Video Game Art: The Elder Scrolls Online

It's been a few months, hasn't it?

I figured that for this Friday, I'd like to highlight some art from The Elder Scrolls Online. ESO builds upon the lore from The Elder Scrolls video game series into an MMO in its own right, and over the past decade Zenimax has figured out how to keep the game alive after its own disastrous rollout back in the day.*

Almost all of this art comes from loading screens for the game, which works well in highlighting the style the game intents to evoke.

Can't have an ESO game without a dragon
making an appearance somewhere.

The character models look so much
better than even the Skyrim days.

This is all of the major NPCs --minus
the faction leads-- in the original game.

If you've ever seen the Morrowind expansion
trailer, you recognize these two. Of course,
the Dunmer is everybody's favorite Morag Tong
agent, Naryu.

These login screens always inspire me.

The loading screen between zones when you
fast travel have a quick overview, but I'm here
for the scenery.

Unlike World of Warcraft --and I'm including
Warlords of Draenor here-- ESO has gone all in
on housing. It's actually quite nice, as similar to SWTOR
there's a variety of houses to select all across Tamriel.

In my wandering around today, I stumbled
across this quest area that I'd never seen before.
Boy, was I out of practice on playing.

These three NPCs are found in the original trailers
for The Elder Scrolls Online. The Aldmeri makes
an appearance in the Summerset trailer, and I think
the Daggerfall Covenant rogue shows up in
another of the trailers. (Can't remember which;
maybe it was Elsweyr?)

*This seems to be a trend about MMOs that came out after WoW. Even WoW didn't have the greatest original launch, people who played back then are fond of reminding me, but still a disastrous launch is very difficult to overcome if you don't have any buildup of goodwill from potential players.

EtA: Corrected spelling.

Just Living in Interesting Times

Oh yay, Microsoft got rid of more people from XBox.

And, as Michael Bell pointed out, Microsoft just announced a $60 billion stock buyback at the same time.

So.

I don't think I'll ever pine for the days of Bobby Kotick, but Microsoft is basically claiming "poor" and cutting people at the same time as they're pumping in tons of cash to prop up the stock price. Given the (lack of) tremendous cost savings you get from laying off 2550 people --hint, it's not $60 billion-- it certainly seems like Microsoft is trying to starve Activision Blizzard into.... Something.

Submission, maybe?

I'm not sure what Microsoft is thinking about XBox long term, because they're struggling to compete with Sony's Playstation. I do know they're going all in on Copilot, as I can't open up my work email without seeing another missive from Microsoft about how awesome Copilot is. Maybe they're hoping that customer service for XBox games will get so bad that Copilot will seem to be an improvement. But I doubt Microsoft is even thinking that far ahead, given that publicly traded corporations have an obligation to "maximize shareholder value" to the exclusion of all else. 

***

On the flip side of publicly traded corporations, there's private equity.

Basically, it's all of the greed and short-sightedness of publicly traded corporations but in a private format where their activity is hidden from public view.

You know, everybody's favorite business: the Embracer Group.

Well, Juraj Krupa of AJ Investments is going after Ubisoft and wants to take the company private.

I have no pity for Ubisoft itself, but I also have little time for corporate raiders. They call themselves "activist investors" now, which makes them sound like a do-gooder, but the reality is they want to take control of a company, maximize their profit, and then get out while profits are at their highest.

What does AJ Investments want to do? Oh, not much. Just run Ubisoft like how Bobby Kotick ran Activision Blizzard, complete with a focus on only a few properties that pump out products every year and maximize cash shops and in-game purchases.

Ay-yi-yi.

May you live in interesting times, my ass.

In Case You Were Wondering...

...I have confirmed that you can't get XP from Fishing in Retail WoW. Perhaps that isn't news to you, but I was curious enough to check since I figured that leveling by Fishing would be slower than leveling by gathering herbs or mining ore.

Bummer.

At least Eversong Forest is unchanged from TBC.

