Rest in Peace, Iwata-san

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

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

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

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

Always on, I see

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

It felt, well, eerie being back.

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

Yeah, that feeling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But still....

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

Well, whaddya know...

Remember this post??

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

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

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

Sometimes you just can't make this shit up.

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

What have I done with this opportunity?

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Come on, some things never change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slightly.

From forbes.com.

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

She stormed over to where I was working.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A lot.

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





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

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

Fading Away....

It's been a slow week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's that time of year again.

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

No, really.

FREE.

Even have the logo to prove it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Am I intrigued? Hell yes.

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

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

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

EtA:  And here's the trailer:

EtA: A much better trailer:

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

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