There are a lot of things Blizzard does right with WoW. Even the most ardent WoW hater has to concede that in general Blizzard doesn't release a buggy product when a WoW patch/expac comes through.* WoW also gives enough people what they want that they still dominate the MMO market, and they shamelessly steal ideas from other games and give it their own unique twist.
But there is one aspect to WoW that Blizzard has done poorly in, and it concerns how the US and European servers are configured. Namely, that you'd never guess that the other one exists.
All of the other MMOs I've played in have at least given you the ability to create a toon on every server the game has, but WoW for some reason won't allow you to do that on European and U.S. servers. You get one or the other, and that's it. A long long time ago, I saw the announcement of cross-server grouping as a way to finally get a chance to play with some of my blogger friends over in Europe, but I was quickly disillusioned when I realized that the US and European servers still don't seem to know the other exists.
This kind of turns the wonderful love fest of the Looking for Group documentary on its head, since I can see that Europeans play WoW via the blogs, Tumblrs, podcasts, and fan made art/videos, but I can't play with them without purchasing the game again for the EU region.
I bring this up because other games, such as LOTRO and SWTOR will let you play on European servers. Age of Conan consolidated all of their servers this past year as well. GW2 is a bit closer to the WoW model in that you're locked into the server you start with --and creating a toon on a European server means your license gets transferred to the EU region-- but it still lets you select a European server from the start.
My kids have LOTRO toons across several servers, and they've often commented to me on people occasionally speaking in French on Gen Chat.** I recently rolled up a new Smugger on a European server in SWTOR, and I can attest how connected you feel seeing guild recruiting ads saying "we are an all Polish guild" or "we're an all Russian guild". Or that you'll see someone let loose some British slang in Gen Chat. You get that sense of togetherness, the feeling that people all over the world are hanging out in Coruscant with you right now, without having to leave the game at all.
And really, the lag for the European SWTOR servers is only slightly worse than the lag for the West Coast US server that I typically play on.
I understand that there are license issues at play here, but it still seems odd that this restriction is still in place a decade later, particularly when the world has shrunk with the advent of new social media and the explosion of smart phones and tablets. It just seems a relic of the past, when the most exotic location a fellow player might be from is Buffalo.
*Design flaws, yes, but bugs are minor compared to most other AAA software releases. Having spent time in software QA back in the 90s, I've occasionally wondered just how much pull the software QA team at Blizzard has. Typically software QA is a small speed bump to the rest of the release train, and even if the QA people are screaming that something isn't ready for release the software will ship regardless.
**Which they find incredibly cool that they're playing a game at the same time someone in France is.
I'd been watching the news about the release of Warlords*, and it seems to be a bit more difficult than the usual launch troubles. There's the initial chokepoint of having everyone click on a single NPC to access the Warlords content, but between that and the rush of people to get in there was nothing unusual. But then you throw in a strong DDoS attack, and you've got a real mess.
I saw some of the net traffic charts and it seems they're originating from China, which kind of puts the kibosh on any conspiracy theories concerning GamerGate, but that also makes me wonder whether the DDoS attacks that happened shortly before I unsubbed were actually a test run before the main event.
Personally, I don't think much of a Chinese hacker DDoS attempt against a game launch, because there's nothing critical there to be concerned about. It's akin to a bunch of pigeons crapping on chess tables out in the park: you shoo them away, you clean up the mess, and you can go play. There's no real reason for it other than to simply be an asshat, in spite of what Lizard Squad says about "improving server farms" in their DDoS attack on Sony's Playstation Network and phoning in bomb threats on a Sony exec's plane.
The servers will go back up and people will start playing again, so unless we see a repeat in the next week or so, the DDoS didn't really have any lasting damage.
Go play, people.
*I still think of the old Atari game Warlords when I type that, and WoD means "World of Darkness" from White Wolf Publishing for me.
In my neverending quest to be 1-2 years away from being trendy, I finally broke down and bought Guild Wars 2.
(What, you thought I was going to talk about Dragon Age: Origins? Okay, I could, since I'm finally playing a Bioware Fantasy RPG for the first time since Baldur's Gate II, but that's beside the point.)
It had been over a year since I last played around with the game on a free weekend, but I'd been thinking pretty hard about what should replace WoW* as my main fantasy MMO. Age of Conan is too grindy for me to use it as my main (although it is great in spurts of a week or two at a time), and while I like what Neverwinter is doing I'm constantly screwing up with my keyboard commands when I play the game.**
I can't justify another subscription for the time being, so that eliminates The Elder Scrolls Online. I've already outlined my opinions of Aion in two previous posts, and I've pretty much left LOTRO to the kids***, so what remained was ArenaNet's pride and joy.
Shouldn't he be in a Dr. Pepper Ten commercial?
I still have issues with all of the beautiful people around, but I've come around to liking the quest system there. While the "heart" system for quests is a bit head scratching at times, particularly when you're not expecting to read about "hearts" in an MMO (other than stabbing an enemy in the heart), but it does do a good job of moving you throughout a region without tying you down to a specific story.
The story questlines are reminiscent of Age of Conan, where they're triggered once you get to a certain level. The difference is that Age of Conan's entire starting zone (Tortage) is filled with both regular quests and your personal storyline's quests, whereas GW2 has you wait until the correct level (L10, I believe) until you can start up that storyline.
Also, much like Age of Conan, GW2 is very unforgiving when you attack an enemy a couple of levels higher than you. If you get three regular enemy on you and they're about 1-2 levels higher, you'd better hope that there's another player nearby to assist.
And that's the thing that surprises me the most about GW2, even this long after it dropped: people still come out of the woodwork for the (plentiful) group events. There's no need to call out for LFG; people magically appear and assist.
If this sort of behavior had been around in Wrath, Blizzard probably wouldn't have done away with almost all group quests in Cataclysm.
