searching for gaming nirvana

Paladins should be melee-healers?

2010-05-02T03:59:00.003+01:00

I don't disagree as such, but if you're bored with life as a Holy Paladin, ( /wave to the accountants who find it exciting) expand your horizons and try a captain in Lotro.

TCaP Middle Earth

2010-04-29T06:05:00.000+01:00

A couple of members of my WoW guild, TCaP, have joined me in LOTRO. If a couple more come as well it'll mean some exciting gaming on the horizon. An immediate WoW revival *might* kill it but that would be a shame. WoW (for me anyway) will pretty much be just raiding on the healing priest, levelling a worgen rogue come cata and then raiding/pvping on rogue. Not a substantial time commitment. While raiding in LOTRO doesn’t seem to be as polished or have as much content it definitely has the potential to provide some fabulous raiding experiences. Not to mention getting a group out on the ‘Moors. My Warden hasn’t experienced much group content yet as finding a group can be pretty tough for lower level wardens. While soloing fine in a group setting we’re unable to Tank or DPS reasonably in a group setting until a high level.

Duoing a Loremaster with my wife’s hunter at the moment, which is interesting but I think buffing people as a Captain may be more satisfying than debuffing mobs as a LM. Even after the debuff’s are fixed to work properly.

Hmmm, if the group enjoy the ‘moors I may be able to parlay that into convincing them to go for a Darkfall trial - an experience I’m saving until I have someone to duo it with. (My wife laughed at my prospects of getting her to play a full-loot sandbox.)

WOW

2010-04-28T16:08:00.000+01:00

I mean that in every sense of the word. The announced raiding changes for Cataclysm have blown me away.

I thought WoW and I were done. I'd have probably spared a few touristy hours to explore cata with my wife as a Worgen rogue, but there were just too many disappointments in WotLK for me. Both game flaws - the gearing curve fuckups (all the more disappointing post-Sunwell), the dumbing down of the game and the general insipid repetitive gameplay. And personal issues - being unable to field regular continuation nights of raiding.

WoW has some extremlely serious issues, but it's still the best raiding game out there at the moment. Raiding with friends is fun. But it becomes less fun when you're enslaved to the tyranny of daily dungeons, forcing people to commit days in advance to continuation nights before letting them in the main raid - arguing with IRL friends when they later fail to make the cont nights, etc. We were a casual guild with most people have a wide range of IRL commitments and erratic schedules. We tried to make it work and it just wouldn't in the current raiding game.

But in Cataclysm our guild will work perfectly. I've been accused of being anti-casual and elitist with a constant railing against the dumbing down of raiding in wotlk. Filling in random slots with pugs is a terrifying experience as so many people seem genuinely retarded with little knowledge of their own class and zero of others or how they interact. To bring raiding down a level achievable by these sub-humans is an MMO tragedy. This view isn't anti-casual tho. It's simply anti-retard.

Casual friendly changes incoming that I wholeheartedly support.

- PVE pts changing into PVP pts and vice-versa (at less than 1:1 rate)

This is balling. Variety is the spice of wow-life. I think a 0.75: 1 rate would be optimal, but I imagine we'll see something more like 0.9:1

- Multiple small raids instead of one big one.

Boo-fucking-yah. This is the one that got me crazy excited for wow again as it solves the issues that broke us up. Can't make the cont night? Can only make the cont night? Who the fuck cares? Seperate lock-outs biatch. New night = new raid.

- Same gear for 25 man and 10 man raiding. Shared lock-out.

Woooooooot. 25 man gear being a tier ahead broke 10 man raiding. You could trivialise 10 man progression by jumping in some 25s and getting the uber-gear. It also forced you to do 25s for the better gear and you end up running the same instance sooooo many times WoW becomes a chore instead of fun. It's a game - it's supposed to be fun. Maybe now that people don't feel forced to run everything all the time, they'll be more interested in making their raiding more enjoyable by actually... you know... learning their class and improving their skill level. (I can dream). Either way, the reduced "work-load" is another huge plus to our merry band of men.

- Maximum number of high-level pts you can earn per week.

fuck yeah! this gets better and better. Earning enough points from raiding to max me per week and not having to do the daily dungeon every day sounds fantastic.

If this all happens its truly casual friendly. Hard-cap on the badge equivalent means you dont have to complete every badge-awarding activity every day "clocking in to work". Same gear level for 25 and 10 man means the 10 mans should be more like the challenge they were intended to be instead of a joke on gear-check fights.

Blizzard has earned some serious kudos from me with this. I'm probably even going to resub early, kill Arthas for giggles (tho mainly because a WC3 friend is dying to do it) and check out ruby sanctum.

Of course Blizzard could still disappoint me (hell, they may even be a clear favourite to do so) by simply dropping the difficulty of 10 and 25 man raiding so the retard quasi-casuals (as opposed to genuine time-casuals) can complete everything. But for now they have me excited again.
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I feel like blogging again

2010-04-12T06:31:00.000+01:00

My gaming time (and interest tbh) is sporadic. I have lots of different interests and work takes me off traveling often. But something I've missed is writing about gaming.

Recap since August:

August: Restarted WoW, fell heavily into raiding.

November: Attempt to start semi-casual raiding guild, serious about progression but without attendance requirements to include all the people with erratic schedules.

February: Guild implodes as it becomes impossible to get a monday continuation going. I emo-quit WoW.

April. Restart Lotro after long break and remember how awesome it is.

