Pumping Irony

Working! But aside from that, I am once again on break from LOTRO. I was fine and dandy when I returned in April with my focus on PvMP but of course I had to go check on my Lore-master. I did some of the Moria instances with my kinship and got one more Radiance piece. Then, against my better judgment I dusted off my Captain and took him to Angmar where I worked to get him the full heavy Fem armour set. Sure enough I felt the sizzle, which was quickly followed by the fizzle, of burnout again.

It’s not specifically that I’m burned out on LOTRO, however, I think I’m just burned out on DikuMMORPGs as a whole. I thankfully have that Lifetime membership to LOTRO which has always allowed me to guiltlessly come and go as I please. But I am finding it impossible to get interested — much less excited — about any upcoming DikuMMORPG at all.  Aion? Pfft! Please. World of Animecraft with a zone for flying but invisible walls everywhere else? Straight up DikuMMO with all the same old Diku features as every other DikuMMO the past decade? No thanks. To paraphrase Bartle, “I’ve already played Aion, it was called Every Other Frickin’ DikuMMO Ever.” BioWare is working on WoW: The Old Republic which at this point in time isn’t doing anything for me, though I won’t eliminate the possibility that BioWare may actually surprise me and put out a quality game that is fun and different, but honestly I’m just expecting the same old Diku stuff but with the best animated and synchronized Diku combat ever seen. The only MMOGs out there I have even a slight interest in are decidedly non-Diku. I think I can safely say I am Done with Diku. LOTRO will still be my main traditional (and therefore Diku-derived) MMORPG, and I will still tour some now and then that I already own like Age of Conan and Vanguard. I don’t have any faith that Mythic has the ability to suddenly turn Warhammer into a fun and compelling game to get me back there even for a brief visit, but stranger things have happened. But right now I just don’t see myself jumping on the bandwagon of any more Shiny New Sameness from here on out.

So I’m back to the 360 primarily. I still have Fallout 3 to work on. A friend was replaying Mass Effect so I popped that in and started a new campaign with my existing character, and got him to level 50! Plus my usual suspects of shooters, an RTS (Halo Wars) and an RTT (EndWar) to work on, I’m pretty happy.

I also picked up Too Human on the cheap. It received less than favorable reviews, and the demo wasn’t exactly spectacular but I have to say the full game has been extremely fun! I finished the campaign in a few days (it’s short, but I also played a lot) at level 29, then promptly restarted it. I’m pumped up to get level cap and work on the elite armor set and get the elite plasma rifle for my Commando. I will say that for me, the Commando class pretty much solves the iffy attempt at 360-degree control that causes so much confusion with the melee classes. The Commando pretty much sucks at melee and I only do it to knock an enemy in the air to juggle them with my rifle to crank up my combo meter. It’s a ranged ballistics class and is much, much easier to aim just fine and shoot things. Now I know what Pete meant the other day when he complained about Too Human though. It was designed from the start as a trilogy, and just when the story gets really cool, game over. Literally. A story cinema was playing and just as I said “oh, cool!” it all faded out and the credits rolled. Queue up a Darth Vader “nooooooooo!” yell and you get the picture. I’ve got a few AGE guys who’d like to co-op too, so I’m really looking forward to that.

On the PC, I’ve been playing Guild Wars again after close-ish to a year off from actually playing. The new Zaishen Bounty quests have been a blast and I’ve gotten over my fear of PUGs (well, somewhat) and just jump in with my Monk. Everyone runs them on Hard Mode which I have very little experience with, and it’s been a real eye-opener. I normally run Benjeth with the Healer’s Boon build, with a slight personal tweak, but Hard Mode has made me realize that I need to stop merely occasionally dipping my toes in the Protection line and just jump in and learn it. It seems that in Hard Mode — and PvP! — it’s more efficient and important to prevent the health bars from going down than it is to bring them back up. So there’s my project: Learn Protection and PvP. It seems every time I manage to make it for one of Van Hemlock’s Tuesday Noob Club sessions, it’s PvP week and, as I discovered yesterday, he’s come to expect me to sigh in disappointment and vanish once I learn it’s PvP week. No more! I’ll give it a shot again, although I reserve the right to use the Shock Warrior I made just for the occasion in addition to monking with Benjeth!

In the interest of PvE emergencies and learning PvP someday, I started working on getting Benjeth a shield and spear. His current spear is a normal blue with a +19% enchant bonus, so I’ll still need to get a perfect one, but I did get a unique (green item) shield for him: Keht’s Aegis!

I have some more items that I want to get for Benjeth, but he’ll need to start going into Domain of Anguish, Fissure of Woe and the Underworld for them, which are some of the game’s most popular elite areas. Heroes and Henchmen cannot enter elite areas so I’ll have to learn who’s who in my new alliance to get into some groups.