***
SWTOR has spoiled me on questline interaction and cutscenes. GW2 (and Neverwinter) don't have the lip movements in alignment with the spoken words, and that is more annoying than I expected. But one thing that GW2 is ahead of the curve on is "scout" method of pushing a player deeper into a zone. It's very clever, and while I expected it to be very "gamey", it turns out that I really do like the methodology.
"So you've been out here for days, and you still look immaculate?" "Well, you're not exactly caked in mud either." "Good point. Must be my magnetic personality."
It may be a simple conceit, but I do like the Renaissance/Age of Reason look to the gear. So many RPGs and MMOs are firmly based in the Dark Ages or High Middle Ages, and when something comes along that bucks the trend, it feels like a breath of fresh air.
***
Am I going to keep playing GW2?
Yes. I've already played GW2 more than I have Skyrim, so I don't see why not. While it might not completely take the place of WoW in my current game listings, it more than stands on its own.
*I keep getting bombarded with e-mails from Blizzard to Azshandra, saying she has a free week in Azeroth and that she should come and check out the game again. The similarities to a timeshare sales pitch aside, It's starting to make me wonder if my Rogue has indeed gone Rogue on me. I might want to scan my bank statements a bit more carefully in case she's been partying with my gold or something.
**I feel like a stereotypical keyboard turner when I play Neverwinter, and I hate that. In spite of those limitations, I do have a Cleric up to L22 or so, and I intend to keep playing it on a low key basis until I get at least one toon to max level. Since I tend to play MMOs solo, however, I don't know how much group content I'll be doing on Neverwinter, as I dislike not being able to pull my weight. And with a Cleric, you can bet that any drop off in healing would be noticed by everyone.
***That's not to say that LOTRO is for kids, but more that my kids play LOTRO enough that I've taken to thinking it as "their game". Plus, the color scheme for the UI still drives me nuts; I must be borderline colorblind or something.
As more crap seems to be flung over the Zoe Quinn Incident, it's easy to look at all this and think that the entire gaming hobby has turned into this putrid ooze of hatred and filth.
At times like this, I think of my kids and am thankful that I banned them from social media. I did it ostensibly because I wanted them to be mature enough to navigate the social morass of Facebook and Twitter, but I've since realized that it's social media that needs to grow up instead.
I suppose it's not a big surprise that I have found myself wondering what on earth the Internet is good for if it is filled with bile.
Do you really have to ask what movie this is from?
It's not an idle speculation, either. I've been on the internet in some form or another since the 80's, and I remember the heyday of Usenet. I remember the free flow of ideas, the fights and holy wars, and I remember the signal to noise ratio slowly degrading over time until people decided enough was enough and abandoned Usenet in favor of "walled garden" forums.
I wonder if we reached a similar breaking point in gaming.
The forces at work in Gamergate have been lurking below the surface, but Gamergate has exposed the slimy underbelly of the gaming world for everyone to see. When Gamergate makes the front page of the New York Times, you can no longer say that the harassment inflicted on Anita, Zoe, and others is not a big deal. The harsh light of national media exposure is now on the controversy.
And the Gamergaters are about to find they are not seen in a flattering light.
As I've said time and again, perception is everything. You can have the best argument in the world and have truth and justice on your side, but if you act like an ass nobody will believe you. Gamergaters don't exactly have truth and justice on their side, just coordination and creative editing tools*. In fact, a very very good case could be made that if it weren't for all of the bile directed their way, Anita Sarkeesian and her fellow critics would never have gotten the exposure they have.
I doubt that Anita is going to grace them with a thank you, however.
What will happen now?
Well, the dynamics that led to Gamergate --the increased participation of women in gaming and the increasing dissatisfaction on how women are portrayed in games-- aren't going to change. If anything, women will continue to participate in gaming in ever growing numbers. They're going to see the advertising, the YouTube videos, and the store displays and want to try things out too. They're going to grow up in families playing games, and they're not just going to stop because they hit adulthood.
And they're going to want games with protagonists they can identify with.
This is not a hard thing to understand.
Hell, this is not that hard a thing to program, either.
Bioware has made a living creating both male and female toons for its games. You don't see the female Trooper in SWTOR running around with a bare midriff because that'd be instant death in a firefight. Perfect World has created armor for female toons in Neverwinter that is far more realistic than what I've seen for the average WoW toon.
Wizards of the Coast, in the release of D&D Fifth Edition Player's Handbook, explicitly states that a player can play any type of character they want to.** Paizo has a long reputation for presenting women and minorities in its Pathfinder gaming materials, such as the number of women and minorities among their iconic representations of their classes.
But why don't we see more examples like this? Are we, as gamers, too focused on the next shiny to demand more? Are we going to be focused on raiding and getting to max level and all of the background art to notice that something is missing?
Or are we just content to for things to be as they are, saying that they're no longer quite as bad as Leisure Suit Larry and Spellcasting 101:
One of the less risque pics from Spellcasting 101,
which came out when I was in college.
(Yes, I'm that old.) From abandonia.
Well, um...
From WoWWiki.
*That creative editing, ironically enough, is what some of them complain about Anita Sarkeesian doing with her series.
**"You can play a male or female character without gaining any special benefits or hindrances. Think about how your character does or does not conform to the broader culture's expectations of sex, gender, and sexual behavior. For example, a male drow cleric defies the traditional gender divisions of drow society, which could be a reason for your character to leave that society and come to the surface. You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, for example, and some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon's image. You could also play a female character who presents herself as a man, a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male. Likewise, your character's sexual orientation is for you to decide." --From D&D 5e Player's Handbook, Page 121.
...there's a new expac announced for SWTOR: Shadow of Revan.
Yeah, that kind of gives away certain elements of the mid level flashpoints, but I'm not concerned. Looks interesting indeed, that the Revanites will have a part to play.
Well, Titan was none of the above. According to an article on Kotaku, Titan was supposed to be a hybrid Sci-Fi shooter with a heavy dose of MMO elements. More than anything else, it was supposed to be similar to the recently released game Destiny*, but with much heavier MMO interplay.
