Pumping Irony

I’ve been distracted with Guild Wars this weekend, so didn’t notice that my server of Thelanis won the Race to the Subterranean to open the new raid in DDO’s Module 7, The Subterrane, housed under the ruins where the Marketplace Bazaar once stood.

That goes a long way in explaining why I was unable to find any low-mid level groups last week, yet the server was quite active! Speculators were giving Sarlona the edge because that server has a reputation as being home to many a power-gamer, whereas Thelanis is viewed as the unofficial role-playing server. Apparently the Sarlonians were too busy power-leveling their new monks to raid, and Thelanis took the lead and unlocked the new raid on Friday! Congrats to my fellow Thelanians, and I hope to some day join the ranks in those raids.

My understanding of the Race to the Subterranean is that it was similar to WoW’s War Effort to open the gates of Ahn’Qiraj. Where WoW took donation of crafted items and such, DDO had tokens in each of the prior raids. Players on each server raided, collected tokens and turned them in to count towards opening the Subterrane on their server. I’m not sure what time frame Turbine had in mind for this event, but Thelanis pulled it off in three days! That’s a crazy amount of raiding, folks!

Returning to the Eye of the North story arc, Benjeth successfully completed the Destruction’s Depths dungeon. Now it was time for the final battle! With the Disc of Chaos and its legion of destroyers defeated, the Asurans were able to reclaim their Central Transfer Chamber. It is learned that the destroyers operate as a collective so while the Deldrimor dwarves fend off the destroyer armies, Benjeth will lead a strike team to eliminate the Great Destroyer himself!

High Priest Alkar guards the Asuran gate that leads to the chamber of the Great Destroyer. First, some reconnaissance. We gated into the hot, magma-filled chamber and sneaked near enough to see what we’d be up against to create a battle plan. The Great Destroyer is level 31! Right away that implies plenty of armor and health, so I’ll need to come up with a way to lower his maximum health. Several destroyer guards in the chamber as well, though hopefully placed so that we can take them one at a time. The chamber itself is a lava pit with only a few areas of encrusted magma to stand on, so we’ll likely be dealing with burning environmental damage. If I’m correct and burning is a continuous damage effect, individual condition removal skills would deplete the monks’ energy too quickly and leave none for healing. So I decided to rely on party heals instead and attempt to out-heal all the damage we’d be taking.

I decided to leave Benjeth’s build alone for the most part; he’d handle a little protection and normal individual healing. The exception being I brought the Asuran skill Pain Inverter, a hex which, at Benjeth’s current rank of 5, reflects 108% of the damage a mob deals right back onto it, ignoring the mobs armor too. I also brought the Deldrimor skill Breath of the Great Dwarf which removes burning on the whole party as well as providing a party-wide heal. Not bad having a single skill that both heals and removes the burning condition on the entire group for a cost of only 10 energy. I brought along Ogden and Dunkoro (Hero monks) and gave them each Holy Haste, an enchant to make their Healing Prayers spell cast 50% faster, and Light of Deliverance, an elite party heal. These would serve as their bread and butter for keeping the group alive with fast group heals, though I also gave them some single-target heals as well, to help Benjeth while their LoD refreshed. To handle the Great Destroyer, I chose Koss because I already had him configured as a warrior specializing in axe mastery, which tends to have a good selection of skills that cause a Deep Wound, lowering the maximum health of the target. I gave Koss every Deep Wound-ing, heavy damage axe attack I could find, along with an interrupt. All that was left was hiring four henchmen to complete the group. My choices were: Herta, hoping her melee and elemental wards would provide some additional protection from the destroyers and burning. Eve to keep the monks’ energy up and her elite health degeneration hex. I was concerned about the Great Destroyer’s armor, and health degeneration bypasses armor. Aidan for heavy ranged dps without interrupts. Some alliance-mates suggested keeping interrupts to a minimum so where I’d usually hire Zho, I thought better of it for this fight. Finally, reliable Mhenlo for more healing prayers.