Is this the “forces at work” that have been delaying Module 9? Is this the so-called “Super Secret” that has been bandied about the forums and DDOCast?

Turbine announced today that DDO will be going Free to Play, though it sounds almost like a hybrid Freemium model. The new DDO will be entering closed beta soon, signups are on the new Eberron Unlimited announcement page, along with specific details as to what premium “VIP” subscribers receive versus the free players. They claim all current subscriptions do not change, so I’ll leave mine alone since I got that $9.99/month thing they offered last year and find out if it changes or not.

I do wonder how they’ll be dividing up the Adventure Packs out of the current content, though. It does say all the Stormreach and vicinity content will be included in the base game for free players. Going off that, I’d say additional places like the Menechtarun Desert, Meridia, and so forth would be in the Adventure Packs. This will most likely affect the way future Module updates are released as well, unless Turbine plans to sell each Module separately to the free players, which is probably not a bad idea.

A DDO Store will be opened for the game and players can buy (get ready for it) Turbine Points (say it with me: “ugh!”) which are then used to purchase items from the store. A quick glance at the VIP vs. Free chart looks like the store will contain the Adventure Packs, obviously, character slots, a shared bank slot, the Monk and other new classes (one new class is in the announcement!), and the Drow and Warforged race.

Personally, I do have a problem paying to unlock the Warforged race since that was always a standard race in DDO. The Drow you had to unlock with favor (DDO’s reputation system) anyway so I’m on the fence about the drow. Separating the Monk class seems on the surface as yet another (yeah, I’m going to say it) “slap in the face” to the Monk, which seems to get no love from Turbine, and while Free players will most likely increase the overall player base, paying for a class will probably mean the Monk will stay relatively rare like it is already.

Regardless, this all sounds exciting, and if nothing else all the DDO servers may see a population increase of players, and that’s always a good thing!

Microsoft’s 1 vs. 100 has been in beta for a little bit now but it seems they’re always testing on a Friday or Saturday. I don’t have the kind of seniority (or luck) to get Fridays or weekends off so I jumped on the opportunity when I saw a 30-minute test of Extended Play mode scheduled from 7:30pm to 8:00pm EDT last night.

Apparently the game is setup just like the television game show (I had no idea there was such a thing until Googling afterward) where one player is selected to be the One and one hundred other players are selected to be The MOB (Mass of Bodies – if I’m getting this right?). Everyone else who joins is part of The Crowd but still gets to play along.

The Extended Play mode is where there is no One and no Crowd; everyone is part of a huge Mob. Extended Play will have nightly games, and are fully automated, whereas the normal shows are live events hosted by Chris Cashman.

This being my first time in 1 vs. 100 I took my time reading all the notes as I learned to play then joined the game. Apparently 1 vs. 100 can hold up to 200,000 players!

Last night’s session was four rounds of ten questions. After each ten questions there’s a brief intermission where you can browse that game’s statistics while some of them are shown on a monitor along with some short advertisements. Hey, it’s freely available (as far as I know) so they have to earn money somehow. Overall, the breaks were welcome because each round gets a little more intense as the game progresses. The ads seemed pretty short and I think there was only one commercial per break, everything else was either 1 vs. 100 or XBL-related.

One of the screens during the break is interesting – it shows how many players got correct answers during that round. With that information, I can say that last night there were over 37,502 players because that’s the highest number who got correct answers in one of the rounds!

I did notice that once in the game, I was auto-grouped with three other players. If the normal XBL VOIP channel was on, the others weren’t using it, and since we’re competing (or in Extended Play, are we?) I’m not sure I’d want VOIP on anyway. It was nice to be able to see how quickly they were answering the questions while it was being asked, which combined with the rather quick timer, probably adds an additional psychological factor to the intensity. Once the time is up, we can see the answer everyone chose while the host shows us the correct answer. I suspect the reason we’re grouped is so that we can at least get a little bit of sense that this is all happening live and there are other real people behind all the nameless avatars in the studio, because otherwise it could probably seem like you’re playing an offline single-player game like Scene It.

All in all, I have to say 1 vs. 100 was a very fun game. It’s easy to play, pretty casual in nature but it starts feeling fast and furious as the questions get more difficult, and being grouped with three other players gives a sense of live competition. Unlike a single-player game, such as Scene It, where eventually you would memorize the finite number of questions, for 1 vs. 100 Microsoft has a team of writers for each individual episode of the season. The timer is slow enough to let you read each answer and think (quickly!) about the answer but it’s probably too fast to be web searching for the answers.

From what I’ve read, 1 vs. 100 will be free for Gold members but even Silver members can play if there’s a Gold account on that console as well! So if I (Gold) play, my girlfriend (Silver) can join me on the couch and play along online! She’s never really gamed before, and she’s intimidated by all the buttons and controls on the 360 controller but I think she can deal with a total of four buttons. I think.