Given that this would have been a completely new property for Blizz, it would have been that fourth leg to their table that currently has Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft holding the company together. It does sound very interesting in concept --particularly the ambitious nature of the economic game-- but I know I could never play Titan since it's a shooter.**
In the end, I suppose that Destiny was the final nail in Titan's coffin, since you're getting about 75% of Titan in Destiny's released form, and why would you want to compete with a game you're releasing?
One aspect to Titan that might have been interesting would be how it would have translated into PvP. With MOBAs all the rage these days, could Blizz have turned a portion of Titan's development into a PvP game that would compete with already released MOBAs? I suspect PvP wasn't a focus of Titan's development process, and that might have hampered Titan on release as well.
Regardless, Titan is now dead, deader than Jacob Marley, but you never know when elements of it will appear in other, already released games.
*By Bungie, which is released through Activision/Blizzard.
**Shooters give me headaches. Seriously. I have to take dramamine before I can even attempt to play a shooter.
EtA: Cleared up a grammar error in the first paragraph.
What I got from the Polygon article (go, read the link, I'll wait) was that Blizz couldn't recapture that elusive "it" that they had with WoW, and decided to kill off Titan before it became an albatross and dragged down their reputation. Does that mean that even Blizzard can't put out a new MMO in this climate that will potentially topple WoW? Probably, but that's not their stated goal. Does it mean that it can't put out a new MMO that will at least be successful and not hemorrhage subscribers after a few months? I think that more likely.
If that doesn't give the MMO market pause, then I don't know what will. Even Blizzard is admitting defeat before Titan was even released.
The article also tells me that WoW is going to be the last word in the MMO genre from Blizzard. No Starcraft MMO, no WoW 2, nothing. What you see in WoW is what you'll get; some incremental updates, some new expacs, some other stuff from other MMOs (housing) added on, but at its heart WoW is going to be the MMO you see today.
I also suspect that the rise of League of Legends and other MOBA games has had an impact here as well. Video game professional leagues have suddenly become big business, and money is flowing in that direction. Releasing an MMO when the money is going elsewhere isn't smart business. Of course, you can lose your way merely chasing the money; a AAA video game is often years in development, and where the money is at when you start development is not where it's at when you're finished.*
Finally, expect more small tie-in titles in the future, such as Hearthstone, but leveraging their existing Blizzard properties. It is entirely possible that Blizz isn't going to create anything new, such as completely original games with new worlds and/or properties, for a long time to come. Creating a new, original property takes some risk, and Blizzard seems to be electing to go the safe route and reuse the properties instead.
To be honest, Blizzard has been living on its existing properties (Warcraft/Diablo/Starcraft) for a while now, and Titan was going to be a fourth leg of a table. I guess that table will have to get by with three legs now.
*See: novels and movies. The time it takes for a novel to be written and then published is a couple of years --and movies even longer-- and tastes can change at the drop of a hat.
As you may have heard, Microsoft is buying the developer house Mojang, which owns Minecraft. Unless you're more plugged into gaming circles, you'd also know that the creator of Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, left Mojang the same day, citing how he'd like his life back.
Between this and other recent gaming related items, the term "we eat our own" comes to mind.
Sir Lancelot: [Sir Galahad the Chaste is being seduced by an entire castle full of young women] We were in the nick of time. You were in great peril. Sir Galahad: I don't think I was. Sir Lancelot: Yes, you were. You were in terrible peril. Sir Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and face the peril. Sir Lancelot: No, it's too perilous. Sir Galahad: Look, it's my duty as a knight to sample as much peril as I can. Sir Lancelot: No, we've got to find the Holy Grail. Come on. Sir Galahad: Oh, let me have just a little bit of peril? Sir Lancelot: No. It's unhealthy. Sir Galahad: I bet you're gay. Sir Lancelot: Am not. --From Monty Python and the Holy Grail*
I don't smoke.
I used to occasionally light up a cigar (on the average of once or twice a year), but I gave that up years ago.
The tipping point for me was noticing a change in how I really REALLY wanted to smoke another one within a day of the last one. If you ever smoked a cigar, that last half of the cigar has that harsh blech taste that typically acts as a damper on lighting up another one, and when I caught myself holding a pen like it was a stogie, puffing away, I realized I was very close to a tipping point.
It's been over a decade since I experienced that sort of craving. Sure, there's that feeling of euphoria when you walk into the dealer hall at GenCon and see all of the game vendors waiting to take your money, but that wears off fairly quickly when you immerse yourself in the crowd.**
This past month, however, I've been dealing with WoW withdrawal, which until I actually unsubbed I would have laughed off.
I've been at work, sitting through meetings, when I've had the urge to go run Alterac Valley. And when I mean urge, it's not a "oh yeah, it'd be cool to do XXX," but more like "I NEED TO DO THIS NAOW!!!!"
I've been cooking and cleaning around the house when I really really wanted to stop and go sneak into Eversong Forest on my NE Rogue and watch the new toons out and about.
I've been tired and ready for bed and I've thought "Hey, what about changing my rotation a bit," and gone halfway down the stairs before I realized what I was thinking.
I've found my fingers twitching, mimicking my rotation, at odd moments of the day.
I've had a conversation with myself, eerily mimicking the Monty Python moment above:
"You know, it's not a big deal. You can resub." "No, I've got good reasons for not doing it. I like having less drama in my life." "Yeah, but I do miss playing Alterac Valley." "There are other MMOs that have PvP, so cut it out." "But it took you how long to get good at WoW's BGs? You'd have to start over with more drama. Why not stick with what you know?" "Did you not get the 'less drama' part? I was sniping at the kids that past few months before I quit." "That's on you, not the game. Come on, man up and resub." "No, and that's final."
***
If you'd have told me that I'd have experienced this when I unsubbed, I'd have thought you were crazy. I take WoW breaks of a week or three all the time, so I figured this would be easy once I actually pulled the trigger. But the thing is, that's a false analogy; even if I took a break from the game, the game was still there, ready for me to play. Now, having actually cut the cord, I don't have that security blanket.
