Pumping Irony

The first weekend of 2009 was kinda a bust, mostly because I’ve had serious insomnia all week and it’s catching up and hitting me hard. I did manage to get a full night’s sleep last night and feel better today at least, but I’m also afraid that will just cause an insomnia reset and start it all over again tonight. I’ve always had trouble sleeping; too often my mind and imagination will continue to race along regardless how tired my body may be. Eventually I end up in a situation of being too tired to sleep at all so I get back up and go about the day in a state of incoherence. Lately though some of my joints hurt which adds to the problem of not being able to sleep. If I sit, stand, walk, run, whatever they’re fine but once I lie down the ache starts up. What the hell? I’ve been asked to monitor my food intake, especially later in the day and evening, apparently watching for higher levels of sodium and/or processed sugar. My girlfriend is sodium-intolerant so I’ve taught myself to lay off the sodium too, but she did get me a metric ton of chocolate treats for the holidays. I’m being quite conservative with them (I can barely tell I’ve touched the heap) but perhaps there’s something to the sugar, I don’t know.

My girlfriend has been wanting a body wave in her hair for some mystery reason but she’s been turned away three times now because her hair is already highlighted. I have no idea what one has to do with the other; I certainly see enough celebrities with both color and styling. She finally found someone who would do it and made the appointment for Saturday morning. I got the phone call afterward as she was driving home that she had on her hat and oversized sunglasses, hiding out of embarrassment. “I look like the Jackson Five!” she cried. I have a feeling they gave her a perm, not a body wave, just going from her description but I haven’t seen it yet. She was driving straight home to hide and soak it in cream rinse and she wasn’t going to allow me to see it. I was hoping she’d calm down by Sunday so we could do something together but no luck, she was still freaked over the hair. She’s at work today so she must have managed to de-afro it or she’s hiding in her office all day.

Aside from laughing at my girlfriend’s follicle fiasco, you’re probably impatient for me to get to the games!

On the PC front, I finished up the Yule Festival in LOTRO, getting the Yule Horse mount for Arwellyn’s collection then the yule-fest wallpaper and the elven snowglobe (with a miniature replica of Elrond’s “Last Homely House” inside) to decorate her house. I was hoping to get the wrapped gifts decoration too, but no such luck this year. That and the wreath were the only remaining decorations I was interested in but since the Yule gifts were random upon opening the boxes I never did win them. Next year, I guess. I did turn in a single quest for some XP — she’s about 1.5 bubbles from 57 now — but that was it.

Otherwise the little gaming I did was on the 360. Starting with some Frontlines: Fuel of War online I managed to do surprisingly well (for me anyway) and we had some really intense fights. I’m debating whether to spend the 800 Microsoft Points for the DLC pack with new maps or not. Many of the servers were using the new maps, and I hear the Hindsight map is really awesome. But I managed to find enough busy servers to keep me entertained. I’m pretty impressed with the map design in Frontlines, especially the urban ones. They’re quite busy and packed with nooks and crannies to explore and get places that may not be obvious. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the linear and small maps most shooters have. I also put some time last night into Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2’s story mode (single player campaign) finally getting past the checkpoint I’ve been stuck at for so long. I think I also achieved Marksman level 8, and am about halfway to my next experience level (no idea what level I am currently). Vegas 2 really kicked up the RPG elements more than most modern shooters, where you get XP for every kill as well as for special kills such as headshots, killing an enemy on a rope, long range or short range, killing an enemy who’s hidden in cover, etc. I haven’t played around with what all that stuff will end up meaning in the long run yet, but just like getting XP in an RPG, it definitely appeals to the Instant Gratification urges. On the other hand, the R6:Vegas games are some of the most difficult (dare I say hardcore?) shooters I’ve ever played too. No COD4 style hand-holding and aiming assistance here, no sir! The AI is downright vicious and it only takes a couple hits (or a single headshot) to kill you no matter what your level or equipment is. But it also fits right in with the more realistic and tactical pace of what the game is trying to do versus playing through the highly scripted maps of COD4 where you always have a good chance to succeed (unless you’re on the highest difficulty which is stupid hard).

