Pumping Irony

DDO’s much-anticipated Module 8: Prisoners of Prophecy was released this morning!

I’ll just list a few of the highlights rather than quoting the rather lengthy full release notes.

• Prisoners of Prophecy continues the epic end-game story of the Stormreaver and the dragons of Argonessen who find themselves in a fragile alliance with an undead dragon. The story is told in four new dungeons, four new wilderness landscapes and a new two-part public quest hub.
• New Player Experience combines an all-new character creation screen with template paths for new players along with a completely new tutorial experience with adventures on the island of Korthos prior to journeying to Stormreach.
• Beta DX10 Support is finally in-game. I’ve seen screenshots comparing the same scene in DX9 and DX10 and it’s pretty! The shots of LOTRO and DDO are almost enough to make me consider finally downgrading to Vista just so I can upgrade to DX10.
• Hirelings are not included with Module 8, but will be introduced via a series of live events afterward.
• Stormreach remodeling is still underway, the Harbor and entrance to the Subterrane seeing some changes.
• Collectibles see a nice change. Defeated foes that drop collectibles now drop them in bags which remain even if the mob’s body is destroyed or despawns. Also collectors will now automatically take the collectibles directly from your inventory as well as your collectible bags.
• More character slots! All players now have 10 character slots which are immediately available and no longer have to be unlocked.

Good stuff! I plan on spending some time tomorrow with the new character creation and tutorial. Hopefully I’ll keep my wits about me and remember to take plenty of screenshots and notes to write a comprehensive article of my experiences.

London has been overrun and destroyed. Faced with increasing hordes of demons entering our world, the last bastion of human population is dwindling, out-numbered with no chance of survival. In these dark times humanity is faced with a final dire question of fate: do we continue the fight and let the demons slaughter us or do we kill ourselves so they cannot?

For Hellgate: London players, Namco-Bandai has answered that question: suicide. In an announcement on the HGL site, Namco-Bandai has stated the HGL servers will remain online and free to use until January 31, 2009 at which time the plug will be pulled and the game will be discontinued.

Santa Clara, Calif., (October 24, 2008) - NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., today announced that they will continue to support customers of PC game Hellgate™: London with online server support and play through January 31, 2009 despite the closure of Flagship Studios. In a further gesture of support, Namco Bandai Games will provide this server support free of charge to all fans and players of the game up until the shut down date.

Didn’t we just do this three weeks ago?

Anyway, the LOTRO Europe site from Codemasters has an announcement up that the exact same promotion from earlier this month will be running again soon.

From October 30th through November 4th, former players can rejoin for free with a fully up-to-date (up to the current Book 14) game and +25% XP. As we learned the first time around, the bonus XP counts only towards each kill XP not quest reward XP.

However, that same Codemasters site also mentions the 14-day trial with links to download when Turbine has temporarily discontinued the trial until Mines of Moria launches.

I’m starting to catch on that Codemasters makes their announcements before we get ours here in the US. Maybe Turbine thinks no one checks websites until after 5pm in the States? Anyway, I expect the US announcement within the next four hours…

The previous bonus weekend this month had my somewhat lower-population server busy, especially in the evenings when every night the “high server load” icon would display.

That’s great as long as it doesn’t interfere with my gaming experience… Arkenstone has been very flaky the past 12 hours for some reason already, and Lore-masters are reporting suddenly our “root” graphics for the Cracked Earth ability is no longer showing. I thought it was just me and was about to submit a bug report when several other players I was whining to switched to their Lore-masters with the same story. It worked perfectly fine last night…

Here’s hoping the servers are normal before this bonus weekend arrives.

I was just listening to a podcast where the hosts were talking about being in various beta tests for MMOs and thought I’d remark briefly on my latest experience.

I’ve stated several times that I wish game studios would go back to taking beta seriously rather than just a marketing tool. I wish the beta testers would take the “job” they volunteered for seriously and actually test stuff and submit feedback instead of getting a sneak peek and dropping it. I wish studios would also hold those volunteer beta testers to higher standards of quality and accountability and if someone isn’t pulling their weight, drop them and give the beta slot to someone who will.

I recently announced I was in Friends and Family Beta for one of the higher-profile and anticipated titles for 2009. Each week the studio would send out emails announcing when the next tests would be, what they specifically wanted us to look at, what changes were being made in that week’s patch, and so forth. Each one also stated that participation in each test would count towards inclusion in future beta tests.

I did get to participate in a few of the tests, but more often than not I was plagued by CTD after CTD. Sometimes the game would run like a champ, other times it would lag and hitch badly, especially around other players. Hey, it’s beta — early beta — I expect that. But because of the often rapid-fire CTD’s, the client not connecting to the authentication server, and the limited times of testing (other than a week or two ago when they kept the test servers up full-time for seven days, that was great!) and a few other technical issues, I was not always able to truly participate as often as I wanted or tried to.

The game just entered Closed Beta, and apparently what level participation I did manage did not quite make the mark — I have been excluded from Closed Beta. The NDA still prohibits me from mentioning which game this was, hence the intentionally vague language in this post.

