Pumping Irony

I’ve been on medical leave all month, so I’m bored and ready to return to the *cough* “friendly skies” *cough* though I fully realize that as soon as I’m pronounced fit to return and I set foot in my domicile again I will immediately say something to the effect of “oh my gawd is this over with yet so I can go home?” The grass is always greener, indeed.

In spite of having the entire month off, I really didn’t delve into very many MMO’s. In fact, I spent the majority of game time in Guild Wars, which is not an MMO at all. I spent a lot of time adventuring and farming (boo hiss!) with my monk.

Guild Wars: Early in the month I happened to see Darren in-game and he was in dire need of assistance completing a quest and a mission. I didn’t realize his character was (still is?) still on Istan, which is the “noob island” of the Nightfall campaign. His dervish is level 18 and Darren gave me the impression he’s one of the millions of people who just don’t “get” Guild Wars design. It has levels but it’s not about levels like most MMO’s are so he was curious (and perhaps concerned?) about what was next. I gave a short explanation that hopefully at least got him pointed down the right mindset. Turns out his quest was a Master difficulty quest so even though I’m level cap and had a decent healing and protection hybrid build loaded, as well as good builds on my heroes, we had a rough time of it. Or perhaps I should just say I had a rough time of it since I was the healer. I think he actually made me perspire trying to keep them alive. SOE unleashed their Living Legacy promotion so Darren is in EQ2 now for the duration, enjoying that game’s chapter of Karen’s Revelry and Honor guild!

My next celebrity run-in was the Stormbringer himself: Van Hemlock! I was given an honorary induction into his little Tuesday N00b Club guild, meaning I received a guest invitation that allows me to travel to their Guild Hall for 8 hours. Since I had the month off I ended up making a point of meeting the TNC each week for adventure, fun and hilarity. Last week was our first foray into PvP. We started off doing the Zaishen challenge, which is “practice PvP” against a team of NPC’s. Van Hemlock set up the NPC teams to be single professions. I forget what the first team was, but we mowed them down and got a bit cocky about it. The second team was all rangers loaded with a trapper build. They cut through us like soft, warm butter. Repeatedly. Finally, our heads hung in shame, we proceeded to try PvP against, you know, other players. Rather than the dangerous and competitive world of the arenas we went to Cantha for some Alliance Battles. The TNC is a Luxon guild, while I’m in a Kurzick alliance but I’m fairly certain I can build up Luxon faction without harming my Kurzick standing. We did two battles. The first one, we (Luxons) won (yay! oh wait…) making a dramatic comeback at the end to score the final points. Kurzicks did the same on the second battle. Luxons started off strong and maintained a very healthy lead until the very end when the Kurzicks made an incredible comeback to win. Probably the most fun all month with the TNC was running the Catacombs of Kathandrax dungeon, which received brief mention on the most recent episode of the Van Hemlock podcast. One of the TNC guys was commenting how it was so different running with a real healer. Apparently they’ve grown quite accustomed to having high death penalties in their adventures. Just getting to the dungeon itself is a bit of a challenge, but we pulled it off with only a few casualties. We proceeded through the first two levels of the dungeon in relative caution with only one character dying (twice, sorry mate) then we entered the third level and challenged the boss, Ilsundur, Lord of Fire. I’d never been in this dungeon before so I didn’t know what to expect. Just this one boss in his chamber, easy pickings right? Right… If his massive AoE attacks weren’t enough to immediately put me on a feverish healing defensive while the flame-licked group scattered about, in my concentration on the health bars I just barely caught notice of “something else” in the periphery of the screen. I then heard a rumbling sound slowly growing louder. Just as I started to ask “Hey, what’s that sou…” *KABOOM* I became a crispy, flaming pancake, run over from behind by a gigantic rolling fireball! Ilsundur sets two of these monstrosities rolling, each in opposite directions around the chamber so not only are we fighting him but we have to watch out for the approach of these fireballs, both in front and behind us. Luckily “death by flaming steamroller” is on the rather short list of occurrences which do not contribute to death penalty so despite at least five full wipes, the only death penalty anyone incurred was due to legitimate combat deaths.