I'm hopeful that this, like the cigar thing, will fade with time. There's plenty of other games out there, and I'm sure that I'll find them interesting once I, you know, actually start playing them.
*Courtesy of IMDB.com. I have it in a book somewhere in the basement, but I didn't want to spend over 1/2 hour looking for it.
**And you also look at the prices and realize there's no way you can afford to buy ALL THE GAMES.
In the span of 15 minutes this evening, I saw toons named "chuckroast" and "marsh'mallow" on Tython.
So, if you're wondering what to name that new Jedi Knight or Bounty Hunter, don't take a whiff of the smell from the kitchen and decide that the name "beef'stew" is appropriate.
Just in case you missed the latest brouhaha in the gaming world, Anita Sarkeesian released a new entry in her Tropes v Women series, which was accompanied by what is becoming the all too familiar scene of bile thrown in her direction. Including the rape and death threats that some trolls seem to think are warranted.
Independent game developer Andreas Zecher has posted an open letter calling for this sort of disgusting behavior to stop, and quite a few development houses --including Bioware, Ubisoft, and XBox-- have signed on.
Deftig's wife passed this Kickstarter along to me, and I figured I'd share it. I recognized quite a few of the games that were shown in the Kickstarter, and I'd be interested in hearing their stories.
EtA: Changed the title to make it actually reference the Kickstarter, like I'd originally intended, before I pressed the Publish button by mistake.
On a day with leaden skies and the omnipresent threat of rain, we piled into the van* and drove up to Indianapolis for Gen Con 2014.
Having made the trek for several years now, I made sure we were prepped the night before. Yeah, even though it was a day trip, I know the routine fairly well: someone will want a certain shirt to wear, and someone else will be trying to find their misplaced list of vendor spaces to check out.
And I will want a good night's sleep, so that I don't konk out on the way back home. Which isn't a good thing if you're the driver.
We met up with my brother-in-law**, got our badges, and headed inside to the big hall.
***
Unlike prior years, there wasn't anything in particular that I wanted to see. Unfortunately, I didn't take very many pics either, although there were a lot of cosplayers in attendance. Among the better cosplay outfits were a couple in Black Cat and Spider-man outfits, a woman dressed up as the Ranger on the front of last year's program book, a pack of Timelords (primarily Tom Baker and Matt Smith), and a family dressed as (Adam West era) Batman, Supergirl, and a little Supergirl. Sure, there were the pro cosplayers, such as the Rebels and Imperials near the Fantasy Flight Games booth, the Gandalf roaming around in the outer hallways, and the Wolverine cosplayer who picked a fight with Darth Vader***, but for every Soda Pop Minis woman who did an exacting job on her outfit there were about a dozen or so kids dressed up as superheroes and Star Wars characters.
The biggest cosplay laugh I had went to the guy who ran around in a scruffy t-shirt and jeans, holding out a cardboard sign "Will GM for Beer". My wife and I applauded that one, and he took a bow.
The Mayfair Games' sponsored Training Grounds, where kids could play board games and put crafts together, was absolutely packed. Yes, this was Family Fun Day, but seeing a couple of hundred families happily playing whatever game was available was an awesome sight.
I tried to not take any pics of the kids, but instead
I focused on the sign itself. However, imagine about
200 kids and parents between me and that sign...
As is traditional, in the exhibit hall there were a lot of demo areas for you to try a game out for a few rounds to see if it was something you liked. I really really wanted to check out some of the new offerings from Fantasy Flight Games, such as Star Wars Armada and Star Wars Imperial Assault, but those tables were almost impossible to get to. My wife and I checked out a lot of the family oriented booths for deceptively simple games that play quick, and we found a few at the Maranda Games booth. One of the games I particularly liked was called Eternas, which is a twist on the old Connect Four game.
Eternas, from marandaenterprises.com.
Instead of a grid to work with, you're presented with pegs in a circle, and each player has a limited number of wooden beads to use. The pegs only allow up to four beads at a time, and there are no edges, but for the most part it plays like Connect Four. However, you can't play to a tie: once you run out of beads, on your next turn you must select a bead of your color from the top of a row and move it to another location. It's a subtle change, and one that makes the game a lot more cutthroat.
There were other games that I found interesting, such as Freedom, which is a cooperative game depicting the Underground Railroad. It had won numerous awards this year from The Dice Tower, yet I somehow missed any discussion of it. And if you thought that the Freedom is some sort of lighthearted board game, the cards and events will disabuse you of that notion.
Freedom: The Underground Railroad, by Academy Games.
***
Geek Chic always manages to make me cry a little whenever I stop by their booth.
This is from 2012's Gen Con, but it's still accurate.
That... is what they call The Sultan. Do you see those wooden edges? They fold down. Like this:
From geekchichq.com
The Sultan starts at $12,950 (US), and can go up to $16k (US).
This is one of those "If I win the lottery" items.
***
The main exhibit hall added an extra section this year, which allowed the overall exhibit space to grow by about 20-25%. And it was still packed.
That back section near the addition, which was filled with Kickstarter backed demos and products, was extremely hard to get through. However, whomever decided that the main card vendors should be there, next to the card playing area, should get a raise. I saw people go into the playing area, come out a while later, and go straight to the card vendors.
There are some very interesting games in the Kickstarter area that made it worthwhile to peruse, such as Clever.
***
Among the more traditional gaming companies, Paizo (the makers of Pathfinder) and Fantasy Flight (the makers of a ton of different board/card/RPGs) were running out of stock. Fantasy Flight had a sign at the entrance to their area so you could find out what was already sold out before you went in their space. Both of these companies as well as Mayfair (the creators of Settlers of Catan, among other games) had lines so long they snaked around their entire areas.
A small portion of the Paizo booth. And my finger.
Another view of the Paizo booth. Five minutes after taking
this picture, the line for checkout (on the right) snaked
around the poster of Seoni and doubled back toward me.