Even though I was on the business end of the “whammo stick” I really respect this particular studio for holding us to any level of accountability at all and placing value upon each beta slot they offer. Well played, my hat’s off to you.

SWG fans usually cringe when they see “CU” anywhere. Not as much as “NGE” but they cringe nonetheless. It sounds like Turbine is polishing up their nerf bat and are about to take a swing at Middle Earth.

Today’s Developer Diary details the upcoming combat changes coming to LOTRO with the arrival of the Mines of Moria expansion. This will be a patch update and applies to all players, not just those adventuring in Moria and beyond.

From my (limited) understanding of the article, and with no Moria beta experience, my impression is that most of the changes are “simply” a matter of changing the Parry, Block, Evade, Resistances and Mitigations to a ratings system with hard numbers for players to see rather than the percentages used currently. Percentages will still be available in tooltips, but the hard numbers should make it easier to tell if an item is truly an upgrade without equipping it first. The downside, which is why I put “simply” in quote, is that along with these changes comes a downgrade (ie. “nerf”) of our current statistics within those affected categories.

The NDA on Moria lifted Monday, and players have been saying the combat change was a system shock but something you get used to, just like we got used to the current combat system and had to get used to the marginally faster combat speed that was patched in several months ago. It’s not a full-blown new system like the CU/NGE was, it’s just a change that initially will mean a downgrade to certain current abilities in combat. Some of the more cynical forum posters are speculating that it will mean that by the time we reach level 60 in the Moria game, those same attributes will be roughly equal to what they currently are at level 50 in the Shadows of Angmar game. Could be, guess we’ll see…

Personally I just hope this change will truly be better for the long-term life the the game, like Turbine claims, and that it doesn’t turn the game into a gear-chasing, min/max-ing game like WoW where specific gear and specific builds become “necessary” to progress. LOTRO has been very refreshing in that regard; I would hate to see it devolve into WoW-esque e-peen pettiness.

To paraphrase Bill Murray from Ghostbusters: “I came, I yawned, I canceled it’s ass.”

I hopefully won’t turn this into one of those drawn-out hate-filled rants when people quit a game in a glorious explosion of bile and vitriol. I’ve been pretty up-front here and on other blogs about my issues with the game. Most of the technical issues Mythic will deal with, they’ve been pretty quick to jump on the more outstanding bugs this past month. Balance issues will be dealt with, I’m sure. Will they manage to balance the content so more people are playing the game rather than scenario grinding? I hope they do. If all I wanted to do was play the same instanced battle ad nauseum I could re-sub to WoW. Or better yet, I could play any number of FPS’ for free.

Bottom line: I was not having fun. At all. I’d be chatting on Ventrilo with my LOTRO kinship leader and his girlfriend who are both playing WAR on a different server and he’d joke that I needed anger management therapy every time I logged into WAR.

The promise for fun is there. I can see it. It’s just on the cusp of the horizon. But right now I’m so lonely and miserable every moment in the game, I cannot justify continuing the subscription at the present time.

I want to say I’ll be back, but I may be removed from Casualties of WAR by that time which will also remove the majority of any remaining motivation to return someday. The game is absolutely the most anti-social and lonely MMOG I have ever encountered in my life, which is probably the #1 reason that I’m having such a lousy time. The other smaller issues could be ignored oh so easily if there were other players chatting, adventuring and engaging in war. But they’re not. They’re all hiding and grinding the same scenarios over and over. Mythic could just as well remove the extremely laggy chat server; it isn’t being used much. No groups to Open Group with. No Public to Public Quest with. No one to chat with. I’d almost even settle for Barrens Chat and Chuck Norris jokes at this point. But there’s none of that.

If I start reading that all of the game is improving, that population is improving during all hours of the day, that people are actually being social and that I can re-join Casualties, I’ll certainly come back. I bought into the slogan that “WAR is everywhere!” Right now it isn’t, it’s only in a handful of instanced scenarios. That isn’t what I signed up for. When all aspects of the game are being utilized and I can jump into real battles in the open world on a massive scale with players who are having fun and being social… I am soooooo there! I look forward to that day…

Tonight was the follow-up to last week’s raid into the Rift of Nurz Ghashu to attempt to defeat the balrog Thaurlach, Glathirel’s Bane before our raid locks expire.

Our first try something went wrong in Group #1’s switch room, and several Ever-seers and darklings came out to help the balrog party with us. An unscripted hope wipe triggered in the midst of this and someone panicked and popped their hope token out of turn. Wipe.

Tuesdays several kinships do Balrog-only runs, so we all went to Rivendell to wait out the hope token cooldown as well as waiting for one of the kinships to turn the chain in to Glorfindel, where everyone in the area gets an unwipeable +4 hope buff for 3 hours. I think it was Meaning of Haste who turned theirs in tonight, then we headed back into the Rift to confront the Balrog once again.

This time things went much smoother, everyone kept their cool in tight situations, and we used our hope tokens in order. I think we only had one unscripted hope wipe that I can remember and it was dealt with just fine. All the switch rooms went as planned, I even managed to root all but one of the mobs in my group’s switch room and locked them inside so they were taken out of the equation. That brought both groups back outside to tackle Thaulach himself!