I am so very tempted to just say “Here’s a game desperately in need of a patch” and end the post there, but I won’t. In fact, a patch is due on June 5 but I don’t know what that will address other than enabling trading between players and the corrupted game save bug. I’ve read that compared to the state of the PC version when it launched, I’m playing a pretty polished game, but the console version was also apparently rushed prematurely to store shelves. See? It’s not just MMOs folks!

Now, when I say “first impressions” usually I’ve perhaps been through a decent chunk of the game. But this time I mean it. This is quite literally a first impression. I have two characters, a Dryad for the Light campaign, and a Temple Guardian for the Shadow campaign. Each is now level 7, which took roughly two hours to achieve. So, I have approximately four-ish hours total in the game, but doing the same content twice so I suppose another way of looking at it is that I have two hours of playing with an additional two hours of gaining some (slightly) better understanding.

I’ve said this before, but let me just say it again to get it out there in the open: I did not enjoy Diablo. I never understood the draw to the game. I didn’t “get it.” In the years since, I have been content to simply say “I’m not a Diablo kinda guy” and leave it at that, but I think Sacred 2 may have given me an inkling as to why that is. I’ll also go ahead and admit that Sacred 2 was a huge impulse purchase on my part. I kept seeing more and more AGE members on my Friend List playing the game, skipping out on scheduled game nights in favor of Sacred 2, forming static parties and posting about how awesome and addictive it is.

I won’t bother covering the RPG mechanics, partly because Pete did that last week so I’ll refer you there, and mostly because I am still learning them myself. I only last night figured out how to use that Runemaster NPC to open up a new Combat Art! I haven’t bothered picking up a crafting-type skill yet, so I can’t speak on that yet. I can say that the RPG aspects are pretty deep, though. There’s a ton of customization ranging from attributes to skills to Combat Arts to applying runes… then on top of that are gear upgrades. Fan forums are quite busy with threads on builds and so forth.

When choosing my first character I was immediately attracted to the description of the Shadow Warrior, but he looks rather similar to a Chosen from WAR and I still haven’t quite recovered from my “Chosen is not a Dread Knight” realization so I skipped it. I didn’t see myself enjoying the whole ranged combat thing in a top-down game but when I asked about a good starting character, the response was overwhelmingly in favor of the Dryad. I was referred to a popular build and already at level 7 she is a dps factory, killing everything in one or two shots! Yay, dps is fun! I only played the Dryad solo and overall I had a decent time of it.

Last night some of the AGE guys wanted to start a new group on the Shadow side so we all made new level 1 characters and did a full four-player co-op. I decided to try the Temple Guardian, who seems to be a sort of Anubis-looking cyborg thing with a frickin’ laser beam on one arm! Rock on, that sounds cool right? Well… I don’t know what the hell to make of the TG class. He now has two Combat Arts equipped, one of which is the default which summons a glowing red cloud that shoots a fat red laser beam from it. I can at least tell that one does some damage (half or less) to a single target. The other one creates a fiery aura around my character and causes the enemies to get angry, gang up and beat my wimpy little TG to death. I’d like to say it’s massive damage that causes the massive aggro but I honestly can’t tell that is the case yet. If his arm laser is actually hitting anything and doing any damage whatsoever, I certainly can’t tell it. He’s been a major disappointment so far, doing barely any noticeable dps and dying easily and frequently.

The world of Ascaron is massive! It’s a huge, lush environment full of little details. Even little non-interactive critters like bunnies will make tall grasses sway as they hop through it. There are towns with lots of quests available, there are caves scattered about the wilderness, and it’s all in full 3D. On the downside, it’s also full of invisible walls. There’s no going for a swim in the water. There’s no walking over an obstacle, no matter how small, you have to walk around it.

Each town has a resurrection monolith you can activate, which also allows you to teleport there from the world map. Sometimes you’ll find a portal you can activate which will allow teleportation as well. In a co-op game you can join the other players by clicking their icon on the world map and teleporting to their location. That one is handy!

The audio is a mixed bag. The background music is nice though it plays only sparsely. Combat sounds are adequate. Voiceovers are its sore spot. It’s cheesy. However, I can’t quite tell yet if it’s cheesy just because it’s a) a video game, and it’s still rare to find quality voiceovers in games, b) the developers didn’t have the money to contract better actors (they recently filed for bankruptcy so this is a possibility), or c) it’s intentionally cheesy, because it’s certainly cheesy on a consistent basis. It even has a little tongue-in-cheekiness to it, with some enemies saying lines such as “I’m nothing more than an extra!” as they die. Perhaps it’s because it’s so consistent that I don’t find the voiceovers grating at all. Go into a town and the NPCs are quite lively, conversing with each other or with you as you walk by. I’ve had a bard-type NPC come up and sing to me, I’ve had another play his musical instrument for me, last night I even had a needy child run across the town square and follow me around, shutting up only long enough to take a breath it seemed.