Fantasy Flight Games' Report from Day 1 of Gen Con 2014
There were plenty of demo tables available for gaming companies such as Days of Wonder (makers of the Ticket to Ride family of games), Z-man (makers of Pandemic), and Queen games (which tend to be more hard core Eurogames, such as Alhambra and Aqua Romana).
RPG companies not named Paizo were well represented too.
While Fantasy Flight is more well known for their boardgames, they were well represented in the RPG area with the release of the beta of the third volume of their Star Wars RPG, Force and Destiny.**** This third volume covers the Jedi and the Sith in an environment around the events of the Original Trilogy, so any force users out there will be (for the most part) on the run from the Empire. This beta release was so popular that FFG sold out of it by Sunday, and players were queueing up to try out the game at their demo tables.
Pinnacle Entertainment had their Savage Worlds products out in abundance, as did Catalyst with their Shadowrun RPG, and the Shadows of Esteren team with their RPG. There were even some really old time RPGs, such as Flying Buffalo's Tunnels and Trolls and The Design Mechanism's version of Runequest.
But what about Wizards of the Coast and the 5th Edition of D&D?
"Gonna need a bigger boat," my ass.
From dnd.wizards.com
WotC had an entirely separate hall to themselves this year, and it was packed with gamers trying out the new 5e. You could purchase the game there as well, but given the discounts via Amazon, there weren't as many people queueing up to purchase the new Player's Handbook right then and there. However, there was a huge release party on Friday night outside of the convention center.
***
There seemed to be an increase in the LARP vendors this year, as opposed to other years. I'm sure someone probably got all huffy about the corsets for sale being too stereotypically feminine, but given the amount of steampunk cosplayers wearing them, the vendors were just giving the people what they wanted.
***
According to the press release after the con finished, there were 56k+ attendees this year, and Gen Con has doubled in size since 2009. Things seem to be building up toward the 50th Anniversary in 2017, but now the question becomes whether Gen Con can maintain its momentum while remaining a fun con to attend. I think they can, and seeing the crowds of families and kids enjoying themselves on Sunday gives me hope for the future.
If you're looking for more coverage of Gen Con, you can find plenty of pics at Zachary Houghton's RPG blog:
In addition to the first YouTube video listed above, Fantasy Flight Games have a production of each day at Gen Con. No, you won't find us in the video this year (unlike in some prior years), but they still capture a bit of the zaniness at Gen Con:
**Who also runs the actual play podcast Roo Sack Gamers (look to the right for the link). What is an actual play podcast? It's a podcast where a gaming group records their gaming sessions for post later. The Roo Sack Gamers --so named after the roo sack dice bag (don't ask)-- run RPGs that are on the more narrative end of the RPG spectrum, such as Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, etc, that could use a little attention. Why listen to an actual play podcast? Well, if you want to run or participate in an RPG but you're not quite sure how the game will play out, you can listen to an actual play podcast and get a feel for things.
***All in jest, and it would have made for an excellent pic but I came out of the exhibit hall just in time to see them leaving.
****From what I've been told off the record, there's a LucasFilm requirement for any release --beta or not-- to be done via print. I'm not entirely confident about whether this is truly the case, as I'd prefer more evidence, but the reality is that FFG had come out with a print version only for every beta release.
*****And yes, before you ask, the kids that were interviewed at the end of the podcast are the mini-Reds.
EtA: Forgot the Paizo pics.
EtA: The Roo Sack Gamers had to re-upload the podcast, so I had to fix my link.
I would like that, but within the past hour it was announced that Lauren Bacall has passed away today as well. If Blizzard does immortalize Robin Williams at the World's End Tavern, I would also like them to have Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart at a table nearby, watching the show.
EtA: Yes, I know that my title is a) a misattributed quote, and b) from Ilsa Lund in Casblanca, played by Ingrid Bergman. However, it didn't feel right referencing a bar such as World's End Tavern without using that quote. I suppose I could have used "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?", but that scene isn't from a bar.
Robin passed away today, the victim of an apparent suicide. While he was most well known for his comedy and acting, he was also an avid gamer. He played Warcraft 3, D&D, sand table tin soldiers, and a variety of video games.
He battled his demons, depression and drug addiction, until the very end.
In honor of the release of the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, I figured I'd post an oldie but goodie from the Dead Alewives, their classic Dungeons and Dragons sketch.*
And, well, whaddya know. Gen Con is next week. I'm looking forward to checking out the games, watching the crowd, and seeing the previews with the family. Among what I'm hoping to see are a preview of Fantasy Flight Games' new Star Wars miniatures game, Armada. I've always wanted to yell "IT'S A TRAP!" during a game, and now it looks like I'll get the chance.
*I have to confess when I first heard it, I cringed because I lived through the Satanic Panic back in the 80s, but then the transition to the gaming happened, and I lost it. If you replace Mountain Dew with Milwaukee's Best Light, then you have my gaming group from back in college...
I'd been taking a break from gaming for several days, figuring that the time away from the computer would do me some good. No big surprise, really, since every time I go through my blogroll I'm reminded that I kind of need to come up with a new theme for the title graphic among other things.
But a week away is long enough, and I logged into SWTOR for the first time in a while.
I'd been trying to keep from leveling too far with some of my toons that are at the end of Chapter One so I could play with my kids, so I figured that I should either try something new or work on the Chiss Bounty Hunter I've got.* The Bounty Hunter isn't a bad option at all, and I do like where the story has been going in Chapter 2 (I'm up to Hoth now), but there was one glaring class omission from my list that I decided I should rectify:
The Imperial Agent.
My son had started an Agent but gave it up because the Empire asked him to do things he felt uncomfortable doing. I can respect that, but after having played a few Imperial toons --and one to max level-- I figured I could handle the Agent's story.
I spent more time than I usually do creating a character, mainly because I was trying to get a look that would allow the toon to seamlessly integrate into various Hutt and Republic areas. I also figured that an Empire that emphasized pureblood Sith and Human races over others would likely send a human to perform their espionage activities. Finally, I decided on a female toon, because I had 4 male and 3 female toons on this server, so things ought to balance out.
