Twenty Years in the Making

I was going to write about something else, but I saw this come across my newsfeed today (courtesy of syfy.com):

Dungeons and Dragons had its Biggest Sales Year Since 1997

It took me a few moments to digest those words.

D&D had a better year in 2017 than when 3e was released in 2000? Better than before Wizards of the Coast bought TSR?

Wow.

That's quite an accomplishment.

I'm sure that the success of Stranger Things hasn't hurt, and the interest in watching people play D&D on Twitch.TV (such as Geek and Sundry's Critical Role) has helped too. But maybe the fact that it's twenty years later means the gamers grew up, had kids, and now their kids are playing too.

From imgflip.com.

For all the new (and returning) players, welcome to the world of RPGs! Pull up a seat and tell us about your character. I'll get you a drink: beer, wine, or the D&D staple Mountain Dew?* Sorry, I don't have any Nutter Butters around the house --one of the mini-Reds has a peanut allergy-- but I'm sure if you bring some snacks that'll do. (Even fruit or veggies.)




*Nowadays, it's Diet Dew for me, thanks. Or coffee.

Fiddling Away

The oldest Mini-Red is home for Spring Break this week, and she had one request of me: that I put a mention about the newest LOTRO instrument in the blog.

So, this is for you, kiddo.

Meet the Fiddle:

From lotro-wiki.com.

Yes, they have a fiddle coming out soon as a playable instrument for LOTRO. My oldest is excited, but mainly because she really hopes they come out with an oboe sometime after the fiddle.

When You Thought Things Couldn't get Stranger....

...apparently the 80's are back in a big way.

People trying to make sense of the rise of mass shootings in the U.S. has found a convenient scapegoat:  violent video games.

Just like with the Satanic Panic blaming D&D, Heavy Metal, and other assorted items for the decline in Western Civilization*, some people are blaming violent video games for the steady stream of gun violence in the U.S.

From what I can tell, the list of video game publishers in the President's Summit on Violent Video Games are there just as a punching bag. Unless, of course, Rockstar is hoping to get a boost in sales due to being labeled the "bad boy of the video games industry".

I guess we'll have to defend our hobby from this crap for the foreseeable future.




*Or that goths were to blame for the Columbine shooting in 1999.

A Quick Wednesday Post

Okay, I laughed. For some reason I thought of the tons of Kitties I've seen over the years in Warsong Gulch.

A Return to Normalcy: More Pugging in SWTOR

It definitely felt weird looking at the large block of free time the other night* and thinking to myself "I could actually run more a couple of flashpoints tonight!"

I've been playing that Jedi Shadow I'd originally started on Red Eclipse (pre-merge) and is now on Darth Malgus (post merge), and since she is at the end of Chapter 1 I figured she's at the perfect point to run some low-mid level flashpoints.**, so I queued up for several and got in without much fuss.

You have to understand that when the following is the case:

• I queued as DPS
• It's about 3 AM server time in Europe
• I specified about 4-5 flashpoints in my queue

that typically I'd have to wait about 15-30 minutes before something popped. However, I got into a flashpoint within 5 minutes at the most. I should know, because I figured I could get some chores done while waiting but I nearly got caught missing the flashpoints because I was AFK when they popped.

But really, that was the worst thing that happened through the entire evening.

The flashpoints were quick, clean, and even the "all DPS" flashpoint (Athiss) was easily handled by my team. I'll freely admit that while I requested DPS, I geared as a tank, because in an all-DPS flashpoint you're going to potentially be called upon to be either a tank or a healer in a moment's notice. Besides, I had enough tanking gear in my inventory courtesy of previous flashpoint runs, so I was covered just enough to not feel like a noob wearing PvE gear into a Battleground.***

While the lack of drama and wipes were the best part of the evening, I found myself in several flashpoints with a couple of the same people. I wasn't so thrilled about one (who kept saying "whatever, bb" when someone would say something to her), but the other was a really good DPS and pinch healer Smuggler. When we were down to just two of us on the last boss of one of the Hammer Station runs, she took out the last boss pretty much by herself while I "tanked".****

I'd have to go back to Wrath era WoW, when I used to get up at 6 AM to play for an hour before getting the (then) little mini-Reds ready for elementary school or preschool, to when I got to know most of the regular instance runners on a server. It was oddly comforting, knowing that the same people who worked so well together were still around, running the same instances. Perhaps it is better to think of the early morning crew as essentially a mini-guild, held together by the common goal of getting an instance completed.

I never got that sense of camaraderie when I ran BGs in WoW, because a) I no longer logged in early in the mornings, b) there were the server don't-call-them mergers that brought a larger pool of players together than before, and c) in the 40x40 BGs that I preferred the fights were so big that you rarely got the chance to know people to the same degree. I wondered once whether the 40-man BGs approached the scale of fight that you had in the old 40-man raids, but I concluded that wasn't the case because you could kind of putz around in  Mists-era Alterac Valley and not be missed at all, but everybody (and I do mean everybody) had a role to play in AQ40; people noticed if you weren't pulling your own weight.

Still, it's nice to find some regulars to run with from time to time. I'm not planning on joining a guild, since my free time is pretty imaginary most days, but it's nice to have that guild-esque feel to some in-game activity.

Without all the drama.





*Courtesy of the Olympics, my wife was glued to the television and let me have free rein of the desktop.

**With the leveling adjustments done in flashpoints these days, the concept of low-mid level range flashpoints doesn't exist. However, I'll always think of the Hammer Station through the Boarding Party / Maelstrom Prison (and Imp equivalent) level flashpoints as low-mid level.

***If you've ever been in that situation, you understand. Personally, that's why I would run the WoW 40-man BGs until I got a reasonable amount of PvP gear, because one person isn't typically going to make a difference in a 40-man run of Alterac Valley. Typically, anyway.

****There was only so much damage mitigation you can do when you're specced DPS as a Jedi Shadow, and I was tanking pretty much from the beginning of the fight when the "tank" died early in the fight before one of us could reach the healing station. I died with just a 1/8 of the boss' health remaining, and the Smuggler was able to take out that last bit before the next round of adds spawned.

And People Wonder Why MicroTransactions are a Thing

In Polygon's article on the 9th about Activision Blizzard's record breaking annual profits from 2016, three things stood out:

• Overwatch has an installed player base of 25 million, becoming the largest intellectual property by Blizzard (yes, that includes WoW).
• The profits by Activision Blizzard (4.87 billion dollars) were the largest in their company's history.
• $3.6 billion of the overall revenue from Activision Blizzard came from in-game content, such as lootboxes and WoW pets.

Activision Blizzard pretty much confirmed that Overwatch is now Blizzard's cash cow, and will likely get the lion's share of development going forward.

However, these lines from the Polygon article really caught my attention:

Games like Overwatch and World of Warcraft, along with the Call of Duty franchise, played a big part in raising Activision Blizzard’s digital revenue for the year. The company said that it pulled in a record $3.6 billion of revenue from in-game content, up 125 percent year-over-year (excluding King, the figure was still up 30 percent). That includes sales of items such as Overwatch loot boxes, Call of Duty supply drops and World of Warcraft pets.

Think about it. Activision Blizzard pulled down $3.6 BILLION from the "despised" in-game content such as loot boxes.

Is there really any surprise that everybody else is doing it?

Sure, legislatures are trying to restrict these loot boxes*, but Activision Blizzard isn't about to let that sort of pure profit vanish without a fight. And neither will EA or a lot of other, smaller companies that rely upon look boxes and cash stores to prop up their bottom lines. (Such as a TON of MMOs, not to mention social media centric games.)