With Benjeth’s strike team assembled and prepared for battle, High Priest Alkar once again sent us through the gate into the Great Destroyer’s lava chamber. From the placement of his destroyer guards, it appeared we may only need to fight a few in order to clear a path to the Great Destroyer. However, I was concerned that, being a boss he may be able to summon help (true) and also that he may kite us into his guard’s aggro radius (also true), which Guild Wars mobs love to do. So rather than taking the easy path then having it come back and bite us later, I decided to clear all the guards in the chamber. For the most part, this was trivial with Koss’ Deep Wounds and Eve’s health degen and four monks keeping everyone going. A few times the Great Destroyer would summon more destroyers, as well as hitting us with an AoE knockdown, but I kept the group at a distance from him. In short order the guards were down and we turned our eyes to the Great Destroyer. I put a protective enchant on Koss, who shouted an armor buff then charged in and engaged the Great Destroyer, immediately causing a Deep Wound, which Koss unrelentingly maintained for the duration of the encounter. I quickly discovered why my alliance-mates were suggesting not to interrupt the Great Destroyer too much: every interrupt causes a massive AoE damage spike. If I’d brought Zho along, or a mesmer, even with four monks I may have been challenged to keep the group alive. Between Koss’ Deep Wound condition, Eve’s health degen, dps from the group and reflective damage from Benjeth’s Pain Inverter hex, the fight was over all too quickly, and we were to a cut scene (which ends in a bit of a GW2 hint: the awakening of the ancient dragon Primordus) then whisked off to the Battledepths for a celebration!

For his end-game reward, Benjeth chose Droknar’s Healing Staff! Not only is it very nice-looking, but it’s a perfect version of the healing staff I’d put together for Benjeth; one which not only gives half casting time and half skill refresh, but which also gives the maximum bonus to enchant duration! Benjeth’s usual skill selection relies mostly on enchants so this unique staff will complement the build tremendously.

Just thought I’d mention that DirectX 9.0c end-user runtime version 9.23.1350 was just released yesterday for your DX9 gaming enjoyment! That link points to the official download site, which requires Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation in order to download the installer. You are using a valid Windows, right? Right? Right… for the rest of you (shame, shame) Codecs.com also has the installer up for download.

I got myself settled in today, put my nose to the grindstone (get it?) and finally, after a little over three years playing Guild Wars, I have finally gotten my first-ever set of Elite Armor for one of my characters! The elite sets from Eye of the North appear to cost only 10k gold per piece (plus materials) rather than the 15k gold each that the elite armors from the three campaigns cost, but they didn’t have reputation requirements, so I definitely feel I’ve worked off the extra 5k. And then some.

I haven’t done this much blatant grinding since I was gung-ho to get the PvP mount for my hunter in WoW before one of the patches close to the TBC launch raised the prices quite a bit. I am downright exhausted from putting this much time into repeatedly clearing zones that give Asuran reputation bounties. But, I’m finished (for now) so turn down the lights, crank up the music, and invite the gals from Sex & the City, here’s a little Monk fashion show!

First, Benjeth appears for the final time in his original Sacred armor, crafted by Seifred in Droknar’s Forge!

Next, Benjeth appears in undyed Asuran armor, crafted by Klub in Rata Sum!

Finally, we decided to spice things up and give Benjeth a look all his own!

There are a couple other elite armor sets I’m interested in obtaining for Benjeth, not to mention my alts. But for now… I’m setting my sights on getting Benjeth through the final dungeon in Eye of the North!

In a perfect example of my short attention span, I specifically stated I was intending to actively pursue my Asuran reputation to get Benjeth his first-ever set of elite armor. Somehow I wound up repeatedly trying (and repeatedly failing, badly) to compete in the Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu. The Bison Cup too, just for the hell of it, but Kahmu is my primary motivation. Next I ended up in Elona working on my Lightbringer points to achieve rank 3 to get the final skill, an elite signet. Farming points got me curious once more about the ever-vaunted “55 Monk.” I’d gotten all the requisite gear for the build last year, but had never actually practiced 55-ing. No time like the present, eh?