Solo, I suppose Sacred 2 is a decent-enough game if you’re into the whole Diablo clone scene. The engine needs some optimization loving, it chugs a bit here and there and doesn’t always manage to pre-load the world in time for a seamless experience. I experience frequent loading, especially in towns, where the map stops scrolling and I wait for the disc icon to go away before I can continue. I had hoped installing to the hard drive would alleviate this (it sure helped with Mass Effect) but alas, it made no discernable difference.

Co-op should be awesome; after all, it’s kept the Diablo series going all these years. However… first impression? Holy Mother of Gandalf I haven’t seen netcode this bad since Quake’s first month or few before its first patch. The lag in Sacred 2 is nothing short of incredible. It doesn’t actually affect what I’m doing with my character though. Even in the worst lag I can still move around and click my abilities fine. It’s getting a reaction from things everyone sees that the lag becomes noticeable. Did that mob just die or did it die 3-5 seconds ago and I’m just now seeing it? I’ll run over some loot but it’s a good 3-5 seconds minimum before I see it being picked up. If I stop running, the map stops scrolling immediately but my character continues in his running animation for 3-5 seconds. C’mon… it’s only a four-player game. Fix. The. Netcode.

Finally the real crux of the game. Or, I should say my real crux of the game: the camera. Sacred 2 is a top-down game but it’s a 3D game and gives just enough of a camera view to tantalize me with what the game could have been. There’s all these cool graphics, cool spells and combat abilities going off but in order to see a damned thing the camera needs to be scrolled back so far that I can’t see a damned thing! Argh! In co-op it’s even worse because now with four players fighting and slinging spells I had no idea what was happening on my screen as I looked down from orbit. In order to see the environment I have to scroll back so far that I’m immediately disconnected from the game. I can’t tell what, if anything, I’m targeting. I can’t tell what, if anything, is happening. Scrolling all the way in actually shifts the view to an almost-but-not-quite third-person (still from slightly overhead) view. If you’re standing on the crest of a hill and do this, it’s the closest you get to a third-person view while actually being able to see in front of you. I think this is my main problem with games like this. Sometimes I don’t mind top-down at all. But for whatever reason, the Diablo clone games just don’t do it for me. If Sacred 2 had been a third-person (freeform or fixed over the shoulder, I don’t care) I think I would be in love with this game. Well, if they ever fix the netcode, that is. Put me into the world, not above it. Let me see and feel the wonder of exploration of this huge, massive world you’ve created. Let me see and enjoy all the cool new gear and effects I acquire. I’d look forward to playing constantly, especially co-op (if they fix the netcode… have I mentioned that yet?) if that were the case. But as it stands, I just don’t know that I can enjoy, much less look forward to, watching from a birds-eye view as the little people on the surface make little things go boom.

I think my perfect solo+multiplayer (I’m not asking for massively multiplayer… yet) Action RPG on a console would be a hybrid of Guild Wars, Hellgate: London and Warhammer 40K. Fast action with deep RPG aspects and customization but the futuristic setting featuring both melee and ranged combat from either third- or first-person (or a toggle for both) with a wide-open world to explore and maybe some (not all) dungeons being randomly generated. Oh, and with a better version of Fable 2’s multiplayer where if I’m playing solo but a friend is in the same area we can toggle being able to join without leaving our current game session. Charge me for DLC expansions but otherwise free online play and I’m there!

KAOS Studios announced their new game today, Homefront, a first-person shooter for the Big Three platforms: Windows PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Everyone hoping for Frontlines 2 is saddened, myself included, but having a brand-new IP also keeps them from being a one-trick pony.

Homefront is set in near-future America where players fight a North Korean occupation of America following the collapse of the US economy. Sort of an eerie blend of our current times with some Cold War thrown in for flavor. Indeed, the story behind Homefront was penned by John Milius,who wrote the original Red Dawn movie in the 80’s as well as the in-production remake, wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now and many other films, and the story for Medal of Honor: European Invasion.

I suspect the single-player campaign will be one-sided much like Frontlines: Fuel of War was. In that game, players could only play through the story from the Western Coalition perspective, ultimately fighting their way to the Red Star base in Moscow. The multi-player game obviously allowed players to choose a faction. (Red Star for the win! Capitalist pigs die!) The wording of today’s announcement leads me to believe Homefront will play out the same with a one-sided campaign then open multi-player battles.

I’ll most likely check out the game if it will be another sandbox shooter and if it continues KAOS’ little innovations.

