far enough in the game to find out, but for the character that I expect to leave for her own command I've already got her replacement in the pipeline.  (EtA:  This doesn't happen unless you dismiss your officers.  See the comment below.)

Where Did I Put Those Training Wheels?

I have PvP on my brain.

Seriously.

After having spent the past two weeks running Battlegrounds (or doing questing in various MMOs), I queued for a Old Republic flashpoint.  Since I'd leveled my first toon strictly via questing and the occasional heroic, I've been taking some time on these alts to explore the different flashpoints in the game.  Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but since I'd been playing a Rogue for such a straight stretch, I had to change my expectations.

Unfortunately, I didn't change them enough.

I got into the Collicoid War Game flashpoint, which was new to me, and I ended up spending part of the first phase of the game as a keyboard turner.  For some reason my brain thought move = both mouse buttons, whereas on the turret it is move = right mouse button.  When I kept hitting both mouse buttons, I kept getting kicked out of the turret.  That was very nearly a disaster, as the collicoids closed to a dangerous level before I finally started blasting them to pieces.

Okay, that was a new flashpoint mistake.  I could deal with that.

But what I couldn't deal with was that I kept pulling aggro.

I mean, I'm not on my glass cannon gunslinger, merely my Commando running DPS.  I've finally got a rotation down for the Hutt expac changes, but I know that Commandos don't hit quite that hard.  The only thing I could figure was that I was being too efficient with my rotation, which is an artifact of PvP.  You know, the "OMG! OMG!  Quick-quick-quick-hurry-hurry-hurry gotta-DPS-this-Druid-down-before-he-heals-and.....  OH NO A LOCK!  Dump the DoTs and Vanish!!  Hurry Hurry Hurry!"

Yeah, right.  You try doing that in Eye of the Storm.

Spacing out my rotation helped, but it didn't really prepare me for the puzzle part of the flashpoint.  "Over here!" became my name, synonymous with "Over here, Ki!" and "Ki!  Not there, here!  To my right!"  Of course, I had no idea which toon was saying that until I clicked to find the right one.  And then, on the last fight which was a boss fight transforming into another boss fight (think the middle boss transitioning into The Black Knight in Trial of the Champion and you've got the idea), everybody was frantically telling me to move to the middle.

What for, I wondered as I ran up.

Then, WHAM!  The last droid boss dropped in.

Oh.  That's why.

Still, nobody died due to my klutziness.  Except me, who moved over to try to push an elite off a platform and ended up getting blasted off myself.  "Those droids do that," the tank said as I respawned back at the beginning.  

"I noticed that."

By the end of the flashpoint I'd slowed down my rotation enough that I didn't pull aggro* from the rest of the bosses.  But I think I need to do a bit more PvE group content to balance out this PvP attitude I've got going.

Okay, one more and then I shut it down for the night.

*Except for my very first shot at the final boss, which I'd deliberately waited before dropping a Grav Round on it, and of course the boss turns and smacks me.  "Oh, for pete's sake, I only hit it once!" I said in party chat, which elicited laughter.

I Love the Smell of Gyrocopters in the Morning...

At the end of an Isle of Conquest battleground, my Rogue dinged 85.  I looked around the entrance to Uldum, decided there was no reason to stick around, and I went back to Stormwind to begin my expedition to the Orient Pandaria.

Having ignored most of the Beta and being baffled by most people's commentary on their own blogs (Mogu, Schmogu), I figured I was going in as blind as you could be without actually being a complete noob to WoW.  Also, I decided this would be a good duplication of my previous attempt in Cataclysm, the "Convoy to L85"*, but with my iL at 280 I assumed this would be a bit rougher of a transition.**

I flew up to the Skyfire, landed, and we were off.

About five minutes into the intro questline, I had one overwhelming thought:  why are we still playing WoW with swords and axes and bows?  WoW has gone full steampunk with Mists, and the old paradigm has become obsolete.  It's so steampunk, both gyrocopter sequences --the one you pilot as well as the one where you tag certain places in the Horde stronghold for air strikes-- felt like something out of Apocalypse Now.

Throughout the entire SI:7 portion of Jade Forest, the comparisons with Vietnam grew stronger, with the Alliance and Horde's arming of the indigenous populations echoing the Soviets and U.S. arming the Vietnamese.***

And then, things just collapsed.

We were back to the traditional WoW environment of kill ten rats, sly names with a nod to popular culture, and quest writing similar to any other expac.  It's almost as if Blizzard went up to the edge, looked over the precipice, and decided to play it safe and go back to the tried and true.  With the exception of the graphics and voice actors, if you were to drop the Pandaria quests into another expac you'd not tell the difference.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense:  WoW is what it is, and putting an Asian veneer over it isn't going to change the core of the game.  Just like how I could tell Aion was Korean in origin by the quest text****, I could tell that this was WoW by the quest text.