I've also just bought an xbox (with FFVIII and Halo 3) that wants my attention. I have Dragon Age still staring at me wanting play (I liked it on first play and somehow never picked it up again). And Warcraft 3 arrived yesterday which I've been looking forward to trying forever.

So the summer lull in quality gaming most people are lamenting isn't really going to affect me. I have plenty still to find time to play and Darkfall is finally installed on my harddrive waiting for me to find a spare week to play it.

Sunday's Top 3

2009-08-25T20:59:00.000+01:00

3rd: Syncaine gives us a cataclysmic reality check.

2nd: Veneretio helps confused warriors in 3.2

1st: snafzg wants open PVP to be more meaningful.

SW:ToR

2009-08-23T16:04:00.001+01:00

Heartless is now of the opinion I've been expressing to anyone who would listen for months - SW:ToR is not going to be the second coming.

Development resources are limited and the full voice acting schtick is going to suck dry a huge portion of their budget and time. By declaring this their focus Bioware were effectively telling us that the gameplay would not be original or revolutionary.

I'm obviously still going to subscribe and play with friends who are excited about it, I like the IP, etc. It looks like it's going to be fun, just not the runaway best MMO ever. I would also love to proven wrong on this subject, it's just that thousands of rabid fanbois saying something doesn't make it true.

There's a link to the latest video on Heartless's site. (As I found it there I won't link it directly from here.)

Champions Online - 1st impressions.

2009-08-20T12:48:00.000+01:00

I didn't bother joining in with the first round "reviews" of Champions Online that most other blogs produced as they can all be summed up by: wtf is up with the patcher. I hadn't planned to play the first day anyway as I tend to assume there will be issues with things like this. 100k+ people all trying to patch their pre-installs at once was never likely to be the smoothest of experiences. My mind boggles at the people outraged they couldn't play immediately, and I'm left to wonder what sort of brain-damage would lead people to expect to be able to do so. Perhaps the drooling, twitching, Halo players decided to apply for open beta en masse...

And that thought should have started the alarm bells ringing for me, should have prepared me for what I was to face when I finally did log-in to CO and my previous serenity was swiftly kicked in the nads. It's a console game. Worse, a console game that looks and feels like something I could have played in the mid-90s. The collision detection is absurd, the physics engine bordering on ludicrous and the combat mindless button mashing. The tactical/strategical combat we were promised? Well, maybe if you compare it to Black Belt.

The voice acting is reminiscent of 50s B-movies. I hate it - and voice-acting is something I usually don't give two hoots about. As long as it's passable I don't care (which is probably why other people are getting boners over SWTOR and I'm predicting that the budget drain of this "feature" will gimp the game) - but this is just painful.

So far, I hate everything about the game. My gloomy predictions over Star Trek Online have also darkened. I don't see how a studio who can produce this steaming pile of turds could possibly produce a quality rendering of the ST IP.

As a disclaimer I should probably say that I'm playing with mouse and keyboard. Mouse movement. Just. Doesn't. Work. And I'm only a few hours in. I still have a lot of builds to try and a lot of content to see.

I have a friend who LOVES the game. He's a console gamer tho. I think what I'll do is go buy an xbox controller, adjust my expectations of CO considerably downwards and try again. I'm already committed to £65 and 6 mths of playtime, so I may as well explore it further to see if I can find a way to make this fun. Heck, I love a challenge. Although, I was going to warm up with something easier like feeding 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.

iki-wiki-fail

2009-08-17T14:58:00.000+01:00

Anyone who is a fan of Ikariam, especially if they are used to WoW, will understand that the quality of analysis available is pretty damn low. Material, when found at all, tends to be out-of-date or simply wrong. This is especially amusing in a game where theorycrafting the mechanics is so simple.

The ikariam wiki is probably one of the worst basic resource sites I've ever seen.

Here's an example from their entry on Glass Research:

"Note: the remaining research point will not be added on your scientist score!"

I wonder how many people this entry alone has scared away from using crystal to finish research, afraid that it would gimp their total score in the long-run.

It's completely false as one can ascertain simply by making note of one's scientist's score before buying a research and then checking it again after the hourly score update and noting that the difference is exactly what it should be.

Every cloud has a silver lining tho. The dearth of quality material on the game and the average gamer's unerring ability to fail whenever vaguely possible means that the gap between a new player with firing neurons and an established player is not as large as it can be in a real-time progression model. I'm about to burst through 100k points and have been playing only a month and a couple of days. In another month I will pass several established players that have been playing 8-15 months.

Top 3 of the week

2009-08-17T14:15:00.000+01:00

3rd:

Eric usually goes a fairly long time between posts, but his high signal-noise ratio and insider analysis mean that Elder Game is pretty much must-read material. Going back through the archives if this is your first time there is highly recommended.

2nd:

Goblin on challenge in games and the trend away from it in MMOs.

1st:

Syncaine argues for Eve's real-time progression system as the best skill-based character development system. I've long been a fan of the concept of "use it to improve it" skill systems, but maybe they are just too open to abuse to implement properly.

Honorable mentions:

I've been hoping for an excuse to mention Tony's LOTRO blog for a while, if only because a LOTRO blog that is updated regularly should be supported. Here's a quick post on how Bk 8 is reducing the "grind" portion of the lottery-grind that is legendaries.

Goblin takes a look at why BGs typically fail to live up to their potential as interesting strategic pvp. For those who know him (and if you're here without knowing him it means you're not clicking these top 3 links as I'm unashamedly a huge fan) it will not be a huge surprise to find where the blame is laid.