The majority of my 360 time was spent with Tom Clancy’s EndWar, however. I used some gift money to pick it up Saturday morning and what a gem this is! I’ve said before that, while I enjoy RTS’ I’ve never been very good at them. The more recent batch has failed to hold my interest (mostly because of the pull of MMOs) and the console versions of both Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 and Command & Conquer 3 were both too same ol’, same ol’ for me (not even getting into BFME2’s atrocious performance). I don’t have the attention or focus for base building and resource gathering, which is why I more readily took to Massive Entertainment’s “Action RTS” (Ubisoft calls EndWar “real time tactical” or RTT) games such as Ground Control, Ground Control 2 and World in Conflict. They skip the base building and micro-management and put you directly into the action. I also mean that quite literally, since they’re full 3D games not the old-style 2.5D overhead view, so you can truly get right down into the action. EndWar follows suit in glorious fashion, with gorgeous 3D graphics, fast performance and plenty of explosive eye candy. Unlike BFME2 and C&C3, EndWar is not a port of a PC game; it was designed for the 360 and uses the console’s strengths and limitations to its advantage.

EndWar’s uses a rock, paper, scissors style combat chain. Tanks beat Transports. Transports beat Gunships. Gunships beat Tanks. Two infantry types are also available. Both are very powerful — probably the most powerful of all units — but are limited by their slow travel speed (unless inside a Transport) and vulnerability while exposed. You can have infantry take cover or garrison buildings to protect them as well as giving them a longer attack range and increased rate of attack. However the enemy can target the cover or buildings and destroy them, taking your infantry with them. Engineers are the slowest infantry but can both secure (capture) and upgrade uplinks. They use rocket launchers and other heavy weaponry so when under cover can be used to take out enemy vehicles. They can be upgraded to deploy minefields and other explosive anti-vehicle attacks. Riflemen run faster than engineers and have very strong attacks when under cover but can only secure an uplink, not upgrade it. They can be upgraded with stealth armor and sniper rifles. Familiarizing yourself with the combat chain and which units are strong or weak against others helps you with your own battle strategy.

RTS have always been tricky to control and manage with console controllers. EA used a fairly quick drop-menu selection in BFME2 and C&C3 (both games used the same engine) which worked well enough. Ubisoft took things to the next step: voice recognition! Unlike the poor attempts at voice recognition in the past, Ubisoft should really be commended on their work here — the voice recognition in EndWar is fast and nearly flawless. During the voice training phase it only missed a single phrase and once trained it’s only missed a couple commands. Given my insomnia-induced state of incoherence and exhaustion, I more than likely muttered or slurred my words. It uses a simple Who, What, Where format which is fast to say and fast to execute. “Unit 2 attack Hostile 3″ or “Unit 4 move to Zulu” or similar commands tells your units what to do. To switch camera I can use the D-pad then press the X button or simply say “unit # camera” and the camera quickly scrolls to the selected unit. Need more units? Again use the D-pad to select which unit type or simply say “deploy [unit type]” and it’s done! Practically every function in the game can be accomplished with voice commands, the main exception being instructing your infantry to take cover or garrison a building; you have to do that manually with the controller, but you can use voice command to tell them to secure an uplink. I’ve tried various voice recognition software over the years with disappointing results. EndWar has changed my mind and actually made me wonder how much use the application of voice recognition could have in gaming, and not just the strategy genre. Even if you have an intense dislike of all things RTS, EndWar is worth a rental just to see what a great job Ubisoft did with the voice command system.

EndWar uses a large and complex campaign system. The offline single player mode is called World War III and unlike normal single player games, each battle matters. If I lose a battle, I’ve lost that battle permanently, there’s no restarting from the previous save point to try again. There are three factions: US, Europe and Russia. Each has the same overall unit types but they all have distinct attributes. Russians tend to be the slowest but most heavily armed, for example. I think I read the US units have the fastest speed. I’m only at the beginning of the WW3 campaign and during an accidental click-fest I appear to have chosen Europe as my faction for now.