Right now, if I were a betting man, I'd say that there will be a big kerfuffle by legislatures, but in the end nothing will get done. There's too much money on the side of the game companies (and investors) for any potential restrictions to last without immense political will. I wish that weren't the case, but I think loot boxes are here to stay until people stop buying them. And good luck with that, I suppose.

*Thanks to Syl for the article from the state of Hawaii's own attempts at the same.

Monday Musings: Speed Running Cademimu

I've been in Cademimu more than enough times over the years. While it's not my favorite SWTOR flashpoint, it makes for a nice urban setting and a pretty straightforward grind.

Cademimu is one of those flashpoints that lend itself to some judicious speed running as well.

If you know the drill, speed running past the group just after the second boss saves you a bit of needless fighting, and if you've the right skill you can hack a shuttle to bypass a lot of the trash leading up to that second boss. You can also bypass a ton of trash right before the bar scene early if you choose the right path through the trash.*

But what I wasn't prepared for was that final stretch of trash leading up to the final boss being speed run.

In retrospect it makes sense: you run all the way to the end boss location, wait for the trash to drop aggro, then you double back to pick off the few enemies on the way to Light Side/Dark Side choice location. But still, I wasn't equipped with any extra speed boosts** so I kept lagging behind the rest of the group, with the trash nipping at my heels. No, I didn't die from the trash (came close, however) but it felt disconcertingly like some speed runs in WoW's Halls of Lightning I've been involved with.

If this was what a Cademimu run is like these days, I have to wonder what Taral V and Maelstrom Prison are like.




*One of our team --not me-- accidentally aggroed a bunch of trash when running through that section, and we had to double back to fight them off before one of the droids showed up. Yes, for the record, we were running four DPS, so if even one of us were healing or tanking this would have been much easier. I might need to dust off my healing capabilities and see if I can start doing that again. Not sure if I want the stress that comes with healing, however.

**Outside of the temporary speed boosts that Inquisitors/Councillors have, that is.

Just What is This Thing Called "Free Time" Anyway?

/snort
From Pinterest.

My inability to finish an RPG/MMORPG has, once again, reared its head.

I got my party to the city of Baldur's Gate and acquired a few quests --both with timers-- and I realized that I'd likely have to block out a few hours to take care of some of these items. Sure, I could just save and walk away, but have you tried putting down a good page turner of a book at nighttime?*

So, once again I backed off and said "okay, when I get that sort of free time without any commitments, I'll take BG up again".

Judging by my schedule, I think I might get that sort of free time without much in the way of interruptions by sometime in late March. No, I'm not being facetious either; it's just that busy with two kids actively involved in high school --and one beginning his university visits-- and both parents working.

They say acknowledging you have a problem is the first step to treating it, but it doesn't help that I want to finish these games to find out how they end.**

Yeah, I've been there.
Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer.
From Wikipedia.

And it's not like I can't finish any game at all, because I regularly play Civ and Civ-esque titles to completion. Those games, however, have one critical difference: I can walk away and save without getting so sucked in that I forget everything else. Plus, unlike an MMO they can just sit there in the background while I do other tasks around the house. Perhaps it's because I've cut my MMO teeth on a PvP server, but I've experienced way too many times of me going away, taking care of something or other for 15 minutes, only to find that I've been ganked while parked somewhere in the Arathi Highlands.***

But that's okay. If that's the worst quirk that I've got --stepping in before a self destructive urge takes over-- I'm in pretty good shape. Besides, it's not like I'm twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do.






*Back in the day, when Robert Jordan's Lord of Chaos was released, I spent the entire Saturday after acquiring the novel reading it. I finished sometime on Sunday --no small feat for a Robert Jordan novel of 720 pages hardcover-- and only then did I realize that I not only missed sleep I also missed eating anything.

**Okay, I know how BG ends, but the sentiment is the same. And this sentiment also extends to my to be read pile.

***Flying is a godsend for the MMO player who has to take a break. As is stealth. Neither prevent some determined enemy from trying to gank you --one L80 Rogue tried to gank L63 Quintalan while I was flying by dropping mount and attempting to kill me while falling-- but it's much much harder.

Baldur's Gate for non-D&D Players: Some Tips

Slipping back into Baldur's Gate (Enhanced Edition) was a joy for me, because I discovered I missed the (up to) six person party and the story that the game told. There was also the freedom to wander wherever you wanted --which, truth be told, got me into a lot of trouble-- and level up by exploring and performing mini dungeon adventures.

That said, I've a feeling that it was easy for me to get back into Baldur's Gate because I'm an old D&D player.*

There are --to put it mildly-- quirks about D&D 2e and earlier that newer players may find confusing. Yes, there's the whole Armor Class thing, but also the "how does this translate into a computer game" that people might not be aware of, such as the concept of "rounds" in D&D being translated into a computer.

To help out those players who are a bit confused about the Baldur's Gate way of doing things, here's some tips to help make your excursion into the Sword Coast a memorable one.

***

Rolling Up Your Character: Be Patient and Roll Often

About the best advice I can give you is to keep rolling until you get result totals that are in the upper 80s to lower 90s. The stats you get out of that are frequently worth it in the long run, as a caster will get additional spells per spell level and a melee fighter will get bonuses in hitting and damage. And while you won't run up against it here, in BG2 you will run into the situation where a caster's ability to get to the highest spell levels is directly tied into your prime stat: a Mage without high enough intelligence won't get access to those truly powerful 8th and 9th level spells.

***

Understanding Armor Class, or "Why Do the Numbers Go Down?"

Dungeons and Dragons grew out of wargaming, the pastime where players would fight simulated battles on a grid**, such as Gettysburg or Battle of the Bulge.

The 1991 version of the Avalon Hill
classic, Battle of the Bulge.
From boardgamegeek.com.

Instead of having nameless divisions or platoons and other groups of soldiers on the board, Chainmail and Blackmoor (the immediate predecessors to D&D) focused in on individual in the fight as an avatar. From there, it was a small jump to get to a recognizable form of D&D that we have today.

Still, those wargaming roots show up in some oddball ways, such as the Armor Class.

The basic concept of an Armor Class is something every MMO player gets: get better armor, you get better numbers, and the baddies have a harder time of hitting you. But AC going downward, rather than upward? That's an artifact of the wargaming ancestors of D&D, so while it may seem counterintuitive to go down, from a wargaming perspective it does make sense (older wargames used charts a lot to determine battle outcomes, and AC going down came out of those charts).

So when you get armor that is enchanted to be "+2", your AC actually goes down 2.

As a general rule of thumb, you want the tank type --the fighter or ranger or paladin-- to have an AC less that zero as quickly as possible. They will take the brunt of the hits, and if you can also load them up with magic resistance so much the better. The last thing you need is your tank being feared --or worse, mind controlled-- and then your squishy companions will get steamrolled.

An AC of 0 to 2 for your non-tank melee people is also recommended, but due to class limitations you frequently have to use magic to get yourself down to that level.

Now, while a Mage can't wear leather (or better) armor, they do have access to magical bracers that lower your AC to at least the level of studded leather or better. Sure, it's not going to help much against a fighter gunning for a Mage, but it's better than nothing.

***

Party Composition Does Matter

Yes, you're familiar with the old trinity --Tank/Healer/DPS-- but in a D&D group you need to cover a few more items than that.

First, you need a Mage and a Thief. You can get away with a Thief equivalent, where a Mage has a ton of Knock and Invisibility spells to work, but it is frequently easier to just have a Thief.