Syncaine makes another entertaining Darkfall post. Every time he writes about this game it increases my desire to find time to play it.

gaming update

2009-08-16T00:04:00.000+01:00

LOTRO:

After stalling at level 40 for a couple of weeks my warden has hit 43, revitalized in part by Master of the Spear speeding up gambit building - and partly by a quest where I chased Gollum across Tal Bruinen. Seeing Gollum ingame for the first time made my inner Tolkien-geek do a little happy dance. There is so much to like about LOTRO that whenever I give it a chance it delights me.

To make sure you see Gollum, remember to head to Echad Candelleth in the middle-south of the Trollshaws around level 40. This will also save you leveling from 40-41 the way I did with oldschool mob-grinding in the Misty Mountains after completing the easier MM/Angmar quests and finding myself underpowered for the next set in those zones.

While I don't want to form any strong opinions on the direction of development until I'm capped, I am following Orion's blog with interest.

Ikariam:

A sweet relief in this game is the absence of class choices, so no temptation to give into the 8th deadly sin of altitis. At least one would think that. In fact, some people do have accounts on several servers. Bizarre IMO.

I've broken through 85k points at the end of my first month of play and am now Diplomat of a small, but growing, alliance. The meteoric point gain is important because it means that in a couple of weeks (on this pace) I'll be able to contribute meaningfully to any war effort we involve ourselves in. Maintaining this pace is also challenging and I believe a lot of the fun of gaming is in stretching and testing yourself.

While the role of Diplomat is almost certain to turn into Warmonger eventually, for now it requires a more delicate touch. This is the game that I am probably enjoying the most at the moment and I'm still very early into the journey. Ikariam is essentially a political sandbox and I'm rapidly approaching the point where I can play without getting force-fed the sand.

WOW:

I started again briefly on EU-Wildhammer planning to reroll a tauren druid. Leveling up again quickly seemed like a chore tho and the reward just wouldn't match the cost of time put in. If I return to WoW at some point in the future it's very likely to be on US-Malfurion. And if I do I'm probably going to delete every character except my disc priest. Everytime you roll an alt, Sauron eats a puppy.

Champions Online:

Open Beta monday. On reflection, if this game isn't hopelessly broken at endgame I'll be shocked. But it should be a ton of fun. As I'm committed to 6 months anyway I don't need to go crazy with play during beta, but it'll probably take up most of my gaming time next week anyway.

Champion's Online

2009-08-12T17:26:00.000+01:00

Captured by a spirit of adventure after reading a post on the pre-launch offers of Champions Online, I've just pre-ordered and taken out a 6 month sub advance sub to this latest superhero MMO.

I know nothing about the pen-and-paper game, I haven't been following the dev cycle - hell a week ago I didn't even know the game existed. So the decision to buy sight-unseen may appear strange on the surface.

Access to the Star Trek Online Closed Beta, beginning later this year!

That's my main reason. As a huge Star Trek fan access to this beta is easily worth £65 to me. Not that I expect STO to be particularly good, we appear to be in a post-wow MMO depression where everyone is desperately trying to replicate the formula that lead to massive numbers and profits. Those numbers and profits come from appealing to super-casuals tho and a game that seeks to separate casual gamers from their housekeeping pennies is never going to be satisfying to people who actually like gaming. At this point I don't trust gaming companies to produce a quality experience and so I'm wary of games like STO and SWTOR even though most of friends are treating the latter like the Second Coming. (I'm obviously gonna buy it anyway tho as I'm a huge sucker for the IP)

This leads into my second reason for buying. I will support any game that dares to be different. (Aventurine, as soon as you release a 2nd EU server unplagued by the macro issues of the initial EU server I will buy, lifetime subscribe, send blood, whatever). I feel Champions Online qualifies based on what I've read (which is sparse and could be misleading as the NDA is still in effect). An action MMO with more involved combat, one where you need to think, is a good thing. The full customization options are also intriguing.

It's true that this game could be completely broken, that the balancing issues will kill it within weeks, that the much vaunted action combat could devolve into frantic random button mashing with the screen so cluttered that you may as well be tabbed out while rolling your face across the keyboard. It's highly likely that the game at launch will need heavy patching, be bug-ridden and have higher-level content unfinished. But it could also be awesome. I'm happy to take a small gamble and see.

Open beta starts Monday.

"Sunday's" Top 3

2009-08-10T12:13:00.000+01:00

It's late. Sue me.

3rd: Veneretio on Taunting and Diminishing Returns

Tanking tips is one of the sites that has remained at the top of my feed reader since I started playing MMOs. Consistently high quality and entertaining.

2nd: Syncaine makes me want to get around to trying Darkfall with a review and explanation of the combat system. If you despair at current easymode trends then Darkfall may be the answer.

1st: While it existed I had no inclination to play it. By the time I heard about it, it was already a terminal case. I was soured on the franchise anyway (and I suspect there are many who feel the same way) when it became a franchise diminishing a great movie with tedium and cynical exploitation of fans. But now that it has passed away I will join Colin Brennan of Massively in laying a wreath upon the coffin of The Matrix Online and taking a moment of silence to remember the interesting, novel gameplay aspects that we should have supported.