Experienced Guild Wars players are probably shaking their heads that it’s taken me this long to do it, but I figure better late than never, right? For the rest of you, I’ll give an explanation of the 55 Monk concept, which is essentially one of the most effective ways to solo farm with a monk in PvE. In this case, “solo” specifically means your monk is the only character out there; not grouped with anyone else. Non-Guild Wars players often consider the notion of having a full group of AI Heroes and Henchmen to be soloing, but to a GW player, that’s still a full group. The number of human-played characters is irrelevant; solo means only one character.

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April 30, it was (unofficially) announced via GamesIndustry.biz (who in turn referred to Private Equity Hub, who charges to read their content, so screw them) that Turbine has raised $40 million in venture capital funding. I say “unofficially” because if Turbine ever released this information themselves, I’m not finding it and am inclined to be skeptical of its validity. According to GamesIndustry.biz, however, that was Turbine’s third round of fund-raising and this alleged $40 million brings them to a total of $88 million in funding.

Yesterday, however, Turbine did officially announce that they have raised $40 million in equity financing. Time Warner, parent company of Warner Bros., was one of the heavy investors.

In a quote from a Time Warner representative:

“Our investment in Turbine is an important addition to Time Warner’s entertainment initiatives,” said Rachel Lam, Senior Vice President and Group Managing Director of Time Warner Investments. “Online interactive entertainment is a huge growth market and we are very excited about Turbine, its unique capabilities and the obvious opportunities that exist with our own broad portfolio of IP.”

The emphasis is mine. Now, just to speculate… yesterday rumors flare, sparked by a Warner Bros. quote, about a possible Harry Potter MMOG. Yesterday, Turbine receives financing from Time Warner, which as aforementioned, is the parent company of Warner Bros. I’ll also submit Turbine is keeping a single original IP alive, Asheron’s Call, while their later two titles involved licensed IP’s…

Consider this as creating the rumor “Is Turbine making a Harry Potter MMO?”

The announcement also included vague language which could be interpreted that Turbine will be getting into the console MMOG market, so that’s an additional possibility. I can easily connect a few imaginary dots and point out the conception that console gamers are younger, and Harry Potter is a youth-oriented series…

I’m just sayin’…

Update: (6/8/2008) Thought I’d add a few more thoughts to the rumor mill. In episode #118 of Virgin Worlds, Brent mentioned SOE’s John Smedley bring up researching ways to effectively include the younger crowd in their marketing demographics, specifically targeting young girls (and boys) for Free Realms. I made a semi-joking reference how console players are often associated as being the “younger crowd.” Thanks to Jerry at DDOcast for pointing out that Turbine is looking to hire a Senior Console Engineer (Xbox 360 or PS3)…

Tags: Harry Potter, MMORPG, Turbine

Just short of a year ago Saylah over at Mystic Worlds posed the idea of a Harry Potter MMORPG. I’ve read random and unconfirmed rumors that Warner Bros. had a “Hogwarts Online” concept but had been scrapped. EA has rights to Harry Potter video games, however I’ll point out that they also have rights to Lord of the Rings video games, yet Turbine did LOTRO. Was there a difference in licensing for MMORPG-only for Turbine whereas EA had rights for non-MMORPG games? I’m too lazy right now to research so I’ll just pose that question and leave it be.

Today the Hogwarts rumor mill is up in arms again, with owls of all variety delivering the same screamer letters of unconfirmed potential that Warner Bros. is indeed considering an MMOG based on J. K. Rowling’s work. MuggleNet posts the following quote, allegedly from a representative at Warner Bros.

The notion of creating a Harry Potter massively multi-player role playing game (MMORPG) is something that we’ve been discussing at Warner Bros. At this current stage, we are investigating the possibility of creating our own MMORPG.

The quote is lifted from Pottersphere, which is a French fan site, so you’ll need to either hit up Google Language Tools, Babelfish or go ask Brenden to teach you French since he spent all of April with it!

So… LF tank/healer for Voldemort raid, anyone?