But a Mage is absolutely essential. You will run up against magic wielders in the game, and you will need to mount an effective defense (or offense) against them. Mages are even more squishy in BG than they are in WoW, so you have to protect them from direct attack at all costs. The old joke about 1st Level D&D Mage dying when being attacked by a squirrel isn't too far off the mark.

From pinterest.

You also need a healer type, whether it's a Druid or a Cleric. Sure, you can buy healing potions, but there are a limited number of them in the game so you need to get healing from other methods, and  Cleric casting Cure Light Wounds is the easiest way of getting that. Plus, healer types do have access to a variety of great buff and debuff spells, and don't be afraid to use them, especially on boss types.

Next, you have to pay attention to the alignment of your party. It kind of goes without saying, but evil party members don't get along well with good ones. You can tell how your party is meshing by listening to their talk while your party is exploring. If the party doesn't get along, party members might leave.

From pinterest.

Finally, don't forget you can resurrect characters at a temple. So if you lost a character in a fight, go ahead and visit a temple to rez them. Sometimes that's better than trying to refight the same fight multiple times.

***

Save Often

In a game such as BG, frequent saving is absolutely essential. Renaming save files before going into a situation --such as a dungeon-- that you might want to go back to is also critical. I got about partway into one such dungeon before I realized I drastically underestimated the healing potions I was going to need, so I went back to that earlier save and spent some time leveling and acquiring more healing potions.

From my perspective, saving is so critical that I frequently will save every 2 minutes in a dungeon because of all the encounters and traps. Which leads me to....

***

Traps are a Thing

Yes, dungeons and other areas are trapped. Lethally so.

Having a Thief in front, sneaking around and detecting traps, is critical for survival in a dungeon. And you'll often find traps next to traps, especially the closer you get to an end boss.

From looneydm.blogspot.com.

When leveling a Thief up, place an initial emphasis on improving Hiding, Finding/Removing Traps, and Picking Locks . Even then, you may have to wait some time before traps appear in your screen. So, look at your surroundings and ask yourself "does it make sense if someone would stick a trap here?" If it does, just wait a bit longer and then creep forward, because you're likely right.

One last tip, potions that boost a Thief's abilities are absolutely essential in some areas, particularly once you get late in Chapter 3. But be smart about using these potions; like healing potions, there are a limited number of them in the game.

***

Combat is Round Based, Not Speed Based

This is one of the harder things for MMO and MOBA players to adjust to when playing BG. If you play a game like WoW, you're used to the timing on cooldowns and the attack speed for your various moves. But in a game like BG which is based on D&D, the combat consists of various rounds where everybody gets a turn. Sure, there's the Oil of Speed in-game which speeds up the number of attacks per round (and your movement speed in general), but everybody still gets a chance to attack within a six-second combat round.***

Magic items don't improve the time it takes you to attack, but they do improve your chances to hit and what damage you inflict on enemies.

So unlike the arms race in a game such as WoW where people try to squeeze out the last bit of speed in attacks and CDs when doing progression raiding or PvP, the arms race in BG is a bit more quaint. (But still important.)

***

Enemies Will Use Magic (and Magic Items) Against You

It's not just a matter of getting loot to drop from enemies in BG, but those enemies will also use that loot against you. The baddie that is wielding a Wand of Magic Missiles is going to use the damn thing in a fight, so be prepared. Likewise, a Cleric is going to try to fear your party, and a Mage will try to control and turn party members against each other. They're not dummies, you know.

This guy notwithstanding.
From 1tonghost in photobucket.

Besides, they can unload everything against you while you have to manage your magical stocks for multiple fights in succession, so trying to match them in firepower isn't necessarily the greatest idea either.

***

Be Judicious in Using Magic

As I alluded to several times, there's a limited number of potions in the game, and it's way to easy to accidentally blow through all of them and then be left with nothing.

Likewise, casters have a limited number of spells per time spent between rest periods. When you run out, you have to rest to regain your spells.

An MMO player may have a lot of difficulty managing this, because they're used to Mana/Energy/Whatever that gets recharged as a function of time (but drinking helps to speed it along).

My advice is simple: see those Kobolds over there? Don't use magic on them unless you absolutely have to. Wait for the ogre that's just over the next rise, and even then don't burn everything on one fight unless you look overmatched. Treat magic as if it were the rarest thing in the world, and then you'll appreciate it more.

***

Some Things are on Timers

There's some party related quests that you acquire that are on timers, and if you don't complete them... Things happen. Bad things.

You'll know these quests when you see them, and even the ones that aren't explicit in the timer will have someone constantly prodding you to do what you said you'd do. Listen to those in-game reminders, because you don't want to find yourself missing party members --or worse!-- because you dallied in Beregost for a few more days.

The game does do this to push you into an uncomfortable situation by making judgement calls, but the rewards are frequently worth it in the end if you manage to see the quest through.

***

Line of Sight Works Even at Different Heights

If you're hunting for something that's down in a valley --or an open air prison (nudge nudge)-- and you don't see the item down there because the trees and slope blocked you, this is a reminder that the line of sight is more sophisticated than you might expect in a 20 year old game.

***

Cursed Items are a Thing

There are far more cursed items in BG than I typically see in a regular D&D campaign. So if you see a sword that has that blue glow of magic, don't simply equip it and believe everything is fine. Because there's a non-zero chance that it's not. Take advantage of the Identify spell and visiting places that can identify magic for you (for a fee).

From pinterest.

***

Even the Weakest Enemy Can Overwhelm You With Numbers

Just sayin'. You'll understand this once you get to around 3rd or 4th Level.

***

Not Everything is Going to be at or Below Your Level, Either

And yes, the inverse is true too. No shame in backing off from a fight when you're unable to get a single blow in.

From reddit.

*"Old" as in "was around playing D&D back when Gary Gygax ran TSR".

**Or sand table if you played with tin soldiers and whatnot.

***Weapon specialization ranks will also give you additional attacks per round, so a fighter should use those rather than generalizing.

On Misinterpreting This Place in the Blogoverse

I'm used to seeing on the blog stats the occasional spike when a web crawler goes through the blog; I just kind of shrug and move on.

This time, however, the junk link is from an actual YouTube video*, so I figured I'd better check to see what the hell is going on.

You know it's bad when the first comment for this particular video is "STOP SPAMMING!" (emphasis mine)....

On the bright side, the "monetization" video had only 700 views, so whatever they were attempting to do, they aren't getting eyeballs. Or maybe they thought PC had thousands of readers or something....





*Sorry, I'm not going to post the link here. Why do the work for them?

Playing Buzzword Bingo

I read with great interest the Kotaku article Bioware Doubles Down on Anthem as Pressure Mounts by Jason Schreier. Basically, Bioware is devoting a ton of resources to make Anthem, their equivalent of Bungie's Destiny, with only a few small development teams working on Dragon Age 4 and SWTOR. The overall feel within Bioware is that the success of Anthem is a make-or-break moment for the company, and if it isn't a success this might be the end of Bioware as we know it.*

Remember, the fate of hundreds of employees
is riding on your ability to write bug free code.
From Kotaku.com

The sense of a single release having so much of an impact on a game company's fortunes isn't exactly unheard of. Some people were looking at Zelda: Breath of the Wild as Nintendo's last chance to remain relevant in the console wars with the Switch's launch fortunes tied up with the game's release. On the flip side, Microprose's Darklands release back in the early 90s was such a gigantic disaster that it nearly destroyed the company that released Sid Meier's seminal games.