Helping Hands dead (Ikariam)

2009-08-06T22:54:00.001+01:00

The end of gold pillaging brought down resource prices considerably. Whereas before that 30g was normal per luxury good now they're selling at 4g-10g. This has effectively rendered Helping Hands (the tech that allowed you to overload workers at your island resources) near useless. Each unskilled worker you add only produces 25% of the good that the skilled worker does. This means that the normal cost of 3g per good is quadrupled to 12g per good. Even with a 30% bonus from a stonemason (or equivalent), each normal unit produced costs you 2.3g. Which means that if you can buy goods under 9.2g per unit you're better off doing that than overloading. A glance at the market on my server shows that even marble (typically the most expensive good) is selling in large quantities at 7g.

The exception to this is if you have ambrosia and spend it on a 20% increase in a particular good. Now (coupled with an L15 stonemason) the cost of each overloaded unit produced drops to 8g. Which will, on rare occasions, be a better deal than trading.

In summary, Helping Hands, may, occasionally, be useful, if you have a high level stonemason (or equivalent) and ambrosia (which you are spending on increasing that particular good production). As stated - near useless.

The changes that caused this are old news and will be obvious to many, but Ikariam has a large casual player-base - if you're just building and not involved in war or pillaging actives its possible to play just by logging in a couple of times a day. It's not optimal or efficient, but it's possible and over time you will slowly grow. Reading the forums, I'm constantly struck by how few people understand the rules/mechanics, and these are the people who found the forums - I'm convinced a large percentage of the player base has never stumbled upon them.

WoW 3.2 mount changes

2009-08-06T09:58:00.001+01:00

The gap between starting a toon and catching up with your level-capped friends is getting shortened in this patch.

In brief:

Mounts at level 20.
Fast ground mount are now available at 40 rather than 60.
Basic flying mount is now available at level 60 and is 150% of run speed instead of the painfully slow 60%.
Tome of Cold Weather Flight: New heirloom item. Players who have reached level 80 can now purchase this book for 1,000 gold. Similar to other heirloom items, this item can be mailed to other characters of the same realm, account and faction. The book is consumed when read training the character in Cold Weather Flying. Requires level 68.

Firstly, mounts at L20. This is huge. I vividly remember the relief I felt at finally getting an L40 mount. Then they changed it to L30 and suddenly stranglethorn vale got a whole lot easier/quicker for alts/noobs. This further reduction ramps up the speed of the 20-30 stretch considerably as this is when you do a lot of running for various flight points and have a lot of run-back-and-forth type quests. As the first twenty levels shoot by in a few hours there is now no stage where you have to make long runs on foot (the Thunder Bluff to Ogrimmar run at L13 or so is no more thanks to a connecting zeppelin and the alliance's wetlands run is long since a relic of the ancient past.) L20 also means there is no longer an on-foot bracket of Arathi Basin.

When mounts became accessible at level 30 instead of 40 there was an outcry from the forums decrying that WoW had turned easy-mode and was handing too much to noobs on a plate. “We had to do it the hard way – why don’t they?” type attitude. The speeding up of the leveling process is denounced in the same breath as other dumbing-down moves as blizzard seeks to cater to the lowest common denominator and maximise profits at the expense of quality gameplay. Similar grumblings are likely to be heard again about the new changes, yet I feel this only confuses the issue and detracts from the very real problems caused by entitled casuals who want access to every possible reward with minimal effort.

WoW is essentially an endgame game, whether you prefer to arena or raid. To arena or raid you need to be at level cap. It’s the start of the real WoW journey not the end. If you’re the type of gamer who disagrees with this and plays solely for the leveling, well, it’s likely that the reason you’re playing is to experience the newest content and to do that you need to be 68 (currently). So even if you decry the notion that one should rush to cap, if you believe the game is the questing journey and the endgame a boring repetitive trap to keep addicts forking over monthly fees – it still seems perfectly reasonable for Blizzard to speed up the process of reaching the new content. There are two ways for them to do this. First would be to reduce xp needed to level early, or increase the xp return from early mob kills/quest hand-ins. Blizzard has done all this before. This can be considered a mild form of dumbing-down as it lets you skip the more difficult/group-oriented content, and its arguable that this has a negative impact on the skills of people reaching the new content – people that you are likely to pug with. The second option is to reduce travel time – especially long runs to pick up flight points. It’s pointless dead time, existing solely to lengthen the leveling experience artificially. Wow has long since ceased to be an exploration game. When I first started I wasted time exploring, running into new areas to discover sections of the map and running back again because all the monsters were red. But I’d stopped doing this by level 20 when I realised there was no point. There were no unexplored, remote areas. Too few easter eggs. No point to wandering off the beaten track. It may sound strange considering how much I loved Keen’s reminiscense on old-world MMO exploration in EQ, but WoW is not an exploration game. That boat has sailed a long time ago with the arrival of flight pathes. WoW is a themepark – an on-rails guided experience – and there is no point in trying to make it something it isn’t. So given the choice between the two ways Blizzard can speed up a new players path to a level cap much higher than the orginal one, decreasing travel time where possible seems an automatic no-brainer. The changes to mounts are a fantastic thing – and will breath new life into a dying game for a while. Of course, the dumbing down of raiding, the suspected diversion of WoW’s budget into blizzard’s upcoming MMOs, the balance problems on the pvp side are all real issues and havent gone away. But the changes will bring in new players/characters and for all its multitude of problems and shortcomings WoW is still a whole of fun.

The only issue I have with the changes is that being able to fly at 60 does trivialise some of the Hellfire Peninsula content . HFP was probably the toughest levelling zone in BC. After that its pretty difficult to die oustide a dungeon, but those of us who started during BC will remember a few grisly smackdowns at the hands of mobs tuned to someone who had spent a year killing Onyxia and running Blackwing Lair – not a nublet running through the buring portal at 58 in quest greens. But Outlands is old content, people won’t see huge swathes of it anyway (Netherstorm I’m looking at you), and allowing new players to get to Northrend faster is better for everyone. So a trivialization of HFP seems a small price to pay for fantastic mount changes that are likely to breath new life into a dying game for a while.