Turbine pushed Module 7: The Way of the Monk onto the live servers this morning! Looks like an awesome content update, and will likely be the impetus to get me back into DDO a little this month. I’d already downloaded the pre-patch and had DDO updated today while the servers were down, so that when they were back up I didn’t have to download as many files to make the full update official. Nice touch, I hope they continue with their new downloadable pre-patch policy.

Turbine put up the full patch notes, but I’ll just touch on a few of the nice ones that caught my eye.

• Monks have been added to the game as a new playable class! No idea how appealing the monk class will be to me, but adding new classes to games is always a good move, and I look forward to grouping with some.
• Class trainers will now teach characters of any level, and will warn you if you are about to multi-class. I don’t multi-class (yet) but I appreciate being able to use any trainer rather than remembering which trainer in which city ward trains which levels.
• Two new raids have been added to the game! Woohoo! I don’t have any characters raid-worthy yet. I think my Wizard might be a level or two from starting the Vault of Night series, which ends in the Red Dragon raid, though not having been through that yet I don’t know if I’ll be able to actually do the raid at the same level as when I start the first quest. Either way, I’ve been terribly excited since the beginning to see how DDO handles raids, and I’m so glad a huge-ass red dragon will be the first. The two new raids introduced today sound very cool and I look forward to playing them someday.
• Once a day quests have been added to the game. WoW strikes again! DDO daily quests… hmm… I’ll have to check them out for sure. The patch notes specifically mention low-level characters, so I’ll be interested to see exactly what level bracket equates to “low-level.” With any luck, Koriander will be able to run them at level 7, although he’s as squishy as squishy gets and has difficulty soloing gnats…
• UI Improvements. Several improvements in several areas of the UI went live today, and are they ever nice! Kudos to the first step (on the DDO side) of what looks to be an ongoing overhaul of the Turbine Engine’s UI system.
• Three-Barrel Cove is now a wilderness area! The original Three-Barrel Cove was something akin to an outdoor quest hub. A small pirate town with some pirate mobs outside the pub to fight and a few quest NPC’s scattered about the map, including quests for The Fire Caves, which was a really fun dungeon. The last area that received the “wilderness area” treatment was the Waterworks dungeon. Afterwards, Waterworks was still Waterworks, it just had the new wilderness area-specific quests. Three-Barrel Cove on the other hand, has been completely revamped! Every aspect of the zone, from the town to the terrain, is completely new, and it’s nothing short of incredible! The zone looks to be roughly the size of Searing Heights and the other new wilderness areas, so plenty of exploring to be had!

I thought I’d read that Module 7 would also introduce a completely new tutorial experience, but I just created a monk and was taken to Smuggler’s Cove and did all the exact same content I’d done last year on my other characters. Arriving in Stormreach in the Wavecrest Tavern was humorous, as everyone else had also created monks! It was like a city-wide pajama party!

For more fun details, hit up Massively, they did a huge Module 7 preview treatment last week, with interviews, screen shots and videos!

Tags: DDO, MMORPG

May certainly flew by! Originally I had set a soft goal for myself of getting my Lore-master in LOTRO to 50 before the 24th, my birthday. Shortly after putting that goal into writing, I checked my May schedule and realized it wasn’t going to happen unless I power-leveled my way there, skipping a lot of content I’d been looking forward to. I did manage to get Arwellyn to 44 at least.

Age of Conan was going to launch on the 20th, so I made an effort at getting to level 20 and out of Tortage prior to launch. I didn’t manage that, either. While Funcom applied a so-called “miracle patch” two days prior to launch (and another last week) which improved performance dramatically, they’ve yet to create any miracles which cause me to want to login. I’ve never read Robert E. Howard’s Conan material so I couldn’t care less that I’m adventuring in the world of Conan. I’m just hoping for a fun game. AoC has a lot of positives, but for me personally, its negatives still outweigh them. Originally, I’d said I’d wait several months to play, perhaps around winter. Give Funcom time to get real feedback from real players rather than just the beta crowd. It’s summer and I’d rather get some sun than pick up yet another new game. I have put time in post-launch since Funcom has kept the Live Test servers up for us, and while I’m finally out of Tortage, the game is still failing to draw me in. Knowing that only players who get into large guilds to participate in raids and city sieges will get the most out of the game is a factor that pushes me away. The end-game degenerating into a WoW-esque hardcore raiding or PvP scenario is yet another. I like raiding, but I don’t like having to be a raider. There’s a profound difference, and I’m just not willing to become a raider again. That’s where, for me, LOTRO shines: group content, dungeons, and raids, but players are never funneled into a specific end-game path.