In the end, I realized afterward that I created a Black Widow lookalike**, but with a bit more 80s style hair.
The first several quests were designed to ingratiate me to the local Hutt in control of this portion of Hutta, but were nothing special. I could see certain conflicts lining up, and I had a basic feel of the progression this story would take. Still, I had this feeling in the back of my head that since this was Bioware, things were about to turn sour fairly soon.
And I was not disappointed.
I reached that part of the questline where a Sith intervention (naturally) led to... Complications. I was then asked to turn around and kill the person I'd spent some time aligning myself with.
While it was not unexpected --the one thing I've learned on the Imp side is that the Sith can wreck just about anything-- I still blurted out "You have got to be fucking kidding me."
I then realized what it was that caused my son to quit his Agent.
And, to be honest, I've not touched my own Agent since receiving that quest.
Maybe curiosity will eventually get the best of me and I'll go to complete the quest, but I simply can't go and kill somebody like that. It's not like anybody in the Hutt's palace is free from some sort of blood on their hands, but killing a person not because of something they did but because of something the Sith did to their family and you don't want them to find out, that's a different matter entirely.
I guess that means I'm too much of a good guy to play an Agent. So much for that edgy bad-boy image I've been cultivating.
*Apparently he has a "melty look", according to Mako.
I thought it was going to end today, but apparently it ended yesterday. So much for those last few items I threw on the auction house.*
I also had hoped to drop in on Ancient, to get a snapshot of Cat and I hanging out in DB North in Alterac Valley, but that wasn't to be.**
The night before, I came across the same Night Elf warrior from Moonrunner in multiple AV runs, and since the two of us were on the backcap team, we got to chatting. I'm now kicking myself that I didn't mention that I knew some people from Moonrunner, in Business Time. Another moment of pure serendipity lost.
However, I did manage to cross a couple of items off of my list, things I wanted to solo before I no longer had the chance to. Like all of the Vanilla and BC raid instances. Or how far could I get in a Mists 5-man instance solo as a rogue? (Answer, not very.)
I don't miss the Trade Chat, however. In the couple of weeks since Durotan-US merged with Ysera-US, the Trade Chat has exploded with both factions being complete and total asses to each other. It hadn't reached Area-52 levels yet, but it was certainly trending in that direction.
If there was any indicator that the (don't call them) server merges were needed to keep major gathering places relevant, the merge between Durotan and Ysera were Exhibit A. I would have counted on two hands the number of people in Ysera at Shrine of Seven Stars on most days, and after the merger the place looks filled and active again.
Anyway, the stress and frustration is now behind me. New challenges are ahead.
*Which makes me wonder, if my account is suspended, do any auctions that are still open disappear too? And does the mail from any (un)successful auction disappear after 30 days as well?
**We could have hid throughout the entire battleground and nobody would have noticed, Ancient. The Alliance steamrolls that often enough that you could go AFK.
The MMO music podcast Battle Bards had two listener request shows recently. When they put out a call for requests, I forwarded along my pick to Battle Bard Syl of MMO Gypsy:
The Theme for Rohan, composed by Chance Thomas*, and featuring Taylor Davis on violin, encapsulates what I like the most about the Riders of Rohan soundtrack for LOTRO. It's very straightforward, yet the playing is very emotional. The Celtic overtones, with the bodhran and tin whistle, add to the emotional impact of the music.
In addition to the pick, I'd also griped to Syl about my inability to find any MMO sheet music out there other than WoW's.** Syl took my commentary and added it to the feedback section of the second podcast. Battle Bard Syp, also of Bio Break, suggested a couple of things, but the one which was a classic 'Doh! moment was to simply contact the composer(s) and ask if sheet music was available.
Of course, I'd been operating under the assumption that the game companies owned the soundtrack (and the sheet music), but hey, it was worth a shot.
I contacted Chance Thomas, composer of LOTRO's more recent soundtracks, and asked him if sheet music was available for purchase for any of the pieces. He wrote back to let me know that while most of the music was owned by Warner Brothers, he was able to give me the solo violin part for Theme for Rohan.
The mini-Reds were excited.
My oldest informed me that a few notes in the piece go too low for her oboe to reach, but I don't think that'd deter her from making an attempt at it.
**I've since discovered an arrangement of some Age of Conan pieces in a suite for wind ensemble, but the cost is over $395 EUR, which is a wee bit out of my price range.
Okay, in case you've not seen this before, this is the Ohio State University Marching Band playing a medley of classic video game tunes at the Nebraska / Ohio State football game on October 6, 2012. It was a bit of a FB sensation when it and other videos found their way to YouTube.*
Okay, that was cool. But I'll wager you weren't expecting this:
Yes, that is a high school marching band playing three World of Warcraft pieces for a band competition in 2012.
Yes, you can actually find WoW sheet music for a marching band.
***
Which brings me to a gripe of mine. Why is it so hard to find sheet music for MMO soundtracks not called World of Warcraft?
Sure, if you're good enough you could transcribe --my kids do that enough as it is-- but it would be nice if there were a way to get (non-WoW) MMO soundtrack sheet music. It was easy enough to find sheet music for WoW --we have it somewhere buried under other sheet music in the house right now-- but hours of searching for, say, LOTRO or SWTOR sheet music have yielded nothing.
Those two examples are hampered quite a bit by being part of popular movie franchises, but still I've not much luck at all with finding sheet music for any MMO outside of WoW.
Which is kind of sad, given that video game music has a built in audience, and would be ideal for encouraging kids to play an instrument. You can find plenty of Mario and Zelda and other console games' sheet music, but nothing for MMOs.
*I know there's several other videos out there of other college and high school marching bands with a video game medley, but my oldest was seriously impressed by the footwork involved in the OSU production. (Having a marching band flutist in your house helps with video selection.) And no, we do NOT cheer for OSU. I prefer the University of Dayton, thank you very much.
