Reacquainting Myself with My Inner Min/Maxer

I suppose it doesn't come as much of a surprise that I've been focusing my attention on The Elder Scrolls Online a lot lately. I'm still working my way through the main questline, and dying quite a bit in the process.* The enemies aren't exactly that difficult per se, but I'm typically a "set the rotation and forget it" sort of player, and being forced to swap in and out different attacks in the slots is still a new thing for me to handle. Prior to ESO, the most I'd do for weapon/ability swapping would be to switch between a bow and melee on Age of Conan, and that was mainly done to aggro the mob I want to take down rather than engage close in and have several mobs jump me at once.**

After loading up on shards --and getting the skill that allows you a low percentage chance to fill empty soul shards after zapping an enemy-- I'm happily out questing for a much longer time than what'd be normal for someone who does tend to die an annoying amount of times. And that's a good thing, because it prevents all those deaths from disrupting the flow of the storyline.

I'm still not completely sold on the personal storyline, but I will give props to several of the side quests and zone quests. And I'll also give major props to what Zenimax did in The Rift --the Pact storyline, anyway-- with one of the NPCs from an earlier zone. I wasn't expecting that questline at all, to be sure, and I thought Zenimax did a good job of working that questline.***

And Sheogorath is as mad as a hatter.
But you knew that, right?
From elderscrolls.wikia.com

One thing I am having trouble with is the number of skill points I have. I'm trying to avoid spending the skill points in areas that don't directly affect my combat abilities, but I'm currently sitting on 7 unused skill points and frequently that goes over 10 until I find a few slots to use them. I'm not exactly sure where I got this embarrassment of riches, but were I not busy working on quest progression, these skill points would have found their way into non-essential slots, such as crafting.

I think I'm going to have to slow down my playing and start reading up on skill slot optimization, something I've not had to do for an MMO in, well, years. ("Hel-lo, Elitist Jerks!! I hear one of your people is now on staff at Blizzard. I guess that makes your work all the more legit, I suppose.")

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've some reading to do....





*Action oriented combat isn't my forte, especially when you play enough and your hands and wrists start to ache.

**AoC is still the only MMO I've played where I have to worry about being overwhelmed by more than one mob at once. Most other MMOs I've played may have that in spurts, particularly if you're undergeared or underleveled for the area, but you can be at the right level/gear in AoC and simply be overwhelmed by two mobs of three enemies each. And even if you manage to survive that, it's also likely that a third mob will wander in due to the overlap of aggro areas, and that's definitely the end for you. AoC was definitely designed for a lot of players in a single zone at once.

***Sorry, I'm not putting up details, because spoilers.

A Quick Friday Read

I came across this recent post from Eurogamer about how BioWare completely changed the RPG genre with Baldur's Gate, and found it too good to not share. It's full of the "we had no idea what we were getting into" moments, along with how the game was so incredibly massive for its time. Nowadays, it'd be considered fairly small, but I remember playing the game and having to constantly swap out the 5 CDs that the game came with. I got used to hearing the very specific mechanical sound of the CD player that meant "Hey, I found something relevant", and when it requested a new CD I felt the urge to cheer.

Fun fact: Dynaheir (above) was
voiced by Jennifer Hale. Yes,
Jennifer "Fem Shep" Hale.
From baldursgate.wikia.com and
BG itself.

While I do think that BG2 improved upon everything that the original BG had, were it not for that first Baldur's Gate the entire RPG industry would be completely different, and likely dominated by Final Fantasy clones.

But for me, the best part was finding out the inspiration for Minsc and Boo, which while a bit more mundane than I expected I still found amusing.

From the baldursgate.wikia.com site,
as well as Baldur's Gate itself.

How Do They Keep Cheating the Reaper?

Age of Conan has another limited time server in place, this time with a PvP ruleset.

The Saga of Blood opened on September 27th and will run for a "limited time", with a battle royale slated for the end of the server's life for the people at the top of the PvP leaderboard.

How Funcom keeps AoC alive I've no idea, but AoC has outlasted both Marvel Heroes and Wildstar, and will likely outlast one or two other MMOs out there before finally bidding the MMO world adieu.

***

In other news, I've kept plugging away at the Elder Scrolls Online, and I've become very acquainted with respawning using soul gems as I've worked my way into Skyrim territory (playing as a Dark Elf). I think the dodging that I need to do isn't quite up to my skill set, given that my fingers ache after a long session these days.