The highlight for the month was my birthday trip to the Florida Keys. The original plan was to stay at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas but I seem to have misplaced my passport and would not have received a replacement in time. We chose a new resort we’d never been to on Marathon Key. Had a total blast, and my girlfriend literally had to drag me out of the sun, but I managed to not become a complete crispy lobster critter. My shoulders and forehead were burned and quite red, but not overly painful. Everything else is just healthily tanned. The resort, Tranquility Bay, was very nice and it’s name is appropriate, it’s very tranquil. I’d say for the overall resort treatment, I’d still prefer Hawk’s Cay though. Speaking of which, we stopped by a couple nights and Hawk’s Cay has pretty much completed their renovations. It’s really gorgeous and some of the changes, such as completing remodeling the front public pool and moving the bar to a new location were pleasantly surprising. Looking forward to going back.

Back into the MMO/gaming/blogging community highlights, without a doubt the highlight of the month was Darren making good on his threat to have me on Shut Up. We’re Talking. That was a lot of fun, some good jokes and flubs were cut, but it was a great experience. I’d only chatted with Karen in tells and guild chat a handful of times so it was nice to actually speak to my (former) guild leader, and give her a couple of cheap ribbings. I also learned that, while it’s nice to prepare and take notes so things are fresh and in my head, it’s a Bad Idea to actually have those notes in my face while speaking. They ended up being a distraction and were the cause of my more spaztastic bits where I lost focus. Having the notes there and trying (and failing) to hit each bullet point left a sensation to the listener (in my opinion) that I was focused more on making my point and less involved with being conversational. If there’s a next time, I’ll prepare and take notes, but once Skype goes on, the notes go off.

At the risk of appearing self-congratulatory, I’ll also mention that two of my posts ended up over at Massively.com as well. My post on MMO patching [Massively link] was first, early in the month, followed by my APB post [Massively link] a few days ago. I’ll be honest: I don’t always know what to make of Massively.com. The writers are on an articles-per-week schedule which means they have to churn out material. As a result, that material isn’t always what I’d consider “quality” content on a commercial, professional site. I don’t mean to come off as being ungrateful but “Pumping Irony gets philosophical on patchers?” The title and content made it seem like I was really going overboard evaluating all possible, practical and theoretical aspect of patching, while I thought I had been clear in the actual post that the whole thing was just an early morning observation on the two most commonly used methods. Anyway, I appreciated the attention from a commercial site, but not the attempt at what I viewed at blatant sensationalism. The author of the APB article which linked here had some actual commentary of his own, was well-written, and just used my article to further his point.

I don’t have concrete plans for June. Obviously I’m enjoying Guild Wars again so I’ll certainly spend time there. I’ve been missing DDO. There was some guild drama, in which the guild was originally going to be disbanded. Turns out that never happened, we’re still there just the leader promoted someone else to take his place. I like the family feel of the guild, but it’s also a small guild with rarely more than three of us online. So I’m conflicted: do I leave and take the time to find another larger guild with a more active population? If so, am I being selfish, seeking an active guild so there are always people around when I want them around even though I’m a very casual DDO player? Or do I stick it out and rely on PUGs as usual? Also, ever since I started playing, I always see the Sublime Permadeath guild running around. I’ve been curious since the beginning. Over at DDOcast, Lessah has taken over the role-playing segment after Merlask was hired by Turbine. For the past several episodes, Lessah has also been heavily into the various permadeath guilds in DDO, and highly recommends Sublime. I have a character created specifically for Sublime, but just haven’t worked up the nerve to apply yet. Because I play so casually, and I would do perma-death even more casually, I don’t want to just take up a slot that rarely gets used. But I’m extremely curious about the whole thing, and I’d love to see how they actually play. One of the complaints in DDO is that the veteran players have the quests memorized and tend to rush through to the end for experience or favor, skipping alternate objectives. There is no rushing in permadeath; each encounter must be carefully executed. With the release of Module 7 in a few days, introducing the Monk class, a completely revamped Three-Barrel Cove wilderness area, a completely revamped tutorial zone, and one or two new raids plus a new outdoor raid zone, I can see myself delving back into DDO in June.