EndWar’s online mode is called Theater of War, which is labeled a “massive multiplayer” campaign. My understanding of how ToW works is limited to a small amount of reading so far; I’ve not ventured online myself yet since… I suck at RTS games. Each battle you fight is 1v1 or 2v2 in a given map. It’s the total amount of victories or defeats in a given region from all players which are tallied at the end of the day to determine any movement in each faction’s frontlines, including eventually sacking the enemy’s capitol city. I suppose this could be considered a blend of standard RTS multiplayer with the “massive multiplayer” aspect being tracking the total activity each day to determine each faction’s gains, losses and movement in a three-faction RvR war.

My only complaint with EndWar is… me. As I said, I suck at RTS. Badly. I do have one XBL friend who owns the game but he’s Australian so the time difference is an issue. Also, like me, he’s mostly a LOTRO player so getting him out of Middle Earth and onto the 360 can be a challenge but I’ll see if he can give me some EndWar 101 lessons sometime while I plod along myself and hope to actually get a clue about strategies one of these days.

The past few weeks the citizens of Tyria and Elona have been preparing for Wintersday. Lion’s Arch and Kamadan are decorated and NPC’s offer holiday games and quests. Ascalon City and Droknar’s Forge are decorated too but the only event is delivering presents to children while grentches try to steal them; that event also plays in Lion’s Arch and Kamadan. This year, however, marks the Wintersday celebration at the Eye of the North outpost in the Far Shiverpeaks which has been decorated and offers four brand-new quests and a new 8v8 PvP snowball tournaments.

Completing all four quests makes the Jingle Bear, found outside the outpost in Gwen’s Garden, charmable by characters with a Ranger profession.

Today is the actual Wintersday celebration where every three hours the avatars of Dwayna and Grenth appeal to players for their support. Grenth wants to continue winter’s cycle of death while Dwayna is ready to thaw and bring new life. This year’s reward hats are Rudi’s Mask (Dwayna) and a Grentch Cap (Grenth).

Finally, the popular Secret Lair of the Snowmen dungeon from last year is back! I never did manage to complete that one last year and since today is the final day of Wintersday I doubt I will get a chance to give it another shot this time either.

What a bumpy ride 2008 has been! No one was safe, from banks to automakers to game developers and the games themselves. The downward spiral is continuing into 2009 but I must have a sense of optimism looking forward. Things always get better. We always prevail.

Regarding this blog, I’ve only ran one other blog (not gaming related) that received less traffic than Pumping Irony. On the other hand, while I certainly am an attention whore (never quite outgrew that, I guess) I’m not out for Tobold numbers either. This isn’t a gaming news site, and certainly not a gaming “twitch news” site like Blues News (I ran one of those years ago too and… whew). Yes, I get excited when Massively or Virgin Worlds links to an article and I see the daily traffic go through the roof — who wouldn’t? — but guess what? Those visitors are only passing through; they read what was linked then move on never to return. Even when I feel I’m writing for myself and no one else, those of you who read every article either on the site or on the RSS and then stop by to comment and participate make it all worthwhile. Wordpress sends a text message to my phone every time a comment is posted, and seeing that makes me smile and impatient to come read what was said. That matters far more to me and I’ll take my small community of regulars any day over a large amount of cold and impersonal numbers.

That said, I did get a few bits of attention, starting in February when I received Blog of the Week on Shut Up, We’re Talking #19 when Darren mentioned my article comparing MMO grouping to that found in Battlefield 2142. Then in May I was asked to be a guest on Shut Up, We’re Talking #26 which was terrifying but fun. Massively also linked to my article on APB which fit with what I said in the previous paragraph with a large daily traffic boost but no commentary here. After the SUWT appearance my girlfriend and I went to the Florida Keys for several days for my birthday — an unwelcome milestone — then immediately upon returning to work on the last day of May I had “the incident” which prompted the FAA to suspend my certificate and has prevented me from flying the rest of the year. July saw a return appearance on SUWT for the infamous show #30 which generated a metric ton of negative commentary essentially because all four of us felt nearly the same on every topic; there was no opposing views. Much ado about nothing really, I’ve had plenty of opposing views on things Darren and Karen have said but it just so happened that none of them were on that show. Darren did make a comment (I forget if it ended up in the show or was edited out) that has always nagged me and I so badly wanted to interrupt Darren and call him out on it but it’s his show and as he repeatedly said in the #30 thread, SUWT is a roundtable discussion format not a debate. On the one hand I regret not saying something but on the other, it’s rude to interrupt and I was very aware of the format so I backed off and remained silent. I’ve not been asked back to SUWT since the #30 meltdown, but there are plenty of bloggers out there who I’d like to hear and honestly I did think it was strange that #30 had the exact same roster as #26. I think it would have been better to spread things out though rather than having us back on a mere 4 shows later. I wouldn’t mind making a reappearance in 2009 but quite frankly I don’t blame Darren a bit for not having me on because the whole aftermath of “the incident” left me feeling as if suddenly any and all control of my life had been wrested from me and it was all in the hands of doctors and a government agency with me having no say in the matter. I withdrew into myself and went into a state of depression and negativity that I am only recently climbing out of. I notice now that some of my comments on Darren’s blog and others really came off as snipes, very snarky, negative and unwarranted. I will apologize for those and I truly hope I have not been universally regarded as a major jerk, both here and at my favorite blogs I participate in.