Oh, just to explain the “Stormbringer” thing, Van Hemlock seems to be cursed. Every single Tuesday, shortly after logging in and grouping up with him, storms appear. Two weeks ago they became so violent the power was knocked out in this section of town for nearly an hour. Last week, I had just come in from a several mile walk. Perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, not extremely humid or anything. Van Hemlock logs into GW and within 15 minutes I’m hearing thunder! Ten minutes later a full-on storm is roiling.

It also turns out that despite having completed the Nightfall campaign late last year, I did so in a manner that completely skipped at least three entire zones and two towns! Possibly more, but those were the latest discoveries. I skipped them so entirely that my map didn’t even show the zone portals, so I had no idea anything should have been there until just by chance I compared my map to a fully explored map of Elona. I don’t have the zones fully explored yet but they are on my map and I’ve reached both towns so I can map travel to them now. Farming? Initially I was farming Norn reputation from the Eye of the North expansion to build up my Norn skills, most notably Ursan Blessing which gives extreme bonuses to armor and strength. Yeah, my character is a monk so he’ll have less armor even in Ursan than a warrior would, but I’ve been unsuccessful with every other tactic to get through that Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu (and a few other items) so in desperation I’m looking to Ursan to power my way through it. Rank 8 so far, and not looking forward to repeating this on my warrior someday. I’m also wanting to get my Lightbringer reputation to maximum rank because of the Lightbringer AoE healing spell I’ve recently been introduced to and fallen in love with, but that particular reputation is very slow to increase so I’m definitely not looking forward to repeating it on any other character.

Finally, this month I finally got to see both the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, two of the most famous elite areas in the game! I’ve only been in one time to each, but I’m definitely looking forward to more and being able to learn my way around and which mobs drop the most sought-after items! The alliance I’m in has a daily schedule so I should be able to get involved with more and more high-end content as I get to know everyone better. If I can get into a Domain of Anguish group, that should be of great help with my Lightbringer reputation as well.

DDO: I didn’t get nearly as much DDO time as I’d hoped, mostly because of Guild Wars. I did manage to sneak around solo into the new Three-Barrel Cove wilderness area, but the second any mob noticed me I had to run for my life back to the inn. Wizards being super-squishy and all… I did do a few quests I’d never seen before, and in interesting groups. Oh, for the record, the new Monk class is awesome! I don’t have one to actually play myself, but just from what I saw being grouped with some, it looks like a blast. The only real gripe about them I’ve heard is from clerics, especially those from guilds who take things slower or perma-death guilds in particular. Monks need to keep going in order to maintain their ki so they tend to run ahead of the group and start fights to keep their ki up while everyone else sighs. I’m sure players will find a synergy soon though. In any event, my wizard did finally go adventuring once more, though someone needs to give me a lesson on DDO inventory management. Do I actually need all these robes, scepters, staves and wands? They each seem to have very unique properties so I’ve been reluctant to sell them but I’m nearly out of bag space now.

Hellgate: London: I put a little bit of time into HGL this month. Mostly in hopes of catching up with Hudson and Bildo in-game but that didn’t happen. It’s a shame the game was marketed as an MMO, for it definitely isn’t. In fact, Flagship seems to excel at marketing single-player games as MMO’s. Both HGL and Mythos seem to be solo-oriented with almost zero need to group with anyone other than “just for the hell of it.” I haven’t gotten far in either yet, so maybe that changes, but it seems silly for now. I thought HGL did a great job of nailing the shooter “feel” within an RPG context, far better than Tabula Rasa did. Although I’ll partially attribute that to HGL’s first-person view. Both HGL and TR do a horrid job in third-person. Why do console developers do such a great job with third-person shooters and the PC guys can’t pull it off to save their lives? Anyway, my only real gripe about the shooter aspect of HGL is the unlimited ammo. Sure, in LOTRO I love that my hunter doesn’t have to waste bag space stocking up arrows like I did in WoW (and risk running out in the middle of a raid), but HGL having unlimited ammo really trivializes the combat. All I have to do is hold down the fire button and move the reticule over the mobs until they die with no worries whatsoever about strategy or keeping track of my ammo. It did seem like they’ve squashed a lot of bugs in the months since I last played, and the performance is awesome now, but I still notice that it takes a very long time after quitting the game before resources are released. Memory leak? My Guild Wars alliance also has an HGL chapter, so perhaps I’ll try catching up with some of them and see how the grouping is. Speaking of Mythos, I guess a huge new makeover is coming to the test server. It’s already received the Overland treatment, where the whole game is open rather than being instanced. I haven’t been able to play in a very long time because there was a bug in the game that interfered with the Zune wireless networking services, causing Mythos to not react to any input (ie. I could login but not move). Sure, I could disable those two services and reboot (and I did once) but the Diablo click-fest game play just doesn’t interest me enough for it. Regardless, the latest update to Mythos’ test server fixed that bug so maybe, maybe, I’ll put some time in if I’m extremely bored and in a masochistic mood. I hear a future update will give an “MMO view” so maybe that will make it a more enjoyable experience. Then again, I absolutely cannot stand Dungeon Runners, so maybe not…