Max: [Pig Killer's leg been impaled to the door with a spear] [Max grabbing the door]
Max: Okay, we're going to count to three. One... [Max rips open the door, freeing Pig Killer's impaled leg]
Pigkiller: [whimpering, in pain] What happened to two...?
--From Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
I'd been on the fence for quite a while, and I very nearly pulled the trigger when Rob's commentary regarding adding women to the development staff exploded onto the scene. Still, I found that WoW's hooks were still very deep inside my psyche and weren't going to be pulled out so easily.
So what did it for me? I grew sick of growing lack of attention to ridding the game of asshats and racists and bots.
You could always find asshats in WoW. For pete's sake, all you have to do is watch trade chat to discover that. Area-52 (US)'s Horde trade chat was so full of racists and sexist bile that that was the explicit reason behind my telling my kids that they were not allowed to play WoW. Ysera (US)'s Alliance trade chat is better, but not exactly a model of decorum. By comparison, SWTOR's and AoC's gen chat --particularly so outside of the fleets-- is much cleaner.*
But what I've found is that in the past year, the sheer volume of asshattery has gone up in WoW space.
I used to occasionally see people with guild names** or toon names referencing offensive material, but now it seems that it's okay to have all sorts of offensive toon names out there. I've caught myself reporting close to a third of the toon names in an average Arathi Basin game for obviously racist references, and I've been musing as to the cause with a guildie of mine.
"Maybe they're just not interested in policing people anymore," he suggested.
"I'm wondering if they don't have the staff," I replied. "If you're laying off personnel, low end and easily replaced people are the first to go."
"The L90 boost may have something to do with it too."
I thought about that a moment. "You know, you're right. Starting out at a low level means that a toon name will be seen by a lot of people who will have a chance to alert admins to offensive material. Going straight to L90 and jumping into BGs means they bypass all that filtering."
***
The incessant botting in battlegrounds hasn't exactly gone away either.
I've complained about it before, but the bots aren't going away. In fact, they seem to be getting worse as the sub numbers have gone down. That could be simple arithmetic --the number of bot accounts remains the same, but due to the decline in subs they comprise a larger percentage of players than before-- but I also think that admins are overworked and too few to maintain a reliable presence in BGs.
And the fact that every time someone has an issue with another person's play the response is to flag the toon as a bot means that admins have to verify all of those "false positives" as well as the legit botters.***
***
The result is a game that right now isn't a lot of fun to play at the moment.
But what I found unsettling is that while I've felt that way for months, I've continued to subscribe, login, and play anyway.
Last week, after an Arathi Basin game where one player had a boatload of great gear but also had rez sickness****, I finally said out loud "What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I playing something that gets me so frustrated about things that I've no control over?"
So I decided to finally pull those hooks out and end my recurring subscription.
***
Before anyone asks, no, this isn't the end of PC.
After all, I do still play a lot of other MMOs, and there are MMOs that I'd like to try out again. I have a Fantasy gap in my MMO stable, and while Age of Conan is interesting enough for me to play in bursts, I'd like another game to hang my hat on. I'd like to try Neverwinter seriously once more, as well as GW2.
And I'm not so foolish as to think that WoW might not lure me back in again, either, because there are way too many cool people I know who still play the game.
But the time has come for a change, and playing WoW for almost five years has been a long time for me. My oldest has gone from elementary school through middle school and is entering her second year of high school, and our youngest will be entering middle school this fall. My oldest will be driving before Christmas. My son set himself a goal to make it to the national finals of the National Geographic Bee (he made it to the state finals this year), and he's got one more shot this year before he loses eligibility. All three kids are geeks and gamers, and they are the next generation who play MMOs and RPGs.
Were it not for me playing WoW, they'd never have picked up LOTRO. Or SWTOR. (Or, um, other games that I've got posts in my head.)
I've got a few weeks before my paid sub runs out, and then the hooks will be gone. Not so fast as what Mad Max did, but quick enough, I suppose.
*No, it ain't perfect, and there are plenty of idiots wherever you go in MMO space, but I don't have to cringe quite so often when I see SWTOR's gen chat.
**A few years ago, right after news of the Tiger Woods sex scandal broke, a guild named "Do It Like Tiger" appeared on A-52. It didn't last long.
***This makes me think that an admin for Xbox Live must be the most thankless task in the world.
****He was a DK and had only 264k health due to the rez sickness. Several people politely asked him to leave, because they pointed out he wasn't going to be any help at all until his rez sickness expired, and his response was "Screw you! I can do whatever the fuck I want to." As you can guess, we lost that BG pretty badly.
If you port into a BG that hasn't started yet and decide to drop, you get a 5 minute debuff. If you do it again within 20 minutes you get an additional 5 minutes tacked onto that debuff (until you reach a maximum of 20 minutes.)
***
Given that I'm often forced into taking a random I know we have no chance in or being saddled with a debuff that will last longer than the game, this is a sanity saver.
Of course, the SMART thing is to level out the teams more so that gear levels and healing components are more equal, but I doubt Blizz is going to do that any time soon.
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, out there on the prairie...
--Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion (pick an episode, any episode)
Yeah, it was a quiet week last week.
I ran some battlegrounds and perused another MMO (watch this space for more info), but other than that, not much happened. Well, in MMO gaming space, anyway.
Last week was a week more for getting things done around the house: painting the kitchen, painting an adirondack chair (with another one to be built on the docket), replacing the 20 year old entertainment center with a more modern design* that had "some assembly required", and some annual cleaning of the heat pump and the porch/deck.
Yeah, Summer is here in the Midwest.
I did break my "only AV and IoC" battleground credo after finally getting what I consider to be enough Prideful gear (meaning I finally had enough Conquest points to get the Prideful weapon), and I promptly regretted it. There were so many bot filled games that it makes you want to pull your hair out, and to add insult to injury the Alliance was back to bad habits, where I as a (at best) partially Conquest geared Rogue was in the top 3 in health on most of the games I played.