My hopes for Homefront, and KAOS’ future games, are that they launch with dedicated servers for PC first and foremost. I still to this day feel that was the major nail in the game’s coffin from the PC side of things. But also give dedicated servers for the consoles – we love having those available on the 360! Second, I hope they’ve either gotten a grip on the Unreal Engine. Frontlines was their first time using the Unreal tech and… it showed, performance is still an issue. I’m not much of a fan of the Unreal Engine anyway but if KAOS is stuck with it from licensing it for Frontlines or just deciding to use it again now that they do have experience (I have no idea how the licensing works but I suspect it’s on a per-game basis anyway) they need to put everything they can into giving the best performance possible. Third, audio. I remember the audio engineer saying they used a stock sound library for Frontlines for budget reasons. It was your first game, so fine. But now, spend a few bucks, get out there and record your own high-quality sounds. Look at DICE… when it comes to the audio quality and immersion, it’s hard to beat a Battlefield game. But try, please.

For Part Deux (my girlfriend likes Charlie Sheen, so I couldn’t resist a minor reference) of my little MMO Debate Class, our topic of the day will be heroism.

Many games, RPG or otherwise, set up the character we play as a “hero” or at least give us the option of filling that role.

In Fallout 3, I am on my first play-through, so I chose the “Good Karma” route. I saved Megaton rather than detonating the nuke sitting in town. There’s not many people to be found in the post-apocalypse Washington D.C. area so I have only the well-scripted NPCs to interact with and care about, or not.

In the Halo series, Master Chief is the penultimate Spartan warrior who is cast as the heroic protagonist the player sees the game through to save humanity from the Covenant and Flood. Your actions as Master Chief affect the fate of Earth and through cinematics and in-game scripted interactions with NPCs and virtual AI companion Cortana, gratitude is expressed for your deeds.

In the examples given of Fallout 3 and Halo, neither is a “hero” simply due to being a badass and being the victor in each battle. They are heroes because they put themselves on the line to have a positive affect on others they’re fighting for. In other words, I never blast a Covenant Elite then say to myself “Ha! I’m such a hero!”

Looking at the definitions of “hero” (courtesy of dictionary.com) we have:

1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal.

Those coincide with my personal interpretation of the word and reflects how I use it.

I recently made a comment over at Tesh’s blog alluding that those situations while in a group where things go downhill but you somehow pull off a creative ability and save one (or all) of your group members is really the only time we can truly be a hero in an MMO.

Another commenter disagreed, saying he also feels heroic even while soloing because “really it just comes down to a combination of overcoming a very difficult challenge while achieving a state of flow.”

From my standpoint — in an MMO — my character is more often than not cast as a mere mercenary to do some odd job for an NPC in exchange for XP, cash, gear, or some other reward. Everyone gets the same chance to do that same mercenary task and have the NPC give them the same thanks as they give me. That applies also to the more rare occasions when a quest may actually put us in the position of being a hero to that NPC.

The difference is even soloing in an MMO, it is not single-player games. In Fallout 3, no one else can ever enter my game session; those NPCs are talking to me and me alone and my actions have lasting meaning. In an MMO a barrier has been broken and we all know we’re not really doing anything unique. Those evil goblin mobs will respawn in five minutes. That princess will be captured all over again and need saving. Anything I can do with an NPC, so can anyone else. Therefore its meaning is drastically reduced, if it was ever there to begin with, depending on the individual player. (This could be one of many factors of why we tend to skip quest text.)

If I’m solo in an MMO sometimes I might have a difficult encounter, or perhaps pull one (or a few) more mobs than I intended to. I might use a few techniques, combined with crossing my fingers, and live through it. I can pat myself on the back for a job well done, perhaps even file away a new technique or combo to be used later. I might even get cocky and feel like a badass. But I don’t feel like I’m a hero, because I only saved myself.

Can one be a hero if there’s no one around who needs help? I say no.

Who do we refer to as heroes in life? The fireman who ran back into a burning building to save an infant. Getting a cat out of a tree for a distressed elderly woman. Giving of yourself to help neighbors in worse shape in these rough economic times. People who sacrifice of themselves in some way for a cause: helping someone else and making a real difference in their lives.

It’s only when I am grouped with other actual players (PvE or PvP, it’s all the same for this topic) and I “save the day” for someone or perhaps even prevent a total party wipe, be it through creative and/or superior knowledge of my character, class, and abilities, pure luck, or a combination thereof that I ever feel heroic, because I have put myself in the line of fire, or even sacrificed myself, to help the other players, and the group as a whole, succeed. The gratitude expressed is heartfelt and meaningful, and doesn’t happen for every single player every single time. My actions briefly mattered and made the difference between success and failure.