MMO-wise, 2008 was a disaster. Two of the highest-profile games of recent years launched way over-hyped and under-developed. Age of Conan and Warhammer both launched to huge sales then witnessed an equally huge drop in subscribers over the following couple months. I was in late beta for AoC and did my share of griping over how boring a lot of the level 1-20 Tortage content was, so much running back and forth and most of it switching to a solo single-player game for the story. I wanted so badly to hurry up and get out of Tortage to see the real world. Then as soon as I did, I wanted even more to return to Tortage — the discrepancy in content and execution between Tortage and Everything Else was glaring and suddenly you felt as if the blinders had been removed; that you’d walked behind the curtain to realize the Wizard of Oz was just an eccentric old man from a mid-Western carnival. 20 levels of storyline, cutscenes, and voiceovers gave way to a generic and uninspired “world” filled with the most generic content imaginable with only breasts, blood sprays and DDR combos to differentiate itself. No thanks. I already have DDR on the 360, it completely and utterly fails as “combat” in a Diku-MMO. Warhammer put me in an interesting situation. For unknown reasons, I have never liked the Warhammer IP even as a kid when miniatures games became all the rage (due to Warhammer). I largely ignored WAR’s development until only a month or two prior to launch everyone’s excitement finally got the better of me and I pre-ordered the game. I should have stuck with my gut instinct and stayed away. I liked the look and description of the characters but the world itself was so incredibly bland and vanilla, I never had any interest nor inclination to explore. The tiny smattering of PvE content was always the same Kill Ten Rats and Collect Ten Rat Tails. Or the Kill Collector NPC who asked “Oh, you just happened to have killed 20 rats? Here’s a reward!” which could have been done so much better. Pre-ordering the game from Amazon caused it to arrive a few days after launch so I had a total of three days with any other players doing anything in Tier 1 before I was alone and unable to find a group for anything after the launch day players had moved on. No one said a single word in chat. Ever. That was shocking to me. After all the MMOGs I’ve played over the years, I had never encountered one, not even the worst possible Asian F2P filled with bots, that was as utterly antisocial as WAR during its first month. These days I read AoC’s performance is better but that the content promised at launch is still absent. I’m reading WAR at version 1.1 is where it should have launched, but I’m not reading anything yet that will change my mind and bring me back yet. I think it’s on its way and perhaps in another three months it might have arrived at a place I’d be willing to try again but overall I think there were too many poor design choices (in terms of what I am looking for) to get me to stick around if I do revisit the game. We’ll see…