F2P: Nothing says “I’m bored!” more than going F2P. That also says a lot about EQ2 that I’d rather play any number of F2P games than login to EQ2, which I did re-install for the Living Legacy thing, and thus far haven’t managed to stay interested in playing for more than 5 minutes total this month. For no good reason in particular I always keep several F2P games installed but I never actually play any, at least not for any length of time. One thing I’ve noticed is that an awful lot of the F2P games seem to be all about soloing. You can create a warrior, mage, hunter, or priest-type character but that seems to make little real difference and only appeals to how you personally like to see your character kill things. I rarely see any incentive to group, unless the high level PvP/PK is better or safer in groups. Archlord has “auto looting” when you’re grouped, so you don’t have to waste time actually picking your loot up off the ground; it goes straight into your inventory. Other than laziness, I’ve seen no benefit to grouping there. The exception so far has been Rappelz. My initial impression is that it actually has a fairly helpful in-game community and I constantly see groups looking for more players, usually a cleric but often seeking a “damage dealer” (DD) class (which we’d call a “dps” class in other games). The classes in Rappelz do matter and they fit their roles more like a “real” (ie. Western AAA subscription) MMO “holy trinity.” There are several dungeons in the game, so you’ll see LFG’s for dungeon parties (DP) all the time. From the very little I can tell, dungeons are where the Cash Shop comes in: players buy the Stamina Savers to help keep them alive and earn extra XP and JP (Job Points for skills) while in the dungeons. Otherwise, the cash shop is aesthetic fluff items, for the most part, and not needed. In fact, in the little time I’ve put in I have received two or three stamina savers either as drops or quest rewards, so it’s entirely possible that the CS wouldn’t be needed at all? In addition to dungeon parties, which anyone of a certain level or rank can join, Rappelz has guild-only dungeon sieges which is a combination of PvE and PvP to own that dungeon, which gives some benefit to the guild. If my guild owned a certain dungeon, another guild can challenge my guild by first applying to raid the dungeon. If they kill the bosses before the timer expires they proceed to the actual siege, where both guilds fight for ownership of the dungeon.

I do notice that yes, F2P games have shallow game play (or at least don’t go to lengths to disguise the grind like our AAA ones do) but they do push the envelope in other areas. Rappelz seems to have a rather complicated pet system. Mabinogi allows your character to age, which I don’t think has been done in an MMO before. If the rumors of a Harry Potter MMO are true, I feel this would be a great aspect of game play where as students of Hogwarts, not only do we “level up” but each year of school our characters actually age and grow, just like the characters in the novels and movies do. If I understand correctly, Archlord seems to have some system set up where after a grueling set of dungeons or keep assaults, one player can become the archlord of that server, and receives super archlord armor and weaponry and a dragon mount, complete with AoE fire breath. Of course, he immediately becomes a target for whomever is waiting in the shadows with aspirations of becoming archlord himself. Who knows, I may actually put in more F2P time with the goal of exploring their specific features where they’re innovating into areas we haven’t really seen in our AAA subscription games.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Guild Wars, MMO Gaming, Whatever.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.