Yes, the graphics are updated in general, but by and large the quests are the same as they've ever been. The zone is filled with familiar NPCs and enemies, frozen in time.

How do I know this? I took my bank alt Rogue from 2010 or so and ran around Eversong Forest to get enough XP from exploring to reach Level 5, which is the minimum level to train the Fishing skill. I got to see all of my old peeps from around the zone. Yes, Magistrix Dawnstrider and Apprentice Mirveda are still there, as was the Dwarf near the Arcane Sanctum and Antheol's wayward apprentices at the bridge crossing.

I am quite aware that the TBC starter zones are off on their own little area, so have been completely unaffected by the Cataclysm revamp back in 2010. Additionally, there might be further phased changes to the zones so what I'm seeing is the "initial" result before, say, a Legion or Battle for Azeroth change happens. Still, not interested in finding out. (I was there for the fishing.)

If nothing else, the Blood Elf starter zones are unchanged from 2007, and that brings to me a measure of comfort in a changing world.

Meme Monday: Traveling Memes

My wife and I just got back from visiting our oldest this weekend*, so we put in a lot of hours on the road. That got me to thinking about all of the traveling memes out there, so... Here we are.

We also had an ulterior motive for the trip, which was to drop off the rest of her items that she couldn't fit into our SUV the first time around (if you'll recall, the U-Haul was up in Dayton so she could only fit a few boxes in before I left to bring the truck up there.)

Yeah, that.
From supermeme.ai.

And so we tried our best to stuff everything into the CR-V. Somehow, we succeeded.

Away we went.

My brain checked out Friday morning, but
it quickly re-engaged when I got pummeled by
work that came from out of nowhere to land
in my lap. I'm still dealing with the fallout
from all that. From memeshappen.com.

This is a problem that only truly became
an issue after about 2010 or so. But now,
just making sure you have a charger and
cable is half of your packing requirements.
We had those two items, but somehow were
missing other things. Such as toothbrushes.
From mpora.

That's something that does kind of annoy
me. Unless I just get a McDouble from McDonald's
for lunch, you're going to spend more money on
food than you really want to. So when your
wife brings up a restaurant to eat at that you KNOW
she has complained about the prices in the past, you
just know that lunch is not going to end well.

We used to do this, but apparently the new trend
is to have these large bottles of soap, shampoo,
etc. in your hotel room that are pretty much
locked in place, so you can't walk out with them.
On the one hand it's nice to not have to worry
about having enough shampoo, but on the other
hand I wonder about sanitary conditions. From imgflip.

*It was her birthday.

Channeling My Inner Boss

I've been dipping my toe back into some raiding. Nothing crazy, mind you, just regular old Molten Core on Wednesday nights. One of our little group got into that MC on his Paladin, and when I happened to login earlier than usual on that Wednesday, he asked if I wanted to come. My wife was already beat and was going to bed early, so I said sure.

Hmm... Have I been here before?

It didn't hurt that the Good Twin got a couple of pieces of gear, the Azuresong Mageblade --it's made for a Mage, because it has "Mage" in the name!-- and the (Mage Tier 1) Arcanist Bracers. Between those two pieces of gear --plus an offhand I had obtained as a reputation piece via Alterac Valley-- my damage on an unbuffed per Frostbolt hit went from mid-600s to mid-700s. Which ain't so insignificant when you think about it.

***

There's also been all sorts of sneaky activities that my Questing Buddy and I have gotten ourselves into.

Because I simply can't keep my mouth shut.

She and I --on my old Classic Rogue, Azshandra-- have been sneaking into Zul'Gurub and picking herbs, hoping for Bloodvine to drop. 

In case you're wondering, Az's spec is a customized mixture of Combat and Subtlety. I designed it so that I could go just far enough into Subtlety to pick up Improved Sap and then into Combat to get the bonuses for dual wielding daggers. (Oh no, a Dagger Rogue! And a non optimized one, too!)