In the autumn months I found myself on the 360 quite a bit for a change of pace and even peeking around in [shudder] public XBL games. I finished a few games, and picked up a few more including Call of Duty 4 which I have on Steam but doesn’t perform well enough to keep me playing. The 360 version is very very nice and I really enjoyed the campaign even if I’m horrible at aiming with controllers. Truly horrible. I can quite literally shoot a perfect silhouette around an enemy without hitting him once. Battlefield: Bad Company is awesome! I finished the entire campaign and retrieved all the hidden gold on each map. I’ve played quite a bit online and gained a few ranks and unlocked a few pieces of new equipment. I’m equally (if not more) horrible aiming my gun in BF:BC than in COD4 but the scope of the Battlefield games is what has always drawn me back where the smaller maps of COD4 is so ten years ago to me that it isn’t interesting. I also picked up Frontlines: Fuel of War for 360, another FPS I own on Steam. The PC performance is fine but hardly anyone plays and very few available servers, where on XBL it’s more popular and with its large maps and up to 50 players per server (64 on PC servers) certainly has scope and it’s a lot of fun. I’m still plodding away at Mass Effect every now and then, completely on my own with no strategy guide and no walk-through web sites, so I have no idea if I’ve made correct choices, how far along I am or what’s happening overall. I find RPGs are so slow-paced that I miss having people to chat with like I’d have with an MMORPG, where in an FPS the action and story are happening faster and keeping me engaged that I don’t mind being the only person around. I’m quite curious to see if I would like Tom Clancy’s EndWar or not. RTS has always been a genre I enjoyed to a degree, at least single-player. But I suspect I’m too distracted by the scenery, by exploring the maps and watching whatever my little guys are doing rather than doing my job of fortifying my defenses and cranking out units. My attention span and micro-management aren’t exactly well-suited for each other. Action-RTS’ like Ground Effect 1 and 2 suited me much better, skipping the base-building to a large degree and putting me into the action. World in Conflict (by the same devs as the Ground Effect games) kicks it all up a huge notch but once I go online I’m humiliated and decimated by the players who can focus while I’m still learning and easily distracted by all the eye candy and explosions. Would EndWar be the same for me? Or would it keep me more engaged to my task while simultaneously keeping me even closer to the action? Maybe I’ll find out…

December has been a very slow month with holiday preparations and taking the opportunity to visit the family. Just before the holiday I finally gained an appointment with a medical consultant whose recommendations the FAA tends to respect. He’s had all my files from the various doctors and specialists I’ve seen including the results of the tests I’ve undergone. He’s recommending the FAA reinstate me immediately, which obviously makes me happy for the first time in months. While things are truly out of my hands at this point, at least I know one way or the other this unfortunate chapter of my life is coming to an end. The only task left for me is to bug the hell out of the doctor at the Aeromedical department to put my case on the fast track and get me back to work.

I took advantage of Tabula Rasa going free-to-play in December but haven’t written a single word about it yet. I slowed down leveling in LOTRO all month, so I’m ready to continue the journey to 60 after the Yule Festival ends in a few days. I’ve also started fiddling with a handful of F2P titles that attracted me for various reasons and I’ll be writing about them at some point. As far as looking forward to new games, I think AoC and WAR (and Tabula Rasa) pretty much killed things for me when it comes to jumping on hype bandwagons or anticipating something new and revolutionary. For me, the only game that comes to mind as being truly “new” or “revolutionary” specifically within the MMOG genre would be APB but will it see the light of day in 2009? Whenever it does launch, will it have enough pull to keep me engaged for more than a few minutes?

Here’s to 2009, may it bring a positive turn to our nation and the world. I look forward to seeing positive change and growth for myself both personally and professionally. I look forward to expanding my horizons and real-life adventures as well as the virtual ones. And I hope to take you all along for the ride!

I mentioned that currently I’m slowing down Arwellyn’s too-rapid (for my tastes) journey towards 60 in LOTRO, so while I’m still playing daily I’m doing things like the Yule festival quests for tokens and other activities that don’t involve gaining XP. I’ve also been putting more consecutive time on the 360 in the past month than it’s seen in the two years I’ve owned it.

But I thought I would add another column to the blog about F2P games that make any sort of positive impressions in any way. This won’t be a regular column, just whenever I actually happen to spend any amount of time in an F2P that I feel is worthy of discussion.

To clarify my own definition of F2P, I will only use that acronym to refer to games that are free to download as well, meaning Guild Wars does not qualify, nor will any other “buy to play” games that may exist.