Remember when people were saying that
Nintendo should get out of the console market
entirely after the "failure" of the Wii U?
Yeah, I don't hear that anymore either.
From zelda.com.

Still, it sounds like the struggles with the EA imposed "single solution" of the DICE Frostbyte Engine haven't ended for Bioware. Compared to Unreal, Frostbyte is the muscle car of Engines in that it does one thing well but has... issues... when being expanded into areas where Bioware excels: RPGs. They had issues with Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda, and it seems that these issues are now continuing in Anthem.**

To MMO players, the fact that Bioware is keeping development of SWTOR going in the face of the "all hands on deck" approach to Anthem is a good thing, but the fact that they had a discussion about putting the game in maintenance mode isn't.

But I made the mistake in reading the comments in Jason's article, and that got me annoyed.

***

A lot of the comments center on a few key points:

• EA is Evil (as in Disney Villain Evil)
• Bioware isn't what it once was
• Anthem will suck because of microtransactions and lootboxes

A lot of the negative comments really break down into variations of "EA is Evil", even when they're talking about the superiority of CD Projekt Red over Bioware in creating RPGs they're basically saying "EA ruined Bioware and EA is Evil!" 

But the thing is, EA isn't Evil in the standpoint of being purely malicious, but rather EA is doing what it does because of their own external pressures. 

Every publicly traded corporation has to deal with the pressure of "what have you done for me lately?" sooner or later. Sure, you get that from your customers --gamers in particular are a prickly lot-- but far more stress comes from investors. If you have a breakout hit, investors will expect you to continue your streak. If a competitor does something that breaks new ground and rakes in a ton of profit, investors will expect you to respond. And not just in a year or two, but yesterday.***

In that vein, the rise of mobile games and the F2P cash shop haven't exactly been helpful to more traditional video game companies. The volume of money made by microtransactions in the mobile arena has inspired Wall Street to push for more monetization of games, while the cash shop has demonstrated that it can keep MMOs afloat in a F2P/post-subscriber world.**** RPGs and MMOs are more expensive to create than this year's edition of Madden, and if they don't make a huge splash the development corporation is left holding the bag. And believe me, Wall Street knows it.

Yes, here's the obligatory quote from Gordon Gecko
in Wall Street (1987). And remember, even more people
agree with this now than they did 30 years ago.
Isn't that a real kick in the ass? 
From giphy.com.

The reality that Wall Street and the pursuit of short term profits are driving the monetization of games and pressuring developers to release on a tight schedule doesn't let corporate management off the hook. People aren't exactly going to be crying for EA's management or Activision Blizzard's Bobby Kotick, and you can make a pretty damn good arguement that good games are released in spite of them rather than because of them. But this is the new way of doing things in corporate development houses. If you're not under extreme pressure to release a buggy product early,***** it could be that your development house is a wholly owned subsidiary of a console maker (such as Horizon: Zero Dawn's Guerilla Games or Nintendo itself) or that your development house doesn't get the spotlight shone upon it by Wall Street, NASDAQ, or the Tokyo Stock Exchange (such as CD Projekt Red, which is on the Warsaw Stock Exchange).

Does that mean that we have to like it when EA gets DICE to slip in microtransactions like they did in Star Wars Battlefield 2? No, but it also doesn't mean that they're tools of Satan, either. Until the economics driving the video game industry change, don't expect video game activism to suddenly convert these corporations into the second coming of Ben and Jerry's. Besides, even Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield sold their socially responsible ice cream company to Unilever.

Video game companies can change the way how they do things and tell Wall Street they're not going to chase the last dollar or euro but instead invest for the long term and release when they're ready to do so. You know, like Blizzard does.

But it certainly helps to be able to print money like Blizzard can with WoW (and to a lesser extent Overwatch). Oh, and remember that WoW and the MMOs that preceded it convinced a gamer community that it was okay to actually subscribe to a game rather than simply play it offline like almost all other games that came before. That monetization can be a real bitch, sometimes.

Remember these guys? Mr. Redbeard does.
From Reddit.com.

*Some would argue that the Bioware as we knew it was already gone after ME2 and Dragon Age: Origins, but I don't quite buy that. Bioware still wants to go all in on RPGs as much as they can, but external pressures are forcing them in other directions.

**And I thought that the engine used in SWTOR was considered clunky and difficult to work with!

***When you hear corporate speak about "agility", this is what they mean. In my experience, however, the other corporate standby, "lean and mean", doesn't mesh well with "agility". You need bodies to be agile enough to change direction, and corporations that typically operate as "lean and mean" don't have any spare bodies out there to spearhead that change. (OOO!! Spearhead!! Another corporate slang term! Has anybody won Buzzword Bingo yet?)

****See: SWTOR, LOTRO, Star Trek Online, etc.

*****Or release with tons of microtransactions and other monetization schemes.

On The Highway Bypass

Blizz rolled out level scaling with the most recent patch, about three expacs later than they originally proposed it.*

However, if you were thinking that level scaling would operate in a similar fashion to that presented on, say, SWTOR, you're in for a surprise.

When I think "level scaling" that means that an implementation similar to that found on SWTOR, where if you have outleveled a zone the game artificially lowers your level down to an arbitrary maximum for the entire zone/planet. If you're in an instance, you're leveled up to the current level cap and your gear/abilities/etc. are scaled up to said level cap. This means everybody is roughly the same "level" in a zone, and eliminates the occasional "surprise!" overleveled area in a zone.**

Blizz has implemented a different level scaling system, which is meant to allow a player to avoid certain zones entirely. The idea is a bit more complicated than the SWTOR implementation, where the quests and enemies scale to your level and not the other way around. Additionally, the scaling in the Vanilla area can get a bit confusing as you progress. Go to this link from Wowhead to get the basics of where leveling happens.

From Wowhead. Yeah, I think it odd that Hillsbrad
goes all the way up to 60. Gives a whole new meaning
to those old gankathons on PvP servers at Tarren Mill
and Southshore.

Given the way that Kotaku explained it, you'd get the feeling that story has pretty much been thrown out the window so you can avoid "boring" zones such as the BC leveling zones.

"If you were looking to get into World of Warcraft (or return with a new character), now’s a great time to do it. 

Check out all the changes coming in update 7.3.5, including new questlines and an enhanced S.E.L.F.I.E. camera, in the official patch notes."***

I think that Kotaku is kind of missing the forest for the trees. WoW already had story issues without this level scaling implementation, and now this implementation of level scaling means an acknowledgement that story and questing in the lower zones really don't matter as much as getting you to current content.

As I've said before, WoW's biggest advantage over every other MMO is not the size of its playerbase**** but that it has such a large play area. However, Blizzard's focus on the current expac and raids have imposed external limitations on the size of the WoW universe. Cataclysm's breakage of the storyline continuity made the situation worse, Now, between the "instant L90" (currently "instant L100") that Blizz instituted for Warlords of Draenor and the level scaling, Blizzard has de facto admitted that the leveling zones are merely bumps on the road to get up to speed with the current expac.

If anything, this is a problem imposed by the WoW MMO culture rather than a top down Blizzard design decision. Blizz doesn't really do anything without enough of a desire present in the playerbase, and since the playerbase is primarily oriented toward the current end game Blizzard's changes are designed to get a new toon to the endgame as quickly and painlessly as possible. You can skip the parts you don't like and zip straight to the parts you do like. The thing I find kind of odd about this is that Northrend, Outland, and the Cata zones all had multiple pathways to get you to max level, so if you didn't like Zangarmarsh you could go to Terokkar Forest. Didn't like Borean (Boring) Tundra? Head to Howling Fjord instead. Sure, these provide more options, but it's not like there weren't a lot of options to begin with.