I can’t just leave it there, however. Some additional definitions of “hero” are:

1. the principal male character in a story, play, film, etc.
2. the central figure in an event, period, or movement

Disregarding the sexism in the first (hero, heroine… same thing, different genitalia) both of these definitions could apply to soloing. If we manage to disregard that everyone’s doing the same content, we all want to have “our own story” in these MMOs. A single fight with a mob could be considered an “event” and our solo character would certainly fit the role of the central figure. These can give credence to feeling heroic even while solo, even though I reject that notion in my own personal definitions. It’s just two ways of viewing something. It doesn’t make me “right” or the other commenter “wrong.”

Even though I’m right…

No, I’m not (intentionally) blog-fading! I’ve just been busy catching up with things at work and getting back into the swing of flying around. I do have several posts in my head but between work, recuperating from fatigue from work (touchy subject with all the fuss over the Colgan 3407 crash but yes, I just went there!), and a bit of gaming, the writing has taken a back seat.

While chatting with Karen on Skype recently, the whole “avatar” discussion was brought up. I said I had a post in mind, because to a degree I’ve already written a previous post which briefly brought up a part of the topic and my opinion is still the same on that matter. But I said I’d wait until I finished listening to Shut Up, We’re Talking #47 before doing so. I probably won’t delve specifically into the whole Noblegarden “Shake Your Bunny Maker” achievement which caused the recent blog debates to begin with, nor will this post touch the Raph vs. Tobold debate on avatars as tokens. I’ll get to that, but I’ll use this to launch a short mini-series on various prevalent debates then bring them all together with my Final Word (uh oh, did I just channel Jerry Springer? ) on the subject.

So. Avatars or Characters? As I stated in my Player vs. Character post, I consider the terms “avatar” and “character” to be two entirely different things.

Background and experiences directly influence our opinions and perspectives on everything in life. The reason, as I see it, that I cringe when I hear people call their characters “avatars” is because I started my multiplayer gaming back in high school with AD&D and other tabletop RPGs. In a tabletop RPG, you create and play the game through a character we create and whose statistics, equipment, and notes are kept and updated on a character sheet. In the tabletop RPG environment at the time, the only time I remember seeing the term “avatar” was always in reference to a physical manifestation of a deity, never in regards to a player’s character.

On the other side of the coin, we have “avatars” which in my background and experiences were representative of the actual person (or persona) behind the name or icon. On a forum or instant message client we can select a graphic avatar image to represent us. In a 3D chat client we select a virtual avatar to represent ourselves. That also applies to Xbox Live, Sony’s Home for PS3 and Nintendo’s Mii’s for their Wii console. If I play an online multiplayer game, say a shooter or racing game, or a flight combat/simulator, same thing — the avatar is representing me, the player (or persona) behind the pixels.

On the surface, that’s how I split hairs between the two terms. Does that make my interpretation correct and everyone else’s wrong? No. It’s only “correct” for me.

From the little bit of reading I managed to do, it seems I get to point the finger at Richard Garriott’s Ultima series for the current trend of “avatar” and “character” being interchangeable. In Ultima I-III you played a character of your creation like you’d do in any RPG. However, Ultima IV introduced an alignment system to the series. In the story, your character becomes sort of a spiritual leader to the Brittanian people and if you chose to guide your character to achieve “enlightened” status in every virtue, your character became their Avatar. Subsequent Ultima games picked up where IV left off, so your character was already an Avatar and was constantly referred to as such. This led the new generation of players coming into the series automatically calling their characters “avatars” rather than simply “characters” like we old school RPGers called them just a c,ouple years before back when we had to roll our D20’s barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways. Oh, and you kids get off our lawns!

In short, Avatar versus Character is all Richard Garriott’s fault!

Note: I am writing this on my Ubuntu laptop and just installed the Drivel blogging client, so if there are any formatting screwups, blame Drivel!

I nabbed this meme from a few of my all-time favorite bloggers. I promise I’ll keep this one short, sweet and to the point since the last meme post was a train of thought wall of text. I will allow for some elaboration, however, should I feel the necessity.

This meme is all about taking a trip down Memory Lane and sharing nostalgic factoids. Here we go!

First MMO played?
Technically, the Asheron’s Call 2 trial, but the first I subscribed to was Star Wars Galaxies.

First Character Class or Role played in an MMO?
Creature Handler. Later switched it to Bio-Engineer.

First MMO subscribed for more than a year?
SWG.

First MMO I fell in love with?
SWG

First Guild I felt attached to?
Alderaan’s Revenge in SWG.

First Character & Game I reached level cap?
Druid in World of Warcraft.