Still, my first observation stands:  why are we using bows and swords and axes in a game that has become dominated by "magic tech" and steampunk?  I can understand a Rogue's use of daggers in an assassin's role, but the Paladin, Warrior, and Hunter seem obsolete in the tech that you see in WoW.  The magic oriented classes --Druid, Shaman, Priest, Warlock, and Mage-- have more utility in the New WoW Order than the melee based classes.

From a historical perspective, once one group makes a major technological leap in warfare, other groups quickly follow suit or they get steamrolled over.  When the musket was introduced and the concept of interchangeable parts introduced, all of the major powers of the day almost instantly switched to this new tech.  Blizzard went in this direction with the entire opening and SI:7 sequences, yet pulled back from the obvious conclusion of modifying the classes to accommodate new arms and tactics.  Yes, the game would have been radically changed forever had they gone through with those sort of changes, but it remains that Blizzard seems to have wanted the flash and bang of the new stuff without the natural conclusion that those changes would have wrought.

Unless, of course, Titan is really WoW Steampunk.




*Use the label to find the old posts on that adventure; I examined the transition from Wrath to Cata as a pair of fresh L80s --Neve and Tomakan-- without the benefit of having run a single Wrath raid or heroic instance.  For fun, I added Q into the mix just to compare the difference in Hyjal from someone with T10 gear vs. Wrath greens.

**Oh, I guess you're curious how my severely undergeared Rogue handled the intro zones.  It was much slower going than the transition to Cata, and the first boss, Ga'trul, proved to be a true gear check.  I'd be doing well enough until he converted to Sha form, and then I'd end up wiping.  In the end I had to go back and blow some of my Honor and Justice points to get enough gear to allow me to knock that warlock out.  Once I got past Ga'trul, however, the road was much smoother than I expected.

***You could also insert any Nineteenth Century European power here, particularly during colonial expansion.

****If there's one thing that makes me hesitate about Guild Wars 2, it's that I didn't like the tone of the quest text from Aion.  If the same company, NCSoft, makes both games, it stands to reason that I won't like feel of GW2 as well.

A Few Newsflashes

I was writing something else but here are a few pieces of news from around the Blogosphere:

• The Old Republic has 1.7 million new accounts since they went F2P.  Subs are steady at 550 thousand or so, but profits are up for the game.
• WoW lost 1.3 million subs since Q4 2012.  The bleeding has been most prevalent in Asia, but all regions lost subs.
• RIFT just announced it's going F2P.  Not sure about the details yet, but they are going F2P June 12th.
• Neverwinter has generated a huge amount of interest, but you knew that, right?

The Hardest Thing.....

I figured I'd end this Friday with a few musings on MMOs, all beginning with the words "The hardest thing..."

Feel free to add your own!

***

The hardest thing about playing a Rogue is learning when not to do anything.  If you're used to playing a tank or DPS who rushes into the fray, a Rogue is a huge change of pace.  You can't simply jump in, because you're too squishy.  Everybody knows you can do monster damage on a single hit, so they all gang up on you.  You sometimes have to wait, let the mob go by, and then catch the lone person left behind.

***

The hardest thing about playing on the Sith Empire side is that it messes with your morals.  Like the agent on Balmorra who wants you to set up IEDs to deliberately kill children.

***

The hardest thing about playing the new Neverwinter MMO is that I feel I should be using a gamepad.  (More on that in another post.)

***

The hardest thing about playing LOTRO is the UI.  I don't know why, but the screen buttons and whatnot just feel so.... busy.

***

The hardest thing I've ever done in an MMO is tank.  Trusting somebody to keep you upright is not easy, particularly when you've seen a lot of bad pugs.

***

The hardest thing in a battleground seems to be getting that last 2% of health on that enemy you're fighting down to zero.  I swear, if I had a dollar for each time I came thisclose to finishing someone off and they still managed to escape....

***

The hardest thing about playing a mage is resisting the urge to run in and blast everyone with a Cone of Cold.

***

The hardest thing about playing Age of Conan is realizing that mobs are much tougher than you find in other MMOs.  Usually you remember this after they ganged up on you and you're back at the graveyard.

***

The hardest thing about Star Trek Online is that all of the NPCs --your crew and others-- all seem to look alike.  They have the same general look in the eyes and mouth, and after a while they all start to blend together.