But in the end, I do find it kind of funny that the level scaling allows people to bypass Cataclysm entirely and go straight on to Pandaria; if it weren't for Cataclysm in the first place we'd not necessarily have to have this version of level scaling around.





*A version of this was originally proposed for Cataclysm, and I looked at the possibility with a great deal of interest. I'd be able to play with friends who were at max level on other servers but without them having to create a new alt just for that purpose.

**Getting one shot in some areas of, say, Alderaan and Tatooine teaches you to avoid certain areas like the plague. Still, trying to explain to the noob not to go over that specific hill can be more trouble than its worth.

***From that Kotaku article.

****Which is now an unknown anyway.

*****with the exception of the Wrathgate in Northrend that you pretty much had to do in order to progress to the end of the Northrend questlines.

Ow

Winter colds are never fun.

And winter colds with sinus pressure....

By George Cruikshank.
Art Institute of Chicago

Yeah, it's been a helluva week.

This has gotten me to thinking about that one legacy of the original D&D rules that is found in just about every video game or RPG: the hit points/health bar.

The ol' HP system was an arbitrary value designed to illustrate the overall improvement in skill and whatnot in a player character (PC). Originally, Gary Gygax wrote that a player's "true" health points are about the last 1-6 HP in their overall value, and the rest represented the gradual wearing down of the PC by dodging and deflecting blows.* To use a pro wrestling analogy, in the Rick Flair ESPN documentary there was a mention about the training regimen for a pro wrestler and that you had to learn how to use the ropes in a boxing ring. When you start out, when you bounce off those ropes they tear at your skin and leave a bloody trail all over your back, chest, and arms. After a few weeks, however, your skin toughens up and that stops happening. Essentially, the pro wrestler gains HP by training and a "low level" injury doesn't hurt anymore.

That being said, I still think the HP system is a bit of a goofy rationale for how things work in real life. Not everybody can withstand the damage that was inflicted on John McClane in Die Hard.

From tvtropes.org.

If realism is the angle we want, something like GURPS' method of health being strictly a low number of roughly 6 is about right.** But that doesn't exactly lend itself to what we'd call "heroic" combat like that found in most standard RPGs (such as D&D) or video games (such as, well, most of them).

The easy way to show that a player's toon is getting better is to let numbers increase, and that includes health. It also eliminates the possibility of the (rather embarrassing) situation where a powerful L60 Warrior gets one shot by a "You no take candle!" Kobold in Elwynn Forest. Raising a player's health is also an easy way to show the power in higher level enemies. Go wander into the old Scarlet Monastery area in Vanilla WoW with a new Horde toon, and even if you manage to land a blow to one of those L30ish Scarlets swarming around outside the Monastery it won't be enough to make a dent in their much higher health numbers. ("No one-shots for you!")

Still, not all MMOs these days follow this dictum, as SWTOR is the best example of adjusting (lowering) your toon's level and stats to match the area you're located in. You won't be able to zip along in Coruscant as an L60 Jedi without having to worry about the Black Sun aggroing on you, but neither will you have to worry about the Dread Lords' zones in places such as Alderaan insta-killing you, either.

I guess the guiding principle here is what the design goals for the game in question are. Is it realism or heroism? While you can be "heroic" in a game heavily tilted toward realism, my experience in playing the heavily realistic games is that you tend to play the game much more cautiously, which doesn't really pass the "heroic" test in my book. The more heroic the game --and the more liberal the implementation of the HP stack or health bar-- the more likely it is that a player will go and perform reckless actions that certainly qualify as more heroic. (Cinematically speaking, anyway.) Both design goals have a place in gaming, but I personally tend to prefer the more heroic end of the spectrum. I loosen up a bit when I see a decently sized health bar, and I'm more apt to throw myself at a (non-boss) fight without worrying too much about trying to be perfect in my attack rotation.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish getting my personal health bar back up to full.





*He must have written that in an old issue of Dragon Magazine, because I can't find it in my AD&D 1e books. Then again, the organization of the 1e books left a lot to be desired, so I suppose it's not a great surprise that I can't find it in there on the drop of a hat.

**GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System. For those who have never heard of it, yes, it is a real RPG system put out by Steve Jackson Games. And as the name makes blindingly clear, the point of GURPS is that you can take the system and apply it to just about every setting imaginable. Unlike some other universal RPG systems --such as Pinnacle's Savage Worlds-- GURPS is very detailed. While the mechanic --3 six sided dice-- is very simple, the devil is in the details and the setup. Most of the problems people have with GURPS is getting their characters and the setting set up right; once that's done, the system is very simple. (Relatively speaking, of course.) A long time ago --when the mini-Reds were very young-- I considered making a GURPS Lite campaign using the Disney Fairies as a setting because the girls were massively into that at the time. But as you can guess, I didn't have the time to work out the details so I passed on it.

Full Plate and Packing Steel

Guess what I've been playing with this past week?

A certifiable blast from the past.

Yes, the second game Bioware ever created, Baldur's Gate.*

I played BG back in late 1999-early 2000, when a friend loaned me the 6 CD set.** There's a bit of a slow part in the mid area, when you're trying to get to a high enough level to gain access to the city of Baldur's Gate itself, but so far the game has really aged well in terms of storyline.

Sure, the sprite images look ancient, but the gameplay remains surprisingly intuitive. The environment simply fits with the D&D system, and it's not hard to pick up and start playing. And boy, the core rules are pretty unforgiving when you use them here. 

I'm up to Chapter 3 --not an "already??" moment, because you spend a lot of time raising your level by doing side quests-- and I've found that I really had to stuggle to get through the end of the Nashkel Mines dungeon. I became reacquainted with the "rest" feature in the area where the soldiers are posted, because otherwise we'd not have enough spells to make it through. And that last fight...

Hoo boy.

I can't wait to keep going.

*I always figured it was the first game, but it turns out they created Shattered Steel first.

**That dates BG right there; you learned to listen for the change in the CD access sound so you knew what event was about to happen.

A Rarity in the Wild

The more I watch the mini-Reds play Breath of the Wild, the more I'm impressed by the work that went into the game's development.

The level of detail that went into placing the shrines and the Korok Seeds, for instance, took a lot of effort. And that was just a small part of the game itself. Sure, the game suffers from that bane of open world games, the giant impenetrable barrier at the edge of the game world*, as well as the grind that can wear people down, but every last detail that Nintendo's dev staff went into the latest Zelda offering is quite amazing.

Without bugs, no less.

Write that last part down and stare at it for a little while: no bugs.

In an age where bugs in software are pretty much standard fare, Nintendo released a (nearly) bug free game with a gigantic amount of detail into the wild. Compare and contrast with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Assassin's Creed: Unity**, which were so buggy on release they required major updates just to be playable.

What's the difference?

The biggest thing that jumps out at me was that Nintendo decided to delay release of Breath of the Wild until the Switch was announced and released, which had the effect of giving the devs an extra year to hammer everything out. Nintendo also channeled the Blizzard release process in that they released only when they felt the game was ready, which was no small deal given the amount of pressure Nintendo was under for the Switch's launch to be a success.***

Another item Nintendo focused on was the graphics and sound experience. Voice acting in Breath of the Wild was limited primarily to the cutscenes, so that kept some annoying problems related to integrating voice acting into the game**** from cropping up. The graphics were designed to exploit the Wii U first, and were never designed to be truly cutting edge 4K. The artistry that went into Breath of the Wild was more important than the realism and detail, which meant that graphical problems were largely avoided.