Of course, the dumbing down of raiding, the suspected diversion of WoW’s budget into blizzard’s upcoming MMOs, and the pvp balance problems are all real issues and havent gone away. But giving Blizzard a hard time over obviously good changes just means its less likely we’ll be heard on the issues that do need addressing. And despite the multitude of problem it has, WoW is still a whole of fun.

two nostalgic pieces you need to read

2009-07-31T18:48:00.000+01:00

While reading through this week's gaming blog posts I came to the conclusion that I was hasty promising a Top 5 of the week every Sunday. This may be a slow week but I haven't found one post yet that I'd be happy including.

I did however find two more from last week. Keen looks back on EQ to discuss what we've lost in today's MMORPG world.

The world.

Meaningful faction.

I've never played EQ. I want to. Reading posts like Keen's makes me want to even more, even though I know, rationally, the experience is unlikely to be the same now.

Whether or not you've ever played EQ and feel like a misty-eyed stroll down memory lane, if you love gaming you need to read these posts.

EVE 5 day free return offer

2009-07-30T15:41:00.000+01:00

The 5 days free offer has been sitting in my inbox since I was in vegas and I've been steadfastly trying to ignore it. I tried EVE; being impulsive I even bought the game immediately instead of playing the trial. On the other hand, saying I tried EVE is disingenuous; I played for a few hours had no clue what I was supposed to be doing and stopped. It was immediately after I stopped playing WoW though so my brain had obviously reached a point of atrophy and was unable to handle a non-themepark game at the time.

So, I've just taken advantage and am reinstalling EVE on my gaming machine. I will replay through the tutorial and see if it makes any more sense this time around.

Initial concerns I have about the game (which while they may be baseless have come from light reading around EVE and are probably shared by other potential players):

Buying ISK for real money. This may make mining ore, etc, essentially pointless. Even people on a low income are likely to find that the opportunity cost of earning ISK for themselves is too high. Or at least they would if they ever considered such things. For the rational this means the cost of the game has now gone up, and one needs to make sure the level of enjoyment from the "fun parts" is commensurate to this increased cost. (On the surface ones' playtime may decrease, making the monthly fee appear to be worse value, but this is an illusion as "funtime" will be at least as long as before you just liberate the hours you spent grinding to either spend ingame having fun or on RL stuff)

On a sidenote there will be people reading this, railing against the previous paragraph and declaring that they enjoy the mindless grind of gathering for virtual cash. We will now take a moment of silence for their souls. We salute you.

The aforementioned "fun" in EVE seems to come from pvp in 0,0 space. This area appears impossible to get to without a strong pvp alliance. And is probably truly fun for only a small core of that alliance at the top and not so much fun for the grunts.

The guild drama in EVE that is so enthralling to read about is going to both be a lot more fun to read about that to experience and impossible to be a part of until you've been playing for years.

It may become clearer if I can get past the initial stages this time, but it's hard for me to see from whence my fun will cometh.

Skill based systems that you train over time like EVE mean that it's somewhere in the vicinity of impossible for newer players to catch up to older players. How much of an issue this is remains to be seen.

I sound pretty negative about the game, but I want to like it. I badly wanted to like it when I first played it, ignoring the trial and buying it to encourage myself to like it. I'm intellectually rebelling against theme-park mmorpgs - especially in their current, dumbed down "to the ground, baby" incarnations. I desperately want to find a sandbox I find fulfilling.

I'll post about EVE again after the 5 days up.

In other gaming news I've barely played LOTRO for the past week, work supplanting my LOTRO time. Ikariam hasn't suffered a similar fate as I can play it much more easily while working. The appeal of a good browser game is becoming clear. I've shot through 20k points now and am considering changing my username to the rocketship.

Sunday's Top 5 MMO posts of the week

2009-07-26T13:43:00.000+01:00

I tend to start most days reading the MMO posts in my blog reader over a cup of hot chocolate while I finish waking up. Of course not everyone has the time to do this so my Sunday post will now a top 5 of the previous week's MMO posts. They will sometimes be WoW-heavy but that's simply because WoW blogging is the most prevalent form and I expect 99% of the posts I pick to have educational value where the theory has applications beyond the game in question. On that note most will also be educational posts but an awesome review/gaming update may sneak in.

5th place:

Ironshield on keeping old tank gear - One of those things that seems obvious as long as you know it.

4th place:

The greedy goblin reiterates his position on AH pricing for max profit. I used to be a double-gatherer and I used to undercut by silvers. It took me quite a while to come to his conclusions for myself so you can imagine my disgust to find his blog and have it all laid out there. His blog contains the "secrets" to making MMO gold efficiently - and less time farming gold = more time actually playing.

3rd place:

Goblin again on why MMO companies fail so hard at balancing. The dumbing down of games is extremely frustrating and the people who rail against this, such as goblin and syncaine tend to be the top priority on my reading list.

2nd place:

Yep, it's goblin again. But understanding this post will make you and your guild more money (which translates into less of your playtime spent grinding and more doing what you enjoy in the game)

1st place.