First “wow!” moment in an MMO?
There have been so many, but probably the first was in SWG after I had joined Alderaan’s Revenge and we began building our city, in addition to having my own personal home. I was getting involved in crafting as well, and that “aha!” moment where I first got a glimpse at just how much potential MMOs have for virtual societies, role-playing, gaming experiences, etc. was probably my first true “wow!” moment.

First MMO I burned out on?
SWG. At the time we could only have one character per account per server. I wanted a second character as a medic but the moment I got that second account was the beginning of the end. It started to feel more like a job than a game.

First MMO I followed avidly prior to launch?
None. There have been a few that I followed extremely casually, but none I was ever avid about.

First time I truly felt like a noob in an MMO?
The first time I logged into DDO. And every time since then, too.

First MMO I indulged in altoholism?
I don’t think having that second account in SWG counts, so I’ll go with WoW. I had a full roster of Alliance characters on Cenarion Circle, three of which were raiding characters, then I had Horde characters on another PvE server, and an Undead Priest on a PvP server. WoW also cured me of altoholism — since WoW I’ve had a maximum of 4 characters (usually fewer) in any MMO, and only 1 or 2 that I actually put any time into playing.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

Most of us are anxiously awaiting news of Guild Wars 2, which has been pushed back to sometime this millennium. But wait! Arena.net still has a small team dedicated to Guild Wars and they slowly push out new goodies. This latest update was a huge deal for the game’s 4th anniversary. Take a look!

Storage upgrades are awesome! Don’t forget to get your free storage pane before May 31st! In addition to four new storage panes available for $9.99 each from either the in-game store or the NCsoft store, they’ve added another bag slot to our characters. The new bag is called an “equipment pack.” The smallest one is a 5 slot bag and costs either 2.5 platinum or 100 gold and 1 Gold Zaishen coin. Characters can run Zaishen Challenge missions to collect coins for bigger equipment packs. The Large Equipment Pack is 20 slots and costs 100 gold and 15 Gold Zaishen coins.

The Hall of Monuments has been upgraded to be able to display achievements from both individual characters and account-wide!

A new zone called the Zaishen Menagerie has been added near the Battle Isles where players can store all their charmed animals! I never leveled my ranger, so I could be way off-base here, but I think the way it works is that rangers can charm, then level, an animal but if they charm a new animal they lose the first one permanently. This Zaishen Menagerie lets you drop off any charmed animal and they can roam around freely and if you want to switch to a different animal, now you can do it! The only real downside is that, unlike the Hall of Monuments where you can bring in other players to view your achievements, only your character and charmed animal can enter the Menagerie.

The Menagerie itself is a good-sized area with varied terrain, ranging from forests to beaches and even a volcanic tunnel. There are Master of Winds NPCs liberally placed who will cast Windborne Speed on you, giving a brief 33% increase to run speed.

Other services include a $9.99 purchasable pet unlock pack which unlocks all common pets. Prestige pets still must be earned legitimately! There are also some trainer NPCs which will unlock individual pets or pet evolution tiers in exchange for either Balthazar faction or gold and Zaishen coins.

Nicholas the Traveler, long thought lost in the Searing, has resurfaced! He’ll be traveling to random cities in each campaign setting, providing new content for those who manage to find him! This is a great way to provide “new content” simply by re-using the existing content for new rewards.

Finally, more transaction-based upgrades for the in-game and NCsoft store, such as character renaming and style changes. The character rename is a simple $14.99 transaction and it’s done. The style thing is a major change, though. This lets us mix and match styles from each campaign into a single character! Purchase Makeover Credits from the store, then visit the Stylist NPC to finalize the new style for your character. Two types are available: a normal Makeover Credit will let you change the appearance of one character, and the Extreme Makeover Credit will let you change the gender as well! Each is priced the same at $9.99.

It looks like Turbine is finally stepping things up and developing tech simultaneously for DDO and LOTRO. For the past year or so, it’s been a situation of one team coming up with tech for their game then several months later it was added to the other. DX10 appeared in LOTRO, then awhile later in DDO. Some new rendering tech to reduce hitching appeared in DDO then eventually made its way to LOTRO (and still needs improvement! Badly!) LOTRO shipped with the ability for users to make their own UI skins, DDO added that much later. Just a few examples. But now it seems Turbine may be getting the engine builds in both games up to parity and developing new technology that will appear at the same time in both games – namely scalable instances.

Reading through the massive (I’ve heard it’s around 40 pages printed!) release notes for the upcoming Module 9, all quest instances (except solo and raids) will scale to the size of the group. When I first heard this mentioned on DDOcast, I initially thought they were eliminating the whole mechanic of selecting a difficulty level (Normal, Hard, Elite) in favor of scaling, but the release notes say otherwise; the group selects the difficulty then the scaling occurs on top of that when entering the instance.