My expectations of F2P games are fairly low. Poor graphics, poor communities — if a “community” exists at all — with chat mostly filled with spam from gold-selling sites, a “world” filled mostly with bots for said gold-selling sites, poor localization “featuring” at best some barely legible broken Engrish with funky characters and no word wrap in the worst possible font imaginable, AI (and I’m using that term loosely) that consists of ‘if $aggro { AI::Monster::Kill; }‘ (ok ok, been a few years since I’ve so much as glanced at Perl… gimme a break!), a shallow experience consisting of endlessly grinding rapidly respawning mobs, and of course item shops for microtransactions. Did I miss anything? Probably, but I think that pretty much gets across my overall low expectations of F2P and why the majority of the ones I install take longer to patch than I actually play them before uninstalling. So I’ll only be writing about ones that make any positive impressions at all, even if they inevitably end up falling into the “shallow and poor gameplay” category.

I do enjoy reading Tipas articles on Dream of Mirror Online (DOMO) which I was in beta for but that one must have crossed a line somewhere of being too Asian in its execution for me. I don’t mind cel-shading but I did mind the way DOMO did it. The pathing was horrid too; click to move straight ahead of you but the game can’t figure out how to do that so you end up walking in S-turns. Drunk of Mirror Online? Sheesh. Everything mouse-driven and the chat window is always active so every key I inadvertently press gets queued up for accidental chat. In beta I never even made it out of the starter town, never saw another player, never saw a single line of chat from anyone speaking. I tried DOMO this morning briefly and it still makes mostly negative impressions but I at least did the 2 or 3 quests (yes, that’s all it took, and I couldn’t bring myself to do them in beta!) it takes to get out of the starter area into the first city. Hey! There’s actually players now! That’s probably a good thing for what is billed as a “Social MMO.” Regardless, I just don’t know if I can make myself tolerate it enough to really get anywhere. We’ll see…

I do have my own first F2P article slowly working but with the holiday so near, preparations will likely be taking up my weekend, and I will be away most of next week — I finally have an appointment with an FAA consultant to hopefully get me back to work and then I’ll be traveling to the frozen tundra of Ohio to spend the holiday with the family before coming back home. Non-revving over a holiday is usually a nightmare only the truly desperate and insane attempt so on a completely selfish note I rather hope the economy makes for light holiday travel loads on the airlines…

On that note, if I don’t get the first F2P article up this weekend, you all have a wonderful holiday season, regardless which one(s) you observe (or not) and I’ll catch ya afterward!

It’s that time of year again in Middle Earth, and to slow things down for Arwellyn I’m taking her out of Moria for awhile and only doing the daily festival quests in hopes of getting a few housing items. I say “in hopes of” because unlike other festivals where I simply save up tokens to barter for the exact items I want, the Yule vendors give gift-boxes with random gifts. I understand where that’s appropriate for the whole holiday gift thing, but it’s personally frustrating because there are only a few specific items I actually want. The cosmetic clothing I already have from previous festivals (no new ones, grrr) so I’m only interested in the season-specific housing items. And eventually the Yule horse but I need to save up some gold first to buy a normal horse to trade for it.

I did do the non-repeatable quest to get a Yule tree for Arwellyn’s yard though. That one is in the Shire. Notorious stick-in-the-mud Lobelia Sacksville-Baggins is the Yule planner due to an old Shire law that says whomever lives at Bag End gets to plan the Yule festivities. That wasn’t a problem when Bilbo was around but he’s gone now and Lobelia goes to great effort to put a damper on anything the locals might consider even remotely fun. Eventually we go see Michel Delving’s Mayor Whitfoot who informs us of the unfortunate law, though suggests we check out the book of Festival Law from the library of Great Smials. The mayor flips through the book and says a new planner can be appointed if a petition of at least ten citizens of Hobbiton are willing to sign, which is not a problem for the fun-loving people of Hobbiton! Lobelia wigs out over her foiled plans (it’s a shame they didn’t use a Scooby Doo “if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” pop culture reference, but then the Tolkien lore-nerds would be out in force screaming foul) and Gaffer Gamgee gives us a Yule tree decoration.

The downside to the tree? It’s not its own special Yule tree model with decorations and all that. It’s just the snow-covered fir tree model from Thorin’s Gate, the dwarven starter zone. Boo hiss. Oh well, more fluff to spruce up the yard and make things seasonal is still a plus for me even if it’s not totally what I’d prefer.