***

The hardest thing about trade chat is resisting the urge to reach through the computer screen and headbutting the idiot who just said a racist/sexist/disgusting thing for the tenth time.

***

The hardest thing about Mists of Pandaria has to be hearing for the five thousandth time "Oh, you mean this is just like Kung Fu Panda!"  

Although seeing the four hundredth permutation of "Po" or "Kung Fu" or "PooPoo Platter" as a toon's name comes close.

***

The hardest thing about watching my kids play MMOs is resisting the urge to toss them out of the chair and "help".  They don't need my help, and if I keep telling myself that, I'll finally start to believe it.

***

The hardest thing about MMO blogging is that I always --and I do mean always-- find a grammatical or factual error right after I press Publish.  The author Michelle Sagara once said in a post of her own that she has the same problem, so I don't feel too bad.  But still, it is annoying.

***

The hardest thing about guilds is watching them implode, and realizing there's nothing you can do about it.

***

The hardest thing about WoW mounts is that damn White Polar Bear mount.  I still haven't gotten that sucker to drop.

***

The hardest thing about MMO friends is that there's never enough time to merely hang with them.

Did Somebody Get the License of that Truck?

I'd thought the L75-L79 BG range was the worst for leveling via BGs.  The Cata gear entering in at L77-L78 skewed the BG fairly heavily toward the top end of the BG, even more so than the average leveling BG due to the compressed nature of an entire expac to five levels.  Having gone through that range twice now, once with a Lock in Cata and now on my Rogue in Mists, I figured I knew what I was talking about.

Seems that I was wrong.

When my Rogue hit L80 and entered into this BG field, with Blizz's internal adjustments my health was about 52-53k.  I saw L84s with 84-90k health, and figured it wasn't too bad all things considering.  I knew I'd have to run through either Vashj'ir or Hyjal to get enough Cata gear to compensate for losing most of my old Wrath and BoA gear*, although I had enough Honor farmed to get some good L270 PvP gear.

Things just looked better than the L75-L79 range, and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Mists was in sight.

The first few battlegrounds I got into --Isle of Conquest, Eye of the Storm, and Warsong Gulch-- I was able to contribute to.  I wasn't a terror out there, as I wasn't high enough level or had enough gear, but I held my own and wasn't a drag on the teams.  Well, let's be realistic here:  Children's Week bringing in a lot of unskilled PvPers helped me considerably.

Then came last night.

I was in an IoC battleground, and we'd quickly stormed the Horde Keep.  I and two other people held back to defend the Keep while the rest went after Overlord Agmar.  A lone Warlock showed up and gave battle, which even though Locks are much improved over the Cata version**, a Hunter, Druid and Rogue (me) should have no trouble dispatching him.

He blew through us in 20 seconds.

"What the hell was that?" I asked as we were waiting by the Spirit Guide.

"Did you see him?" the Druid added as we ran back to the Keep.  "He had 180k health!"

"All I knew is that he one-shotted me and I had 66k!"

We made it back to the Keep and were joined by two more toons.  It didn't help, as it took the Lock a mere 25 seconds to dispatch us all.

"Skip D-ing the Horde Keep," a DK said.  "Just run in and kill the boss!"

"No kidding," I grumbled.  "The Lock is more powerful than the boss!"

Needless to say, the Lock all by himself managed to win IoC for the Horde.

I was still shaking my head over this when I got into an Arathi Basin run.  While the Horde didn't have a 180k health Lock roaming around, they had about half of their team over 100k.

"This is ridiculous," a DK said.  "I might be able to take on one of them, but not a whole side.  Just go ahead and let them 5 cap so we can get this over with."

"So Blizz didn't close that loophole in the gear that they started with Cata?"

"No, they didn't.  What makes it worse is that while they can't queue up for it, a toon can be invited into a group running a Mists dungeon so they can get Mists blue gear.  You've got guilds running their twinks through multiple runs just to get tricked out."

"And I thought L75-79 was bad.  At least I didn't get one-shotted there."

"Yeah, the gear inflation isn't linear between Wrath Cata and MoP."

Well, it looks like my prediction about the BG issues back in Cata has come to pass in Mists.  If Blizz isn't going to allow toons to migrate straight to Cata and Mists from L78 and L83 respectively, they ought to move the low end Cata and Mists gear to a requirement of L80 and L85.  While the gear discrepancy is bad enough between Wrath and Cata, the non-linear nature of gear inflation has made it progressively worse between Cata and Mists.  And while Blizz attempted to level things out a bit by raising the health level of the new L80s in battlegrounds, the L84s with access to blue Mists gear far outstrip any manual intervention Blizz accomplished.