If you're a fresh 90 and you're just chain running regular BGs, you're doing yourself and your team a disfavor. If you're Alliance, queueing for AV and IoC will get you a full Honor set much more quickly than the "queueing for random" strategy. If you're Horde, just go ahead and pick anything OTHER than AV and IoC; hell, I think I've won Silvershard Mines as Alliance only once the entire expac, and why any Horde would queue for anything else for free honor is beyond me.
***
Overheard in MMOs:
In Eye of the Storm (WoW):
Me: Just how many bots do we have? Other Rogue: Well, there's you and me at least.
::silence:: Other Rogue: Oh, that's not good. Me: I don't know about you, but I'm going to hang out around FR for a while.
In Warsong Gulch (WoW):
Hunter: Blizz loves bots, you know. Me: Okay, I'll bite. How do you figure? Hunter: They keep their sub numbers up. They used to ban more of these bots but they stopped when their numbers started dropping this expac. DK: Plummeting, you mean.
In Republic side Taris (SWTOR):
Player 1: Aaaaahh! When will this planet end? Player 2: I don't like it either. Me: What's not to love? Jedis and zombies. Er, ghouls. Player 3: Zombies! Me: Yeah, but movie zombies act like ghouls. Player 4: OMG, you play D&D. I can tell. Me: Guilty!
On Republic side Alderaan (SWTOR):
Mini-Red #1: I don't like politics. Me: You're still on the opening zone, aren't you. MR1: Yes, and I don't like the politics! Me: It gets more interesting starting in the second zone. MR1: AAA! I can't stand House Thul or Organa or the other guys! Me: Just relax, kid. It's not a big deal. It's not like Belsavis, anyway. MR1: Is there politics there too? Me: No, the planet never seems to end. Just when you think that you've reached the final zone, there's ANOTHER freaking zone to travel to. And that's not even the Bonus Series. MR1: ...
In Republic side Taris (SWTOR, whispered conversation):
Player: You get to have Risha as a companion? Me (realizing I had Risha out): Um, yeah. Player: When does that happen? Me: Not for a while yet. I don't want to give out spoilers. Player: Oh, come on! Me: I'll tell you this much, it'll be in Chapter One sometime. Player: Like that helps a lot. Me: It's worth the wait. The Smuggler story is the best one Republic side, IMHO.
*Which is step one in eventually replacing our old --and I'd like to emphasize the 'old' part-- 25" RCA television with a new digital model.
The $30 Blizzard Cash Store Warforged Nightmare party mount.
This Guy.
You read that right: party mount. You can click on an item and get the mount for the duration of the instance/raid/BG/whatever.
But what they didn't tell you is that it combines the sparkle pony's ubiquity with the Lil' XT's mind boggling annoying sounds.
The noise was so bad from having about 13 of these at the starting gate in an Arathi Basin run that I turned my sound off. There was no way in hell I was going to click on the totem/whatever-it-is to get my own mount, and neither was a Mage.
"Get with the program!" one of the fellow Alliance BGers said.
"No thanks," I replied. "Blizz gets enough of my money, and I don't want to encourage them."
I could only imagine the obnoxious sounds of 13 metallic mounts clanking and steam whistling away. This isn't the "clink clink clink" of a Gnomish mount, but something right out of the Molten Core.*
Gah.
I do have to hand it to Blizz in that they do give the people what they want --or at least they think they want-- but hearing this noise is almost too much.
*Not literally, but it sure does look like it could have come out of Blackrock.
I have found the new Hillsbrad, and it is called Hellfire Peninsula.
The past few weeks, I've been hanging out in Hellfire while groups of (primarily A-52) Horde invade Honor Hold and the Temple of Telhamat, ganking everyone and everything in sight. The cold war of the Stadium/Overlook/Broken Hill has turned hot ever since A-52 and its 10:1 Horde:Alliance imbalance was lumped in with Ysera.
There are times when I'm the lone L90 in Hellfire Peninsula and I have to simply grit my teeth and take it when a group of 6-8 Horde sweep down on Honor Hold, slaughtering everything in sight. If it were a bunch of Horde L60 toons doing this, I'd probably not care, because the fight would at least be a fair one. But when it's instead a bunch of L90s wearing Conquest badge gear doing the ganking, I really get annoyed.
Some people would leave, and others would try and tilt at windmills for a while, but that's not me. I might not be able to stop the onslaught at Alliance bases, but I can skip over to Thrallmar or Falconwing, exacting an eye for an eye.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some lone juggernaut who is able to wipe out an entire settlement, and I do often get caught by the same Horde group rushing back to defend their own base, but I also don't gank their own lowbies. I don't sink completely to their level.
But all is not lost for the Alliance.
Eventually someone either calls their guildies or makes it to Shattrath and sends out a plea over Trade Chat, and the cavalry comes running. There was one time a few days ago when a pair of Hunters and a Shaman thought Honor Hold would be easy pickings, never guessing that myself, another Rogue, a Hunter, and a Feral Druid were waiting in ambush.
The results were messy. For them.
"AND STAY OUT!" I shouted when we'd dispatched the last of them.
I'll miss his voice, but he insists that his decision will not impact From Draenor With Love.
Kurn, over at Kurn's Corner, has a very in-depth post talking about how social media impact the wider world. It's close in length to a Cynwise post, but very much worth the read. There's even a Ratters appearance in the comment section.
***
I don't often read Twitter, but it seems that more than a few bloggers I know have invaded Wildstar. I'm not sure how well that will go, but I wish them luck.
Also, given the whole explosion from WoW-space (see the first musing), I'm not sure how well Wildstar will hold up, either.
1927 screen icon or Wildstar character?
You decide.
***
This week is exam week at the kids' schools, so I don't really have a lot to talk about from that perspective. I will mention that two of them rolled up Smugglers and one a Trooper, and they're all loving the class stories so far. (Apparently Corso is "soooo cute". Who knew?)
***
I hope your Monday has been going better than mine has so far. I really need to go get some coffee now....
EtA: Apparently my issues with punctuation include the period. Corrected.