Pre-Moria I was going pretty hardcore with dungeons, raiding and reputation grinding. Now I can slow down again. Ten levels doesn’t take long; in fact Arwellyn was 54 within the first few days of Moria’s launch without even trying. Right now she’s 56 with just under 3 bubbles to go until 57, which won’t take much effort at all to obtain. Moria shipped with 6 Epic Books, and she’s already on Book 4, Chapter 5. The Book 7 update should be in either January or February, and that will be adding Lothlorien reputation, so I’ll be working on getting the Iron Garrison Guards and Miners reputations prior to that (currently focusing on Miners for the goat at kindred then Guards for the legendary trait) but I’m not going to be spending every waking moment playing LOTRO when I have a whole year to enjoy the expansion content, not to mention worrying over my couple of alts. I’m really wanting a deluxe house for the extra storage chest and extra hooks for decorations and furniture (which will also let me free some storage space) but I keep hearing rumors of Lothlorien housing so slowing down and biding my time until Book 7 also gives me time to see if that rumor has any truth to it. One “problem” with the current neighborhoods is there are so many standard houses, which are cheaper, but they have all the good locations. Look at the one I chose for Arwellyn, right by the river with her own little area for swimming and fishing and a great view. I almost got one right next to one of the waterfalls but I figured (correctly) that I would tire of the constant noise from that waterfall. The deluxe houses in Falathlorn are all in non-scenic areas with other (standard) houses crowded up against them. I do have a location picked out that I suppose fits the “lesser of the evils” as far as scenery and having my own space without feeling like I’m in a suburb, but I’m hoping there is Lothlorien neighborhoods with more deluxe houses to purchase in better, more scenic locations.

One thing I wish LOTRO did was decorate the main towns for each festival. Guild Wars completely revamps the hub cities for their holidays. I think EQ2 does as well. I’d love to see Bree and the other primary hubs decorated and celebrate the holidays, not just at the Bree Festival Grounds or the Party Tree in the Shire. It’s fine to go there for the activities but show some holiday spirit and decorate those towns! Maybe there are decorations and it’s so subtle I don’t even notice — LOTRO is all about subtleties, after all — but I don’t think that’s the case.

Turbine’s “My LOTRO” has entered public beta today, and marks their first entry into bringing LOTRO offline and into a more social setting where people can view their characters similar to World of Warcraft’s Armory.

Apparently I need to go in and edit my own profile as well? I’ll look tomorrow, I have a GRAW2 game to get to…

For now though, here are my primary characters:

Arwellyn (lore-master)

Myrra (minstrel)

Gared (captain)

… as if millions of MMO gamers suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

I fear something terrible has happened…

Fuck you EA. Just… fuck you…

I spent a few hours last night playing Left 4 Dead with a friend. Just the two of us, me playing Francis and my friend Daniel playing Zoey, leaving the AI to pick up the slack for Bill and Louis. Honestly, we only intended to play a map or two — at least that was my intention — we got sucked into the game and kept going and going. However:

When I was incapacitated, who threw a Molotov on me and left me to slowly burn to death? Bill.

When I was incapacitated with a swarm of zombies eating my immobile body while I was trying to fend them off with a pistol, who didn’t revive me and instead ran across the entire map to revive Zoey? Bill.

Who jumped in front of everyone and startled every single Witch? Bill.

Who hogged all the medkits and pain pills? Bill.

When we already fighting a zombie horde, a Hunter and a Smoker, who ran off and brought us back a Tank? Bill.

Screw you, Bill!

Even though I wanted to throttle Bill (and I did shoot him on purpose a few times) I can say I’m honestly surprised how good L4D is on a pure level of fun. I’m not normally a heavy talker over VOIP but I was during L4D. Laughing, shouting, oohing, aahing, and OMG-ing! I’d also say that Left 4 Dead also ranks up there with Team Fortress 2 as being something casual players can easily jump into, even those who normally wouldn’t be into first-person shooters and in the case of the 360, also those such as myself who normally don’t do so well with controllers. Despite the seeming hectic pace at times, I found L4D relaxing because it’s focused on simple fun rather than serious goals and trust me I suck at FPS’ with controllers but I was doing quite well here.

Recommended!