I'm not going to hold my breath on any corrections any time soon, because this is the second expac that Blizz has let this go; obviously, they gain more by leaving things as they were than actually fixing this discrepancy.  But from where I sit, this is just as bad as how weak Warlocks were in Cata.  And we know how Blizz addressed that, don't we?





*I ended up with two Toxidunk Daggers due to the generosity of a fellow Rogue on the Ysera server, who saw I was at L78 and in AV at the time.  The Rogue didn't want any gold, he just wanted to give the daggers to someone who was going to use them in BGs.  Who said that Rogues were disreputable people, anyway? ;-)

**Apologies to Cynwise, but I felt like an old man griping that "I leveled a Lock via BGs when it was HARD, back in Cata, and all these young whippersnappers don't know what it's like to be Rogue chow!"

...And Next on the Runway....

"Oh, I love your outfit!"

This announcement was made by a Bounty Hunter in the Cademimu flashpoint, right as we were buffing up.

"Who?" the other Bounty Hunter asked.

"Both you and Sree.  I love how you both look!"

I blinked.  I'm no fashion maven like Rades or Kamalia, as my rules for toon appearance can be boiled down to three words:  "no clown gear".*  My Inquisitor looked like a proper Sith in her hood and chest gear.  A bit plain, perhaps, but since I was still gearing up I didn't have much more than the chest and leg orange gear at the time.  I deliberately turned off the helm view, because I'm not in the mood of staring at a Jason or Scream lookalike for hours at a time.

The second Bounty Hunter spun around, showing off her gear.  "Thanks a lot!" she said.

"Thanks!" I added.

I considered that a unique situation until the other day, when I was getting ready for Warsong Gulch.  While skimming the team lists, I heard a telltale whisper sound.

"Nice mogging job," someone had pinged me.

I blinked.  Again.  "It's not mogged," I replied.  "It's all current gear."

"Really?  I'll inspect you and take some notes."

While I'm sure that I've been inspected before, it felt vaguely voyeuristic that someone wanted to see what my gear was for fashion purposes.

Maybe I ought to avoid Goldshire for a while until this whole fashion thing blows over.





*For example, I still think that Q's T9 Liadrin gear looked the best on him, even if it looked like a generic knight in shining armor.  To me, it just looked functional and cool.

Belsavis is Like Monday -- It Just Seems to Go On and On.....

Having only taken one toon to (what was then) max level on The Old Republic, I've been pleasantly surprised at how other class stories have been playing out.

I've just finished Chapter 2 on my Commando, which took far longer than I expected.  Having only the Smuggler to go on, I expected Chapter 2 to last fairly short, with an interlude at an off planet location.  The Commando's Chapter 2 disabused me of that notion, by finishing up in between Hoth and Belsavis.

It also surprised me for another reason:  I got to see my entire team in action.

That was never really an option in the Smuggler class story, so seeing my entire team storm onto the ship during the Chapter 2 story was a pleasant surprise.  And the end of that assault led to another surprise, which made it a bit hard on my next assignment.*

Still, I've found the stories in TOR to be enjoyable enough that I've been taking my time with them, enjoying each step of the way.

And now I'm looking Belsavis in the face; the one planet that I felt was never going to end.

I can now identify with how Lewis and Clark must have felt when they reached a high point in the Rocky Mountains, expecting a quick jaunt to the sea, and discovered that a huge mountain range --the Cascades-- lay before them.  Every time I thought I was reaching the end of the Belsavis questline, lo and behold there was another area to clear out.  Yes, the story was interesting, it was just spread out way too much.

That said, if you're playing a male smuggler, the ending to the class questline was very amusing.  "I thought you hated each other," Corso said to me.  So did I, but what do I know?  Apparently not enough.

But that ending is far enough in the future that I'm starting to wonder whether it's not a bad idea to go work on that Inquisitor questline for a while instead....




*Sorry, I'm not going to give away any spoilers.  They aren't big --like end of the Knight's Chapter 1 big-- but it did have an impact on me.

Just Exercising Those Facepalm Muscles, That's All

I'm not the most socially savvy person in the world.

(In other news, the sun rose today.)

Being a bit older than your average MMO player, I occasionally make misinterpretations about what other players/bloggers are saying by reading things wrong.  For example, I had always read "omw" as "Oh my word" instead of "On my way".  I just chalked the prevalence of "omw" in various chat forms to politeness rather than anything else, until the other week when I mentioned to a fellow player about it while guarding the Farm.

"It means 'on my way'," he replied.  "What on earth did you think it was?"

I could almost see the implied "doofus" added on at the end.  "I thought it meant 'oh my word'," I said, about as meekly as you could type in a chat.