I got into Guild Wars’ first and only expansion, Eye of the North, when it was first released. I was pretty close to completing its storyline when guild drama occurred and I stopped playing. Darren announced during the recording of Shut Up We’re Talking #26 that he was playing and enjoying Guild Wars, and I realized I really missed that. I missed the old guild and alliance chat quite a bit, and that wasn’t coming back, but maybe I’d never given my new guild — one a few formed in the aftermath of the aforementioned guild drama — a proper chance.

I actually spotted Darren online one evening last week and helped him complete a quest and one of his missions on Istan (the “noob island” of the Nightfall campaign). Turns it was Assault on Breknur Harbor, a Master Difficulty quest! I’d always skipped all the Master Difficulty quests, because they’re extremely difficult without either a group of human players or perhaps two players each with a set of Heroes will full builds utilizing elite skills. Assault was fun, but it was certainly an unexpected workout on my monking ability. Darren and I also had monk Heroes which have super-human reactions but even then his Melonni hero was damage spiked at one point so quickly there was no time to react before she was dead. Forgot to get screen shots of all the action, though! Those are always so fun for future blackmail purposes…

The next day, I figured I’d jump back into the Eye of the North. Previously, I’d worked up through the story up to the Heart of the Shiverpeaks dungeon. I had repeatedly taken a group of Heroes and Henchmen and worked my way through the dungeon but the boss, Cyndr the Mountain Heart, proved too difficult for the tactics (or perhaps the lack thereof?) I was using. I forget how many times I’d run that dungeon, both back then and this past week and every time, every tactic, every build change, Cyndr defeated us. Time for players. I first asked in our alliance chat, but not many people were playing at the time so I did one of the most foolish things a GW player can do: a PUG. Yes, I PUG constantly in other games with great success, but GW and WoW both have well-deserved reputations for some of the worst PUG experiences ever. This proved to be one of those times. Shortly after joining the group I was already getting a bad feeling about things just from the chat and build demands. Next came the realization that I was the only human monk player. After five months away from the game, I wasn’t confident in my timing to run around claiming to be some über monk. Not that I would ever do that anyway. I feel I’m ok but certainly not über at monking, but it’s rewarding and fun enough that the monk is always my main character in the game. One of the players did bring a hero monk, but that was it. Judging from their attitudes and build demands, I’d have thought these guys were experienced players and probably knew their way around the dungeon. Not. As soon as we entered one of the warriors took off in the wrong direction. During the first fight they spent more time making fun of which healing spells I used than fighting. Then the warriors ran into a cave of chromatic drakes, which are known to do spike damage. This cave could have been bypassed and was in the wrong direction still. Sure enough, the warrior was spiked in a single hit. He’d ran in before I could apply a protection spell to him. I haven’t seen such chaos in ages, and in short order I was out of energy. By the time it was over, all but one group member was dead, myself included. That was the first big battle and already the group had a -15% death penalty. Of course the entirety of the blame was laid upon my shoulders, go figure, and they spent several minutes announcing it. I haven’t rage-quit in quite some time, but I finally had enough abuse and called it a night.

Not to be put-off, I tried again the next day. I ended up in a pleasant group, no little e-peen waggling kids who couldn’t back up their words, and three monks, including myself. We made our way through the dungeon again, and when confronted with Cyndr again, everyone grabbed a powder keg to take down Cyndr’s carapace shell defense. Once we had his defense down, we were able to make quick work of him before he could regenerate the defense. No deaths!

Next, and I think final, dungeon in the story line: Destruction’s Depths!