[tags]Xbox 360,Left 4 Dead[/tags]

I’m not talking about the Shroud raid which was recently taken offline due to exploits. For my two cents on the matter, it’s one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations, and personally I like their solution of just taking the raid offline while it’s fixed rather than something more drastic or damaging. It sounds like next week’s patch will be putting the Shroud back open for business anyway.

No, this time it’s the Risia test server being taken down for a bit due to a “secret project” coming soon to the game!

The decision was recently made to close Risia to the public in the coming weeks to prepare it for use in an upcoming DDO project (you may have heard us allude to something big coming down the pipe!). However, Murphy’s Law of MMOs bit us with a hardware failure on Risia on Monday during our regular maintenance. Since the closure was already fast approaching, we re-evaluated our plans and have decided to leave Risia closed for the immediate future. We know this will generate many questions, so we’ve tried to answer a few of them in advance. We’d like to thank everyone for their participation in the preview program! Please stay tuned for more announcements:

Q: What do I do with my Risia installation?
A: You can uninstall the Risia client and delete any installation files. New preview server installations will be incompatible with the current Risia installation.

Q: Does this mean there won’t be a preview program any more?
A: The preview program has been undergoing some changes based on play patterns. The active population on our preview servers tends to be very small between updates. Activity picks up when a new Module becomes available, and then quickly dies back down. We’ll have more information about the preview program in the future.

Q: Can I transfer my characters from Risia to the live servers?
A: Unfortunately, preview characters are not eligible to be transferred. Risia characters are not up to date with the Live servers.

Q: So… this “DDO related project”. Can you tell me what it is? Is it super secret stuff?
A: We can’t tell you just yet, but the wait to find out about it won’t be long! More information about the fate of Risia will be available early this coming Year!

Source

The response to the second question mentioning active population on the test server is identical to one of the Q&A’s back when Turbine decided to keep LOTRO’s Roheryn test server offline except for when new content was uploaded to it. I predict DDO’s Risia test server will resume on a similar schedule.

As for the “secret project” that’s anyone’s guess right now. Turbine said months ago they had big plans for DDO. The recent Module 8 with its New Player Experience was the first step in that direction. They’ve also committed to renovating more of Stormreach (and the older content?) but I’m curious what the big secret is. Expansion-quality content such as a new city in one of the other areas of Eberron? Public landscape areas with quests, mobs, etc.? The ability to contract multiple Hirelings at once like Guild Wars’ Heroes?

I’m anxious to find out what’s happenin’…

So, we were unboxing the holiday decorations and refitting the “Everything Tree” (that’s my girlfriend’s thing… we have the tree up year-round and it’s decorated for each holiday or season) from the Autumn Tree into the Christmas Tree. I usually get a stack of cards after the holidays when they’re dirt cheap so I can use them the next time, that way I have them instead of forgetting and scrambling to card shops at the last minute. Anyway, I noticed I’d also accidentally packed up the cards I’d received from family and friends, cash included!

Whoops!

So, $300 for Holiday Gifts to myself, what was I in the mood for that I may or may not have spent my own money on? Why, the 120GB hard drive for my 360 of course! I’ve been on the fence about getting one since they were released. I do enjoy getting demos and renting videos and the stock 20GB drive doesn’t give me enough wiggle room without weekly management of what gets deleted, downloaded or even re-downloaded. So now, problem solved!

The final straw for committing to the 120GB was Mass Effect. Great game, but the Unreal Engine sucks for large environments, especially in consoles where unfortunately RAM is in limited supply. It seems like the game is constantly freezing with a loading icon, I’m constantly watching textures pop in, especially during the story cut-scenes, and the turbojet engine DVD drive loudly whirring away trying to catch up… it finally got to me, so Mass Effect will be the first game that gets fully installed to the new hard drive.

With so many XBL friends sending me invites to play Left 4 Dead with them — am I the only one who actually checks the “compare games” section to see whether or not they own the game before sending an invite? — for the past couple weeks, I picked that up too. I’m not totally convinced the game has longevity but I’ve only seen the two short maps on the demo; maybe it’s a whole different ball game with the full game available and 4-player online co-operative play? I think Oakstout said he was also on the fence about the 360 version or the Steam version so here’s my personal nudge towards the 360!