Finally, Nintendo knew what they wanted and they had a long time to develop it. Sure, the platform changed during development, but apparently the differences in those platforms were minimal enough that the Zelda team could focus on the actual development and not worry about performing cross system development such as that found with XBox and PS4 (and PC). Like Apple's own development environment, having complete control over the hardware means that you can limit bugs to an exceptional degree.

My hat's off to Nintendo for their exceptional work in Breath of the Wild. It's the sort of game that I'd love to play if the ability to lock the viewing direction into an MMO mode (such as that found in most Western MMOs, such as WoW, SWTOR, or LOTRO) were available. As it is, I'm happy to watch the mini-Reds play. (Well, until I get a headache from the viewing angle changes, that is.)





*But really, there hasn't been an open world RPG or MMO that has created an entire globe, so that's kind of a "meh" problem if you ask me.

**Or, back in the day, Darklands by Microprose.

***Mission accomplished, there. The Switch is, so far, a big success story for Nintendo given the amount of positive press it got as well as the excellent choice in games released for the platform.

****Such as the mouth and visual problems ME:A had on launch, or the problems ArcheAge has with NPCs speaking in Korean in the English version of the game.

An MMO Quickie

LOTRO is having its annual Winter Themed Event, the Yule Festival, with an elk as one of the available mounts.

Like this. From lotro-wiki.com.

I took one look at the mount and quipped "This looks just like the elk mount an Elf gets on ArcheAge."

For some reason the mini-Reds weren't so amused about that.

You Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone...

"Don't know what you got till it's gone

Don't know what it is I did so wrong

Now I know what I got

It's just this song

And it ain't easy to get back

Takes so long"

--Cinderella, Don't Know What You've Got ('Till It's Gone)

In the eight years since we've started PC, I've watched the MMO market change quite a bit. Sure, some things never change --WoW being the 500 lb. gorilla of the MMO genre the chief among them-- but the MMO genre as a whole has changed quite a bit.

Looking back, I can say say with a high degree of certainty that I entered at the high point of the MMO genre: WoW was at the height of its popularity, other MMOs were doing well for themselves, and there were new MMOs on the horizon in Rift, SWTOR, and GW2. DOTA 2 wasn't released for a few years, and MOBAs in general hadn't exploded in popularity.

Of course, it wasn't exactly a true Golden Age.

There was the disaster of Age of Conan's release, and the bait-and-switch promise from the Tortage into zone into a standard grindy MMO. There were also the bugs --lots of bugs-- and the perception that a fairly significant number of people were there for the nudity.

Speaking of train wrecks, there was also the Warhammer Online MMO, which didn't last long and was mercifully shut down shortly thereafter. Perhaps AoC and Warhammer were a harbinger of things to come, where some of the MMO population was looking for the Next Big Thing that would displace WoW at the top, and whatever they found never measured up.

***

In light of all of the changes in the MMO genre over the past 8 years, I've put together a few "awards"

The How is this MMO Still Running Award: Age of Conan. Over 9 years old and reduced to just two servers, this MMO is still active and has a few players. (I occasionally run into one or two out in the wild.) I've speculated that if AoC shuts down that Funcom loses the Conan license, and given that Funcom has devoted all of their "Conan" resources to Conan Exiles, there may be some truth to that.

The It Keeps the Mathematicians Busy Award: Every WoW update. While theorycrafting is its own cottage industry in MMOs and MOBAs, it seems that every WoW update --no matter how small-- is overanalyzed to determine optimal rotation and class emphasis. The latest hotness in BGs and Arenas can change with one little tweak to a cooldown*, and raids can live or die based on healing changes. WoW's size has an impact on the amount of heat generated by the theorycrafter set**, which is why I chose WoW over other MMOs.

The Wednesdays at the Pub Award: LOTRO's band concerts. When the mini-Reds were a few years younger, Fridays at 5 PM were required online time for LOTRO. A band on the Gladden server would play every Friday at 5 PM EST by the western entrance to Bree,*** The devotion the mini-Reds displayed to these regular concerts is not surprising to me, as I've seen regular crowds around toons playing music throughout LOTRO. This is part of why LOTRO is still an active MMO and gets full marks for immersion.

I still wonder how those Hobbits all
got in sync.

The Wrath of the Fanboys Award: Rift. When Rift went F2P, Trion said they were going to "do it right" and not be slaves to a cash store. Of course, by the time I got back to checking Rift out, the cash store was present and heavily hyped, which pissed off the long time players to no end. That and several other moves by Trion to keep the game afloat has generated even more dislike by the fanbase than the random "This game SUX!!!!1!!" comments you still see from SWTOR ex-players who were salty about the lack of WoW-style endgame on launch.

The I Need a Shower Afterward Award: TERA Online. While a strong argument could be made for Age of Conan and it's nudity,**** TERA gets the nod for this award because of the Elin. Every time I login to TERA just play out in the field for a while --because the gameplay is very good, lack of coherent plot or writing notwithstanding-- after about 10-15 minutes an Elin toon wanders by and reminds me why I find the Elin so disturbing.

The Taking Physics a Bit too Far Award: ArcheAge. The more I watch the female toon animations in ArcheAge, the more I'm convinced that the developer staff kind of missed the point with "breast physics". The amount of effort put into breast physics in ArcheAge and other Korean MMOs shows that the dev staff likely spent a lot of time conducting "research", because breasts --especially larger sizes-- do move like how they designed it in-game. But here's the kicker: that movement is for only some types of breasts, and they have to be bare or skintight covered breasts, not breasts covered in more normal fitting clothes or armor. Giving breasts covered by armor or even hidden by normal clothing the same movement characteristics of bare breasts simply makes the breast physics in ArcheAge look, well, weird at times. And far more obvious.

The Will They Ever Learn Award: Wildstar. The entire modus operandi behind Wildstar was that they were going to take the Vanilla WoW experience and crank it up to eleven.# The thing is, the Vanilla WoW experience was fine enough as it was without trying to outdo it. Wildstar was, in effect, doubling down on the belief that the harder and more grindy the goal, the better. And that didn't exactly go over quite so well for Carbine. Wildstar is still alive and kicking --still putting out new content, at least-- but I'm not totally convinced that Carbine learned their lesson. They may look at Blizzard's decision to create Vanilla WoW servers as a challenge, rather than the correction they so desperately needed to their design philosophy. Some of their ideas were fine, but others were a bit too much.

Yeah, whatever gave me the idea that they overdo
it in Wildstar??  From geek.com.

The Pride Goeth Before a Fall Award: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Cataclysm was a complete reboot of the original two continents of Azeroth, the Old World. Sure, there were five new zones, but the revamp of the Old World brought back a ton of old subs and pushed WoW's subscriber base to new heights. Looking back, nobody saw that those few months of returning subs were the high point of WoW's subscriber base. Blizzard's decision to revamp Azeroth was deemed to be worth it despite the major story holes that the revamp created. But my belief is that the same major story holes basically shut the door on new players picking up the game and starting from scratch.## And now? Blizzard no longer releases subscription numbers in their quarterly statements, ostensibly because they have better means of tracking the profitability of WoW, but likely because subs have fallen to the point where WoW has fallen back to the pack in terms of subscriber base.