There was a long awkward silence that was only broken up by an incoming group from the Blacksmith.

***

Shintar over at Going Commando wrote a blog post about two new questlines in TOR, the Seeker Droids and Macrobinoculars quests/dailies.  While her first impression when she heard about the binoculars was of Luke Skywalker scanning Tatooine in the original Star Wars, I instead thought of what Marty McFly's dad used them for in Back to the Future:  being a Peeping Tom.*

Perhaps that's just a generational difference, but it could also be that part of my childhood was spent BSW:  Before Star Wars.  After I'd seen the original movie in the theater, it wasn't until several years later that I saw it again --on television-- so the iconic image of Luke was lost on me.

Now THIS is far less creepy...

...than this.  Safer, too.

***

I'm also not the smoothest commenter in the world.  I can't tell you the number of times that I'd written a comment on a blog post which sounded good but turned out to be absolute gibberish.  Or had grammatical errors.**  Or when I type in a comment and I realize later I'd said a bit too much, which kind of leaves everything sounding awkward.

Like the time I'd asked one of my kids' teachers how she ended up with a cell number from several states over when I knew she grew up somewhere else, and she began to explain about how complicated that was and it involved grad school and whatnot.  I opened my mouth and agreed, saying that it was the sort of story you needed to tell over coffee.  It was only hours later that I realized that it sounded like I was hitting on her, which was not what I'd intended.

***

Then again, a lot of my social cluelessness dates back to my youth, when I was a geek back when geeks weren't cool.***  In those days, geeks were into science, reading SF&F, playing on Atari/Intellivision/Commodore 64/TI-99 consoles/computers, and playing D&D.  If you've ever had your parents throw out your D&D materials because they considered them to be Satanic, you know what I'm talking about.  I mean, I used to twitch every time I was playing Tunnels of Doom on the TI and my parents would come in, because I expected them to realize I was playing a form of D&D on the computer and they would take the thing away.****

And here, what do I do for fun?  Play D&D and Savage Worlds with the kids, Talisman with my wife and friends, and MMORPGs on the computer.

I'm still amazed at it all.

When I read about boss fights, raids, gear optimization, and (even) dailies, a small part of the back of my head is going "Are you kidding me?  Don't break this down into minutae; this is awesome!  We're playing a game that would have gotten you slotted for deprogramming a quarter century ago!"

I see reports from PAX, BlizzCon, and ComicCon, and still pinch myself that there's not a book/game burning in sight.*****  The gamers and geeks have emerged from the basements and proclaim their geekdom in public.

And yet I go to work and circulate among other parents, pretending that other side of me doesn't exist.  At most I can occasionally chat about comic book movies, because their popularity extends beyond Geek circles.  When I go into the office, I try to make sure the background on my laptop is a plain, unassuming gray, not the WoW or TOR backgrounds I typically use.  When surrounded by suits, the last thing you want to do is rock the boat.

"Um, Yeah.  You're planning on filling out those
TPS reports after you finish that quest line, right?" 

I know, far too well, how negatively geeky activities are perceived in some quarters.  When someone shouted out "I love you, man!" to Ghostcrawler at BlizzCon, a part of me winced.  I remember middle school and high school, when you just kept your head down and tried not to stand out.  Even ol' Pat Robertson has recently resurfaced, talking about how there was a game called Dungeons and Dragons that led people astray.  (Newsflash to Pat, it's still around.)  If perception is indeed reality, to these people little has changed since the 80's, except that the geeks are now easier to spot in public.

In fact, if you try to get approved for telecommuting while it's known in the office that you're a gamer, you'll find it harder than you think.  After all, you do just play games all day, don't you?  Why should you get paid for that?

***

I suppose that all things considered, it could be worse.  I'd much rather be occasionally clueless than intentionally cruel. And while there are times it seems that there are far more of those out there in MMO space, it's still good to know that there are decent people out there too.  Even if they're a bit of a doofus, like me.




*Before you ask, no, I never did that.  I knew one kid who did and got in big trouble with his Dad for that, however.

**Which have an unfortunate habit of showing up in a comment on an author's blog, which makes you feel like you're back in grade school and you just got an F in sentence diagramming.

***Okay, they aren't cool now, either, but comparatively speaking today's nerds have it easy.  Not that you could convince my kids of that.

****They never did.  I chalked that one up to Pat Robertson not having the TI Home Computer on his list of Things Corrupting America's Youth.  But Rush and Triumph, two of my favorite bands, were; the cover of Hemispheres alone nearly cost me my cassette tape collection.

*****Unfortunately, the Westboro Baptist Church does attend.  They're better off being ignored, anyway.