Eh, it works for me. She's not raiding. As a bonus, she has advantages in stealth that a regular Combat Rogue would never have, and that means she can help my Questing Buddy with Operation Bloodvine.

When we're not dead, that is.

There's a reason why I'm still hidden.

Those of keen eyesight among you might notice that my Questing Buddy's Druid doesn't have any real gear on, and that's because she'd died enough times that her gear broke.

The idea is that we target an herb node, she casts heals on herself, mounts up, and pulls the nearby mobs. Then I stealth in and grab the herbs and any nearby Hoodoo Piles, then stealth away before the mobs come back. She typically manages to avoid the mobs long enough to find a reset point, but as you can see above she occasionally pulls too many enemies or she runs into one during her escape.

Still, the reward of Bloodvine for some of the best non-raid gear in Classic Era is worth it. The Bloodvine 3-piece cloth set is great for Warlocks and Mages up through Blackwing Lair, and only starts being replaced in the AQ40 T2.5 set pieces. Back in the Fall of 2020, once I obtained my Bloodvine set on OG Cardwyn, I kept it until I began getting replacement pieces in Naxxramas.* My Questing Buddy was hunting for Bloodvine to make the set for herself, but Bloodvine alone is worth a pretty penny on the Auction House. 

So the lure of "free gold" --minus the gear repair bills-- is strong.

When my Questing Buddy is running back from having died, I find myself with time on my hands. So I've taken up dancing and singing while hidden. Because I can.

Yes, I remember Born in the USA quite well.
Between that album, Purple Rain, 1984, and
a host of other classic albums, 1984 was a good year.

***

Oh! And I ran into an old friend in Feralas.

Fancy meeting you here.

It's good to see Rexxar out and about like this, and not tied up at a Horde-only base in Outland.

***

And, uh, this person is back too.

/sigh

Sometimes you just can't win.

*Why is it so good? Because the Bloodvine set has two distinct advantages over most other gear: it has superior spellpower bonuses, and it also has hit bonuses. If you want to go raiding, a Mage has to get to roughly +17 to their Hit bonus to reach the cap and have the greatest chance of hitting a raid boss that's roughly 3 levels higher than you. The Bloodvine set alone gets you a +4 to Hit, netting you a quarter of the bonuses you need to become "Hit Capped". The drawback is that there are absolutely no Stamina bonuses to the Bloodvine set, so you don't have even close to as much health as wearing Tier raid gear will get you. That is.... kind of deadly in places such as Blackwing Lair or AQ40.

EtA: Apparently I can't spell the word "keen". Fixed.

Did You Ever Anticipate THIS, Sir Terry?

For those who are fans of Sir Terry Pratchett, Modiphius Entertainment is going to be bringing an RPG based on Discworld to Kickstarter in October:

From the Kickstarter page.

Here's a link to the announcement on Modiphius' website, and here's the email I received via screencaps:

Okay, here's hoping that this works, but I'm going to put the links for a sign up for Kickstarter updates here, and signing up for the Quickstart Preview here.

Meme Monday: Gatekeeper Memes

You all know about them. 

You've likely seen them in action.

Gatekeepers.

The people who try to make whatever hobby or fandom or whatever an exclusive club, to keep the "riff-raff" out. They're the sort of people that would try to take over a Homeowner's Association just to create rules to turn a local subdivision into their own little fief. 

Video games are definitely not the only fandom or community that has their share of gatekeepers --I have personal experience about that-- so now that I've gone down yet another rabbit hole of a community I'll be posting about sometime in the future, I figured I'll get these memes out there to poke some fun of the "KEEP OUT" crowd.

Yeah, pretty much. The old H.L. Mencken
line about someone somewhere having a good time
springs to mind. From X.

Poor Gandalf. I imagine Gatekeepers imagine
themselves like this. From Twitter and Sales Evangelist.

Like I mentioned, gaming isn't the only
hobby that has its share of gatekeepers.
From Reddit.

Amazing how frequently this pops up
whenever I poke my nose into comics.
From Facebook's Dungeons and Dads group.