The No Clue it was Coming Award: Employees of Gazillion Entertainment, the publisher of the now extinct Marvel Heroes. Much has been made of Gazillion's financial problems --and the hiding of the same-- but the extent that management went through to hide these problems from the development staff to the blindsiding of the staff by the company's inability to pay for paid time off when the company fired them all still makes my blood boil. I've been in that situation when the company looks like it might not meet payroll, and it sucks. A lot. And my ire goes to management not leveling with the staff. We're all adults here, treat us like one.

The You Must Learn Patience, Grasshopper Award: The stereotypical "Go" Guy. We all know this person that was so easily skewered by Crendor, because we've all encountered the Go Guy. This is the Warrior that wants to speed pull all of the trash in the first area of Halls of Lightning and yells at the healer for not keeping him upright. Or the Jedi Guardian who just has to jump off of the platform in Cademimu because it was taking too long for the elevator to arrive. Or the Agent yelling "SPACEBAR!!!" in chat because the group wasn't moving fast enough. Ironically enough, WoW created instance speed runs just for the Go Guy to test their mettle, but that hasn't exactly rid normal instances of the purveyor of timeliness.

Ah, narration by Worgen Freeman.

And lastly, The Golden Trinket Award: To all of the people who would stop and help a new player, or a player needing an assist, or a player struggling along. All of the people who reach out and assist others, play well, and encourage players to find a home in their chosen MMO world. All of the people who treat each other well, both in chat and in the world###, and make the MMO genre a better place.

*I've seen it happen where people picked up Hunters and then dropped them from BGs based on an update in a WoW downtime.

**I know that the SWTOR raiders/PVPers will argue that theorycrafting is alive and well in their part of the MMO world.

***The last I checked, they're still there, playing away.

****Even the succubi and incubi are nude, which actually gives them an unnerving appearance. Unlike, say, WoW succubi, you can look at an AoC version and not get it out of your head that this succubus is something totally unnatural.

#Please please PLEASE tell me that someone gets the Spinal Tap reference.

##Add to that the rise of the MOBA, which peeled away players from the WoW subscriber base, and you've got problems.

###Well, PVP notwithstanding. Being mean to the other faction is kind of the point, there.


EtA: Fixed a grammatical issue and a sentence structure in the Gazillion area.

EtA: Fixed another grammatical error, which leads me to believe I shouldn't be writing at Midnight.

Same as it Ever Was

I've not had a big enough chunk of free time to pull off an instance run (SWTOR or LOTRO) in ages, but this past week I actually had a few hours to myself without having to go anywhere or do anything*, so the siren song of running a SWTOR instance proved too irresistible.

Rather than learning a new (for me) instance, I figured that I ought to ease back into instance running with some of the original SWTOR instances: Hammer Station, Athiss, and Mandalorian Raiders. Why those three? Well, they are my favorites of the original instances (with the possible exception of False Emperor), and they are also the three I'm most familiar with. Even with the leveling adjustment put in place, I figured that these three instances ought to be the Azjol-Nerub of SWTOR**: once you learn them, it's a fairly quick and painless run.

Unless, of course, you're dealing with an all DPS group.

(Guess what groups I got?)

Now, to be fair, the Hammer Station run was pretty straightforward with a standard Tank/Healer/DPS/DPS group configuration, and we pretty much blitzed through the entire instance. Not exactly at the same level as a classic Azjol-Nerub run, but we finished in about 15-20 minutes, and that included me getting stuck on the other side of the meteorite cannon while everybody else took out some more trash before the final boss.

***

But Mandalorian Raiders came next, and the run consisted of all DPS.

My prior experiences in the "Fun With Mandos" instance with an all DPS group meant that the toughest boss to take out was the Houndmaster, the first boss, and this group proved that in spades. The Houndmaster hits too hard for a standard DPS to handle without utilizing Tanking abilities or having a Healer in tow, and to compound the problem we had people attempting to down the Houndmaster instead of the hounds first. After the third wipe, somebody asked in chat "Why can't we down this guy?"

"We don't have a healer," the Jedi Sentinel tanking the Houndmaster replied.

The Jedi Sage we had in our group wrote something incoherent in group chat, and then said "I'll do it, but remember to move in the right direction. Got it?"

"Of course."

This time we managed to down the boss properly, with the Sage's healing supplemented by the healing stations around the boss fight.

After that, the Mandalorian Raiders instance proceeded much quicker, with the only hiccup being the Sentinel who thought it a good idea to jump onto the downward descending platform in the section leading to the final boss. As you can guess, he finally caught up to the platform in time to die due to falling damage.

"Rez me!' he cried.

"I'm trying, but I can't select you," I replied. "How the hell did you manage that one?"

"I'm talented. Hee hee hee."

I grumbled something as the Sage rezzed him.

***

Athiss was a different beast entirely.

I knew I was in for an interesting time when we kept having people reject the instance before we finally got a full group.*** Then while a few of us jumped down into the ruins and healed up, a Jedi Sentinel sliced the elevator...

And jumped down anyway.

"Hoo boy," I thought. "I hope that was just an accident."

But by the time we got to the first boss, I could see clearly that it wasn't an accident. That same Sentinel pulled one too many mobs for a pure DPS to tank, and we wiped on the trash. Then we nearly wiped on that first boss, even though that's actually kind of hard to do with four DPS burning down that boss quickly.

But things seemed to settle down a bit when we plowed through the next several rounds of trash, until we got to the Beast of Vodal Kresh. There, we wiped repeatedly on that boss because a) people weren't using the healing stations (twice), b) people (including myself once) got knocked off into the level below and the trash below aggroed****, and c) nobody could hold aggro well enough against Ye Olde Beast.

Sometime after the fourth wipe the other Jedi Sentinel who'd been acting as the tank --all the while spewing invective in group chat-- ragequit. I took that as my cue to leave as well, since it had become obvious that this particular group simply wasn't going to get past the Beast of Vodal Kresh.

I then decided to hang around my starship for a while and relax, letting some 30 minutes pass by reading the codex and checking on college basketball scores.# I figured that 1/2 hour was time enough for me to not run into any of those three players again, and queued up for Athiss once more.

And I got an all DPS group. Again.

This time, however, the run went without incident. I'd not call it smooth, as Prophet of Vodal Kresh took a lot longer to kill off than I prefer,## but nobody died and nobody complained in group chat. It had been a long time since an instance ending in silence

***

After those instances, I decided that I'm not going to venture into any of the post-Vanilla instances for a while. First, I need to get up to speed on a rotation for my Shadow, as I constantly felt a bit slow compared to everybody else##, and second, I think I'd need to study the instances before simply being dropped into them. The instance running crowd is as I remembered it: with few exceptions, people are of the GO-GO-GO variety. One scolded me for not skipping the dialogue sections, but I wanted to tell that person that SWTOR is great because of the dialog, not in spite of it. If people do that to me on a new (to me) instance, there's likely to be some pissed off group members. In my WoW days, delays were frequently given as a reason for a votekick --which I'd often reject unless it was someone who went AFK for no good reason-- and I don't feel like reliving those days again.





*This included house chores such as laundry or dishes or cooking. I'm still not sure how I managed to get this free time this week, but hey, I'll take it.

**That ought to take old WoW players back to the good old days of Wrath of the Lich King. By the time Wrath came to an end, a random pug could pull off an A-Z run in about 10-12 minutes flat. Sure, being overgeared for the instance helped, but once you knew the fights it was a rare occasion to see a wipe in A-Z. Even Utgarde Keep couldn't match that one.

***Of all DPS, naturally.

****In my defense I knew about the knockback quite well, but I was speeding to a healing station that was still open when I got knocked down.