It's gobl- wait, no it's not (phew), it's Joveta on the frustrations and ill-treatment of raiding healers. Not that we'd ever expect the dps-monkeys to get it.

ikariam

2009-07-23T10:25:00.001+01:00

I was first introduced to Ikariam in October by a friend who got lost getting from BC to WotLK. (As it turned out I left WoW a couple months later anyway) and I thought it sucked. My initial thoughts were that it was slow, boring and incomprehensible. I didn't give it a fair shake.

The friend stayed and amassed a 900k score in 9 months or so, shooting past many long time players stuck in the 300k-600k range. Somehow I ended up giving it another try 2 weeks ago and this time what I found was an intricate and involved mathematical wargame, where diplomacy was an asset and strategical thinking key. While not always catastrophic, mistakes have the potential to be punished. Hard.

The early stages are mainly about building while trying to get yourself left alone by bigger guys so that you can grow. People can shut down your development if they want to so the order of the day is making friends not enemies who can crush you with their pinky.

My recommendations for people starting out:

1) If you have RL friends who play move near them, you'll be able to do it after a few days play and the week you "lose" is a small investment in the future. The time isn't completely wasted either as you will have got some vital research done in that period.

2) Don't settle on the edge of the map, it restricts your trade radius and will make it less interesting at endgame as it'll be harder for you to get involved.

3) Settle on a marble island then go wine, marble, crystal, sulfur (it's spelt that way in game)

4) Don't bother building a large army early - you need the gold for other things than upkeep on a force that is predestined to be destroyed the moment anyone attacks (everyone is bigger than you by a huge factor). Keep enough forces to pillage inactives and you can just replace units as they die and they'll be ready for the next pillage when your ships get home.

5) Focus on building hideouts (and filling them with spies) and a wall. Build one ship in each harbor for nuisance value. The point is while you're going to die if someone determines you should you can protect yourself by making other people look like better targets. Some pillagers search for people with a zero military score and blind pillage, others spy out 1st. With a ship in each harbour and built up hideouts to discourage spying you're far more likely to be just be able to put your head down, build, and be left alone.

6) Research early is vital as it gives huge benefits for little cost, but at some point I feel you should make a judgement and stop research to save gold while focussing on maxing your town's population and buying trade ships to go pillaging with. When your population is enough to max out the mills/quarries and you start getting a small surplus you can sell that for the gold to fund max research/more ships.

7) Plan your towns. If you have some spare building slots you're not likely to use for a few days throw low level carpenters/foresters into them. The first few levels pay for themselves immediately and will end up saving you a fair amount of material, even if your town plan means you'll be replacing them at some point.

Ikariam isn't time intensive at all as buildings/forces are made in real time, research is done in real time etc. Even the early buildings take 15 minutes to complete and you swiftly get to the stage of multi-day research and buildings that take several hours. As long as you have regular computer access you just start something and walk away/tab out. Being at war will require more careful monitoring but general gameplay is a tab in when you get a spare moment and then tab back out affair, so it doesn't decrease productivity very much at all.

Despite losing a few days relocating across 70(!) islands I'm up to 16 ships and 7400 pts. And having a ton of fun.

It's likely I will never be able to catch my friend's score, but that's not a huge issue as within a couple of months I'll be a force to be reckoned with. It seems similar to EVE in this way, long time players are very hard to overtake but it isn't gamebreaking for newer players.

back from overseas

2009-07-19T10:57:00.000+01:00

I managed to play a little lotro while overseas (Warden 40), the connection was actually fine for soloing and i only got about 80ms extra ping for being on a different continent. I was there to work tho so gaming definitely took a backseat. Now I'm back started duo-ing my guardian (20 +the undying title) with a loremaster. I'm really not sure which will end up being my main but I'm probably going to just focus on these two to the exclusion of all others. I don't want lotro (or gaming in general) taking too much time away from work at the moment.

Ost Alagos, Far Chetwood Eastern Breefields.

2009-06-11T10:52:00.000+01:00

If you've never been you have to check this area out. I'd somehow failed to notice the big empty patch in the NW of my Bree map, having been busy with the extreme amount of work that is making crafting partially worthwhile in Lotro. I needed to find 24 ash tho while waiting for a group for B2Ch3 and the road from Forsaken Inn had been picked clean so I found myself headng North through the Weather Hills. At some point I jumped off this huge cliff into the water below and was suprised to find that I can actually die from falling instead of just breaking my leg. It was somewhat bizarre that my first falling death resulted from landing in water but whatever. (I think the falling mechanics are better in WoW but I'm liking Lotro a lot more as a game.)

Then I run across these elite 19 trolls (Ost Alagos) and wonder wtf is going on - I don't remember any quests sending me here. I skip them and head into Far Chetwood - I pick up twice the ash I need almost instantly and a ton of ore. Sweet farming spot. Then spend a few minutes more heading back across the Eastern Breefields. The whole area is delightfully empty of other players. I imagine that's because there is no real reason to be there.

Unfinished areas of WoW in the old world like the centre of Duskwood or the far NE corner of Ashenvale were irritating, but I found this patch of Middle-earth charming. Part of the difference may be simply having far more attachment to the IP here, but I think it's more that these areas arent filled with max level elites so you can simply explore. It's also a premium spot for T2 materials and for grinding the sicklefly deed.

As regards my earlier comment on crafting in Lotro I *knew* from the forums that there was little point in it, but felt oddly compelled to do so anyway. Between my toons I have all the professions and they are all wearing mainly crafted gear better than any rewards available. However the levelling time I save from doing this doesn't offset the time I spend on crafting. I could have simply sold all the mats I'd gathered, bought premium gear from the AH and finished ahead in time and money. But where would be the fun in that? I like having max levelled crafting on toons.