Similarly, in Massively’s interview with Jeffrey Steefel for LOTRO’s 2-year Anniversary, Steefel mentioned that the Book 8 update scheduled for June will also have new scalable instances; the current working name for them is “skirmishes.”

I also noticed Steefel mentioned Book 8 will have “customizable soldiers that you can train and bring into these skirmishes,” which seems to have escaped most readers’ notice over the excitement of skirmishes and the post-Book 8 hints. Why do I have a sneaking suspicion they might be moving DDO’s Hireling tech over to LOTRO? I was a little skeptical of the need for AI companions in LOTRO but it sounds like (for now) they may be limited for use in the new scaling skirmish instances. Probably a good thing, the tech and the AI is still very much being worked on in DDO, and quite frankly LOTRO is having enough problems already with AI and pet pathing since Moria launched…

In other Turbine tech news, one of the big changes to DDO in Module 9 will be the new “soft targeting” system. Players can toggle this on and off, but when enabled will have a targeting system similar in some ways to Mass Effect. Just moving your cursor or the mouse reticule near a target will select it (though I think you can simultaneously keep another target hard-locked?). DDO is also getting a first-person camera. Previously the camera would only scroll right up behind your character’s shoulders, and for screen shots players would have to scroll all the way in then click the Hide skill to make the character duck below the camera. But that’s not all! DDO is also getting a new “shooter-style” control scheme, selectable in the options, which will remap a lot of the controls to make the game control and feel similar to how shooters do. I’ll hazard a guess that the control scheme will work in both first and the normal third person view.

Not only will the new camera, control and targeting scheme provide a whole new feel to DDO but I also can’t help but feel DDO is being used as a guinea pig to test various schemes for Turbine’s secret in-development console title. Despite all the rumors of DDO or LOTRO being ported to the 360, I just don’t see it. LOTRO is a traditional DikuMMO with all the hotbar and inventory aspects to the UI that would be extremely problematic on a console. Despite its emphasis on fast, visceral action, I find DDO to be even more cumbersome to deal with because it has so many abilities, “clickies” on most gear, switching items constantly… that just won’t cut it on a console. At level 8, my wizard in DDO already had as many hotbars onscreen as my druid in WoW did at level cap and raiding! I’ve only bothered to put a fraction of the stuff available to my wizard on the hotbars, otherwise it would be even more cluttered. LOTRO is Turbine’s cash cow right now, and they’re still working on a new UI sytem for their engine and games. As Steefel mentioned last year at, the core of their UI subsystem was written in 1997! Yet I’m supposed to believe they have a fully functional and brand-new UI system for consoles to handle their existing games? Sorry, not buyin’ it. Until proven otherwise, I’ll continue to believe that their console MMOG will be a whole new game, not a port of one of their PC MMORPGs.

Slight tangent, but I’ll just say that in the spirit of getting both DDO and LOTRO up to parity, the DDO team needs to get crackin’ on the UI. Out of all the UI’s I’ve ever had to work with in any MMOG, DDO is by far the fugliest. It’s functional, yes, but it’s obvious from all the work the team has been putting into DDO the past year (and Module 9 is proof of that) that they’re looking to reboot the game. It’s being given an all-new look and feel, starting with the new tutorial area added in Module 8 (Module 9 is adding full voiceovers to the entire Korthos experience, thereby fully realizing the Age of Conan-esque “the tutorial was a lie!” comparison. ) and the makeover to the Harbor. Module 9 is continuing this trend, with a makeover to the Marketplace. I know a lot of people who like to scale their UI intensely dislike LOTRO’s because it actually resizes rather than scales, which leads to a blurry and pixelated appearance. That’s one of the many things Turbine will fix in their UI 2.0 system but there has been no news whatsoever of when we might actually see that. In the interim, I’d at least like to see DDO’s UI get brought up to the same as LOTRO’s, so that when UI 2.0 does come out it can be fit into each game at once.

Speaking of rebooting the game, Jerry from DDOcast posted this morning that briefly, DDO.com was showing the game under the name Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unleashed. It’s been changed back now, but a quick search on the ESRB site does in fact show DDO under that name! (Interestingly, they also have the Forsaken Lands expansion that was instead released as one of the Module content updates.) Turbine has been hinting for quite awhile now that something “vast and mysterious” was coming to DDO. While I’d love to see them switch to the LOTRO engine tech for a huge seamless world that would probably bring in a lot of new players, doing that would be the equivalent to the NGE and I don’t think they’ll go there. What this probably means is now that Module 9 finally brings the game to D&D’s level cap of 20, they’re putting even more emphasis on new content and moving the focus away from the city of Stormreach into even more areas of Eberron. I’m hoping they make a compromise and take some of the existing zone tech from LOTRO, as well as Moria’s “dual height map” tech and give a nod to Age of Conan, adding population-limited public zones to adventure in.