#My alma mater won, so I was happy.

##One player decided to start hitting the balls of fire rather than the Prophet, which meant one less DPS on the Prophet.

###I'm sure lag has something to do with it, as I was playing on a European server.

EVE Online Adds to F2P

I've said before that I'm not that likely to play EVE Online, but I do keep an ear to the ground whenever major updates happen. And this week's particular update has expanded the capability of F2P players within EVE.

Battlecruisers and battleships, the mainstays of the large fleets, are now available to F2P players. While that by itself is impressive, in order to not cripple a F2P player by giving them a ship without the skills to operate it effectively CCP has expanded the skillset of F2P players as well.

It all adds up to a big expansion of F2P players' capabilities within EVE Online.

It's a great win for F2P players, but I have to wonder as to the reasoning behind the move. Maybe they CCP has data that shows that they get a high rate of F2P to subscription movement, and by adding capabilities to F2P CCP hopes to entice more people to subscribe. Or maybe they're looking at simply shoring up the number of people logging into EVE on a given day. But if nothing else, these changes do make the F2P option for EVE more appealing.

I guess we'll see how this shakes out in the months to come.

That White Noise Can Get Pretty Loud at Times

One interesting item about vanishing for a couple of weeks is that I've had a chance to look at what the blog's stats look like with the blog in a steady state.

And I'll let it be said now that the number of real reads --or those that I consider actual, live people reading content-- runs around 25-75 people per average blog entry. Sure, there's the occasional spike of interest if someone from a far more populous site links to a post*, but given that I've never tried to promote the blog in any real way**, a steady readership of 25-75 isn't too bad.

The bot traffic, however, can be almost bizarre at times.

It has to be due to all of those Walking Bombs
in Gnomeregan. Those things used to give
me nightmares. From WoW-Wiki.

As of this moment, PC has had about 945 pageviews this past seven days, and almost all of them were bot or spam related. Quite a few of them are search bots that go through every single page on PC, but there are quite a few bizarre sources in the list.

I'm not going to post them here, per se, because I don't want to somehow summon more of them via speaking their name like Voldemort, but when you see pageviews coming from places such as Dermatology Times, you know that something weird is going on. I've actually clicked on a few that looked at first blush like legitimate blogs with Wordpress or Blogger URLs, but then you find out that those blogs (if they ever existed) had long since been taken over by hackers.

Then there are the ones, that while they are legitimate sites, you don't typically expect to show up in a referral list for Parallel Context. Such as the UK website for Elle. Or an Intel software website. Or a blog about the Great American Songbook.

***

Once in a while, an old post catches new life and shows up in the weekly stats. The Two Sides of a Coin series --about the similarities between Blood Elves and Draenei-- that I did back in 2011 periodically makes an appearance, as does the 2010 post about how I was mistaken for a female player during a run of Magister's Terrace in I Think I Misplaced my Ovaries. And Soul's 2010 post about How to Effectively Tank the Lich King was a favorite long after Cataclysm dropped.***

But for the post part, PC never developed into a hot blog that people had to read to keep up with their latest MMO fix. And I'm fine with that, because MMOs aren't the "it" thing right now anyway.

So if you don't mind me, I'll hang around with my friends, the bots, and open a beer while waiting for SWTOR to load. I think I need to get an Athiss run before I go to bed.

This place never gets old. Neither does
WoW's Halls of Lightning.
From swtor-wikia.com.

*The single greatest spike in readership for an individual post came from a link from WoW Insider, back when a) they existed as WoW Insider, and b) when they used to highlight interesting posts from the blogosphere. Both of those days are long past. Even then, the spike was about 1300 users in December 2011 for Part 2 of my Two Sides to a Coin series. I've a cousin who wrote for a site that deals with eSports and console games, and they frequently get that many visitors per hour.

**As I've mentioned way too many times on PC to count, I've never signed up for Twitter, and I don't promote the blog via Facebook or Google+. I've likened this as my way of shouting into the wind without much worry about causing a hurricane a half a world away.

***It once showed up on the front page of Google search results for "tanking the Lich King". Soul was very proud of that.


EtA: Corrected a couple of grammatical errors.

I Blame the Holidays

Well, the US Thanksgiving season has come and gone, and with that a visit from the oldest Mini-Red for 9 days.* I provided the transportation, as her university is 130 mi/209 km away, and as is the grand American tradition for college students returning home for holidays, she brought her laundry along.

And her laptop. And a desire to get back into playing LOTRO and SWTOR.

She tried playing in some spare time while she was away, but she discovered that the dorm's network is really bad because it's simply overwhelmed with connections.** When she needs a stable connection for her classwork, she retreats to the music building to work; but she doesn't goof off when she's there.

Not that I consider MMOs goofing off per se, since I do write about them, but I understand and admire her dedication to her classwork. When I was in college *mumbledy mumble* years ago, I played the original Bards Tale, Ultima IV and V, the original Sim City/Sim Earth, and various Infocom games in my spare time. Not to mention games designed for the VAX system, such as Angband or Star Trader, or our Saturday afternoon D&D game.

Still, her ability to login to SWTOR at home (after it updated, naturally) was a nice bonus to her visit. We didn't team up for anything, but she spent a lot of time puttering around an old Assassin of hers, and reacquainting herself with the game.

Perhaps it was her class selection that provided me with inspiration, but I started playing an old Jedi Shadow that I'd created on The Red Eclipse but allowed to languish once I got to Coruscant. She was one of two toons I had that I was forced to make a name change --I think I got really lucky-- and I made a minimal tweak and logged into a zone surrounded by Black Sun thugs.

I'd forgotten how much fun having a Trandoshian around as a companion can be.

Due to this toon being in a rest area for a couple of years as well as the XP bonus that was going on, I was outleveling planets a chapter away. That felt really odd, but on the flip side I wasn't getting gear for my actual level from questing, so between that and the artificial level suppression it kept my toon in line (sort of).

But I think that this time I'm going to keep Qyzen around as my companion, since a) I've never followed his story all the way through, and b) companions aren't limited in their role anymore. (I didn't need a tank when playing as a Shadow, I needed a healer. And now Qyzen can do that too.)

Still, it felt good to kick off the rust and go questing in SWTOR and get a Hammer Station random instance in. Now, over the Mini-Reds' Winter Break, I'm looking forward to getting back into some MMO playing I've not done in months.





*So if you're wondering where the blog vanished to, now you know.

**Being a geek, I noted a network connector in her common room and brought up a relatively inexpensive hub for her to use, because I knew that cinder block walls and WiFi don't mix well. Even then, the network connection is poor, simply due to the overwhelming use. The night before I picked her up, most of her fellow students had already left for home, and the network finally became usable. (Surprise!)

Adios, Marvel Heroes

If there was an MMO that I'd played over the past several years that was going to be the first to shut down, odds are good that I'd not have guessed it was Marvel Heroes.

Gazillion released the game as a steaming hot mess, but they diligently cleaned it up and made it a bright spot in the MMO world, particularly that they were at an intersection point between all of the Marvel characters, including Squirrel Girl, the new Ms. Marvel, Luke Cage, and all of the big properties (Avengers and X-Men and Fantastic Four).

But apparently things were not good in Gazillion land. You can read about the accusations of sexual misconduct, missed updates and events, and other items here over at Massively OP's article.

The game shuts down on December 31st.

But knowing Disney, they likely have a new software developer of choice. (I've read that Square Enix is likely it, but you never know with Disney.)