Warden 29 Explorer
Champion 19 Armsman
Guardian 16 Armourer
Minstrel 14 Tinker
Captain 7 Scholar (Supreme Master Farmer)

The Captain is waiting for my wife to start playing and maxing farming only took a day of barely paying attention while working in another window.

LOTRO update

2009-05-26T18:02:00.000+01:00

Surprisingly LOTRO worked fine on my laptop. I say surprisingly because my laptop laughed in my face when I tried to log into a toon in Dalaran in December and the resulting week off is part of what allowed me to break away from WoW and sample the wider world of MMOs. Of course I was only in the newbie zones and I have no doubt a raid would cause my faithful old Dell to explode. What it did allow me to do was roll each of the classes through the intro to see what I fancied continuing with.

The Minstrel is almost certain to be my main, as it should be the easiest route to finding a group/kin and developing ingame friends. Now I have more MMO experience than I started with I understand that grouping is the entire point. In a similar way that getting married gave a point to my success in my chosen work field, MMO satisfaction would be lacking without grouping and a good kinship (guild). Success is often empty without someone to share it with. I soloed my way through most of WoW initially rushing to catch up with friends so I could arena with them, when they left the game I was stuck without group/tank experience on the warrior and ended up rerolling to experience raiding. I raided as a priest in WotLK and I feel a Minstrel is my best way into a good kin. A good healer is unlikely to ever be left on the sidelines. It's also fun enough to solo level where needed as I can drop most mobs shortly after they reach me. It certainly seems more viable than wanding and self-healing as a priest in WoW's early grind.

As the main reason I chose LOTRO over alternatives was because I felt it would be the most accessible game for my pvp-hating wife, I also need a toon to play with her. That will be the Captain. Although I was initially dismissive the Captain looks like a fun and challenging group role. If she rolls a 2nd toon I'll roll a guardian with her. Playing it through the intro zone made me miss my WotLK warrior that I levelled from 70-80 as Prot. WotlK made Prot a blast to play, shield slam crits anyone? Warden is the other playstyle that interests me, but my first impression is that the gambits will be hard to remember and utilise optimally unless playing it as your main.

Hopefully LOTRO endgame has more to it than people say, but I'm a huge fan of the IP and with so much of the story left to tell a lifetime sub will be great value whatever as I'll def be there at the end. As long as I make some friends in game, improve my grouping skills and my overall MMO skill I will consider the trip to middle-earth a success.

Darkfall Online

2009-05-23T00:15:00.000+01:00

The fallout from the Eurogamer "review" of Darkfall brought the game to my attention. The scandal has been covered in detail on many other blogs, but cliff notes are as follows:

Ed Zitron gives Darkfall 2/10 in an EG review.
Haters jump on the "haha darkfail" bandwagon.
People who actually play Darkfall point out that Ed's review is factually flawed at almost every line and Ed either didn't actually play the game or he really is... special.
Aventurine reviews game logs and point out that Ed only played for 2 hrs not his claimed 9 and most of that was spent on the character creation screen.

The game itself looks interesting for anyone who still wants MMOs to be a challenge and reward skill. (I know thats a shocking concept in today's MMO world where if the suckiest of players can't do something they start cryng how unfair it is.) I'm almost certain to try Darkfall when I get home, and that's a direct result of the exposure Ed Zitron has inadvertently given Aventurine. I doubt I am the only one. So this could end up being a great thing to happen.

But that's hardly the point. Just because it's on teh internetz doesn't mean that journalistic standards don't apply. It's not a forum post, it's not a blog, it's supposed to be a review on a gaming website. Eurogamer should accept editorial responsibility, apologise, and ensure they never use Mr Zitron again. Ed should probably just hang himself, but is more likely to simple change pseudonyms and keep hacking away. (I am curious what possessed him to do something this stupid though, if he wanted to slack he could have just waffled ambivalently and given it 6/10)

On a side note, reading the comments on the original article is not for the faint of heart. It's depressing to see that a large percentage of the online MMO community I'm becoming a part of is near brain-dead and can't see the distinction between a fact (or in this case an outright lie) and an opinion.

On the other hand there are people like syncaine around and his blog Hardcore Casual has shot to the top of my must-read list. I'm looking forward to going back and reading his archives and once again thank Ed Zitron for his aid in my finding it.

7 character slots - 9 classes

2009-05-18T23:28:00.001+01:00

So my human champion hit 16 and I suddenly remember my wow experience where I only found my favourite class, priest, after levelling a warrior to cap and warlock+rogue to Tanaris. My initial choices were almost random and I swore that in my next MMO I would try out each class before deciding on a main. So I halted progress partway through the level 15 Class quest and researched rolling another character.

Now the forums seem to laregly frown on min-max questions cos LOTRO is "not that sort of game" so the official line seems to be it doesn't matter what race/class combos you choose. Screw that. It matters to me. The endgame may be developed at some point and I'd rather not have a gimped character when it does. Except for role play reasons I can't think of a single good reason for even slightly gimping your toon. Besides, the research and number crunching is part of the fun.

So what race/class goes really well togther. Oh. Elf Hunter. Check out that Agility.

So Gildras was born. I only had time to play for a few minutes to get to level 3 and as I stopped I suddenly realised I had a problem.

Gildras is already born so I don't want to kill him (besides even tho its not my normal play style hunter could be pretty cool for some wind down fps style action after work). I already have significant time put into my Champion and although I anticipate grouping being difficult with an overplayed class I love fervour grinding - 'zerker warrior anyone?