I've not gotten down to "old man Redbeard" levels yet, but I can see that time approaching in the future. I do have to wonder, however, whether Blizz's changes to WoW to make the game easier to play have less to do with the price of entry and more to do with the aging of the player base.

Just a thought.

Fortnite's Big Break

You know that you've "made it" as a politician, celebrity, or sports figure if you're skewered on Saturday Night Live.

For the uninitiated, Saturday Night Live (or SNL) is on the US broadcast network NBC at 11:30 PM on Saturday nights and lasts until 1:00 AM Sunday morning. Yes, it's a live show, and it began in October 1975 and has been on television ever since. The cast is constantly evolving as people join the crew, stay for several years, and move on to do other things. Stars such as Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Amy Proehler, Will Ferrell, Sarah Silverman, and many others got their big break on SNL.

Well, I knew that Fortnite was big, but not SNL type big, until tonight. Guest Host Adam Driver is the "dad" in the Fortnite skit:

At least I've never been that bad in video games, but I can attest that my own dad would have been that bad.

Between myself and Ancient, I guess we've got the "old man" aspect of video games covered....

As Sand Slips Through the Hourglass...

I knew this day would come, but it doesn't make the transition any easier.

One of the mini-Reds has reached 20.

Oh, she still games and does all sorts of other geeky things --she recently was one of the people who put together a D&D 5e gaming group among her band friends-- and I'm still really proud of her.

But she's no longer a mini-Red.

A mega-Red, perhaps.

Happy birthday, Kid:

Fun With MMOs: The Elder Scrolls Online

The Elder Scrolls Online is one of those MMOs that was built on an existing (and wildly popular) video game property. Unlike other well known properties turned into MMOs, The Elder Scrolls franchise is strictly a video game property, as opposed to the broader scope of the properties behind MMOs such as LOTRO, SWTOR, Neverwinter, etc., etc.

But that's not a bad thing. After all, the biggest MMO out there, WoW, is a video game property. As is Final Fantasy XIV, for that matter.*

The Elder Scrolls Online was developed by Zenimax and published by Bethesda, and after a reported seven years in development was released for PC on April 4th, 2014. In June 2015, ESO released for the PS4 and XBoxOne.

And I'll freely admit that when I first heard of ESO, my first thought was "Why?"

This never gets old.
From all over the internet, really.

After the WoW-killer failure of Rift and SWTOR** as well as the tremendous success of Skyrim, it seemed very foolish to tempt the MMO gods by creating a huge MMO for the Elder Scrolls franchise. Additionally, the release date in 2014 didn't really have the same buzz for ESO that another 2014 release, Wildstar, had. Wildstar was also getting a lot of press because it was moving in the direction of "old school MMO" in a way that most major MMOs had long abandoned, such as heavy grinds, really tough raid bosses, and tons and tons of attunement. When ESO was mentioned, one of the first items that you'd typically see was "oh, it's a subscription only game, just like Wildstar". Not exactly the sort of hype you want to see in an upcoming game.

However, the year is now 2018 and ESO is still adapting and thriving, while Wildstar is about to be shut down. ESO has moved into the buy-and-play model of GW2 with a cash shop and an optional subscription, and with that move along with several critical major updates the game is chugging along quite nicely. The developers at Zenimax must be doing something right, so it's time to login to The Elder Scrolls Online and find out.

...and Even More Contraction in MMO Space

For some reason, I've not been paying too much attention to some of the other MMOs that I've tried out, but while Rift Prime seems to be doing fairly well at the moment TERA has just completed a bunch of server merges.

The TERA merges went live yesterday, and in NA (at least) the PC version of TERA is down to one PvE and one PvP server each. Prior to the merge, if you logged in you could get a boost of 20 character slots to cover your stable of toons across the servers, but naturally I was unaware of that so I lost three toons (two of which were only L1, so it's not too bad).

So all of those "TERA is doing fine, much better than [insert MMO here]!" comments I've seen on other MMOs make me wonder whether that was just wishful thinking or whether TERA isn't even close to as popular as the MMO community thought it was.

From my perspective, it seems that the MMO shakedown that began with Marvel Heroes' shutdown is continuing, and even gathering a bit of steam.

Does that mean the MMO is becoming a genre of one (WoW) with a couple of hangers on? No, but I also believe that the MMO genre is retreating to a much smaller footprint in much the same way that a fad comes and goes. MOBAs are the new hotness, and in about 5-6 years they'll fade from view as well to be replaced by something else.

I don't think TERA is on life support, but it definitely isn't doing as well as it could be.