I'll def be rolling both a dwarf guardian and a minstrel of as yet undetermined race. Warden looks really interesting and although after a brief look I can't tell wtf is going on with RuneKeepers its probably worth a try - after all expansion classes tend to be more involved and usually op compared to original classes (for obvious reasons). Captain could be worth a try, Loremasters seem to enjoy their class a lot and hey, how can I not roll a hobbit burglar? So that adds up to..... Damn.

Captain is almost certainly going to miss the cut and the real choice will be what to leave out from burglar, loremaster and runekeeper.

I'm away for a week and my laptop is almost certain to refuse to run LOTRO so I have plenty of time to research. I still need to decide which toon will be the one I level with my wife tho.

First Impressions

2009-05-16T18:39:00.001+01:00

I'm just shy of level 10 after my first foray into middle-earth.

Too easy? My initial impression is yes. While it's pretty hard to die in WoW if you know what you're doing it's also easy to die if you don't. Starting Lotro I was just pressing keys randomly and everything around me would die. On the other hand it's been such a long time since starting WoW that its very possible it was like this there as well and I've just forgotten. It's very possible that Lotro will have a similar learning curve to WoW and get more challenging as I get deeper into the game.

Lack of endgame? Before buying I had the idea that raiding in Lotro would be less involved than WoW and that was fine. However some reading around seems to suggest that Lotro doesnt even have an endgame, although the author also suggested that no MMO does which Blizzard's monster would dispute (most of us think that the real WoW game starts at level-cap). Until I get there I won't know. The thing that concerned me most was reading that crafted epics were equivalent to drops from raids. Say what? Why the fuck would you do that?

Roll a healer? Maybe. For a time I really enjoyed my disc priest in WotLK and a large part of that was running heroics and naxx, but on the other hand it often felt like I was working, the tank was working almost as hard and the dps were just faeces-munching monkeys. If I find a kinship I like and raiding isnt a waste of time I will almost certainly roll a minstrel if needed.

Regrets over purchase? Hell no. At the very worst I have an entertaining diversion exploring middle-earth and some much needed downtime to keep me fresh for work. And if I tire of it I can stop for a few mths and play again at the next expansion. As the current Lotro content seems to only be 1/3 or so of the final content planned and expansions will be spaced some time apart I have a feeling that my lifetime membership will not be wasted value.

(Although... the economist in me just realised that if their entire player base is on lifetime subs then the makers have no incentive to create new content to keep the subscribers subscribing!)

Vocation? Torn between Armsman and Explorer. Explorer seems the safe choice and i'll probably take it just because the 1st toon in any mmo should probably be a gatherer to garner you gold and make your life and that of your alts much easier. If it turns out that weaponsmith is vital to being a champion I will revisit the choice later but at the moment it seems too niche to risk levelling it with no idea how the endgame looks. On top of which I would have the twin issues of being cash-starved to even level weaponsmithing and having no kinship as yet to provode wood for woodworking. Yep, having written that the choice seems simpler - Explorer.

Fun so far? Definitely. It was with a measure of sadness that I closed the client to start work.

Clearing out my google reader

2009-05-16T12:55:00.000+01:00

Since I stopped playing WoW at christmas, and so stopped reading the wow blogs I had filled my google reader with a return to my reader page shows its overflowing. Time for some housekeeping methinks.

I've just deleted 90% of my subscriptions in a purge. So which blogs have the honour of remaining?

http://cantankwilltravel.blogspot.com/

http://www.tankingtips.com/

http://egotisticalpriest.com/

http://www.worldofmatticus.com/

www.angryraidleader.com

http://kaliope.wordpress.com

http://woweconomist.com/blog

http://snarkcraft.wordpress.com

My favourite blog:

http://tagn.wordpress.com

and one I found today while looking for lotro blogs to fill my reader with as I research my new game

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/

LOTRO and before

2009-05-16T12:04:00.000+01:00

LOTRO arrived in the mail today and on impulse I bought the lifetime subscription. The main focus of my semi-regular, semi-coherenty, ramblings here will be my journey in learning to play LOTRO. As I'm patching updates at the moment I have nothing to say about the actual game yet, apart from that a brief look at the manuals gives me the impression that I should probably start with a champion in the same way I started with a warrior in WoW.

I grew up on text adventure games on the speccy 48k and I fell into them in a huge way, staying up late stuck on a puzzle, having the answer come to me in a dream and then waking up early. At which point I would try to find the balance between rushing downstairs to the computer while not waking my parents. Break-times between school lessons were obviously spent writing my own adventures which I would program with PAW after school.

I then spent a decade from Uni onwards doing very little computer gaming, tho looking back the part of me that loved to game was just sidetracked into other pursuits such as chess, and obviously working for a living one has less time to pursue frivolity than one does at 15. I also seem to remember a few rpgs on various consoles tho other than final fantasy something the names escape me.

Then 2 years ago a friend got me into WoW and online gaming consumed my soul. WoW still holds a special place in my heart but aspects of it annoy me and I've been searching for something better. I tried Eve briefly but it didn't captivate me and WAR left me cold, so I returned to WoW but struggled to get back into my old toons. If LOTRO turns out to be the big steaming pile of turd that a lot of WoW-ers claim it to be I may end up back in wow, probably rerolling a horde druid on an EU server and focussing on arena and some casual raiding.

But for every "LOTRO sucks" post I find, I'm finding others that adore the game. I'm excited waiting for it to patch.