The group has been through the fight several times, and the leader has taken plenty of notes and was calling what to expect and when to expect it. Very calmly, very friendly, very patiently. However, they’ve never actually killed the Balrog in all this time. I love that not only have I stumbled upon such a friendly group, but one who, like myself, prefers to get the strategies on their own instead of Raiding By Numbers and following someone else’s strategy. They’ve been working on this for a long time and tonight, it all paid off.

Thaulach has been defeated!

I haven’t been in a raid that was this excited and happy over a boss kill since my raid group finally downed Nefarion for the first time in WoW’s Blackwing Lair raid back in pre-TBC days. The raid leader was literally shaking; everyone was in such a great mood! Goddamn I miss raiding! Stuff like this makes it so easy to relapse into that hardcore raiding routine… You guys will help keep me centered, right? Right? *knock knock, is this thing on?* Anyway I am so, so happy for the guys who have worked so hard doing this, and I am honored to have been there for their first balrog kill.

BioWare and LucasArts delivered on their promise to officially unveil the worst-kept secret in the genre: Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Set 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic — roughly 3,500 years prior to the movies — SW:TOR will allow players to become a Jedi, a Sith, or “a variety of other Star Wars roles” in what BioWare claims will be a highly story-driven MMOG. Their FAQ specifically says it’s a MMOG rather than using the full MMORPG acronym, so take from that what you may.

Also mentioned at least twice so far are “companion characters who will fight at your side or possibly betray you based on your actions.” Sounds like BioWare might be taking the Hero (Guild Wars) or Hireling (DDO) concept and injecting it with some single-player RPG style where companions are more meaningful than mere pets to be ordered about like units in an RTS.

The FAQ also states that the majority of the game can be completed solo, while certain content will require a group. No surprise there, most developers with even a few remaining neurons firing in their grey matter will allow for a great deal of solo play. On top of that, BioWare has been quite complimentary in their admiration of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. That, in and of itself, I don’t mind at all. If BioWare pulls a WoW-style bait-and-switch on their end-game, however, I do mind. Damion Schubert gave an Elder Game presentation at GDC Austin going over the importance of end-game and the continued focus on that versus always providing mid-game content — again, which Blizzard has been (in)famous for doing. I don’t necessarily envision SW:TOR as a “raiding game” but then again I don’t work for BioWare so that’s pure speculation on my part. If nothing else, the Missions from Guild Wars and Epic Books from Lord of the Rings Online have shown that it’s certainly possible to have repeatable content and also focus heavily on story, something WoW always failed miserably at accomplishing. PvP? The IP and setting certainly provide plenty of opportunities for conflicts of small and massive scale, which is something SWG failed at providing. But if there’s a heavily story-influenced leveling process which dumps you into a PvP-focused end-game, that’s still a bait-and-switch.

I will keep a wary eye on the title’s development, but I will in no way, shape, or form go fanboi over it anytime soon. What I do look forward to reading is the forum flames from the bitter and misguided fools who just knew that BioWare would provide them with a true sandbox set in the Star Wars universe to make up for SOE’s atrocities with Star Wars Galaxies. Get over it, people. BioWare owes former SOE customers nothing. Sandbox and a heavy focus on storyline are mutually exclusive — stories are by their nature linear. BioWare’s single-player offerings were also linear — while offering certain latitudes of freedom — because again, they’re telling a story. The site does mention “telling your own personal story” but then so does practically every other completely linear MMORPG. Those of you looking for a sandbox, my Jedi insight tells me you’d be better served looking elsewhere.

I completed Book 14 last night, which effectively means I have completed the Volume I story line and am waiting on Volume II: Mines of Moria to continue the story. Rumor has it that a Book 15 is coming, though I haven’t seen certainties on that nor details on whether it will be a normal content update or included with the Moria expansion.

The final chapter to the book, Chapter 15: The Doom of the North, is by far the longest and probably most challenging of the epic book instances. We took shortcuts and snuck by mobs rather than clearing every single mob in the place, and it probably still took an hour or so. The final boss before we could enter the ring-forges seemed like she took 30 minutes, but that’s because she’s a scripted encounter just like a good dungeon or raid boss would be, and it took us awhile to figure out a strategy that would work. My lore-master’s mezzes and roots, as well as the burglar’s mezz, were resisted quite often which caused the battle to last longer than it might have otherwise.

Spoiler Alert: Book 14 did a great job bringing the past 4-7 books full-circle. We’ve been running quests for an elf, Laerdan, whose daughter Narmaleth was responsible for Amarthiel’s downfall in the Fornost dungeon. We gradually learn that Amarthiel possessed Narmaleth and the loss of his daughter took a terrible toll on Laerdan’s mind. Amarthiel poses as Narmaleth to manipulate Laerdan, as well as taking the form of her keeper to manipulate the players and other characters involved in the story arch. Amarthiel is seeking to reforge Narchuil, a Ring of Power, and that story takes us into Forochel (which was the Book 13 update) and finally into the small portion of Eregion included in Book 14 that is the location of the ring-forges. Mordirith arrives on a fell beast and challenges Amarthiel, however, and with the full power of the Witch-King behind him, defeats her and his servant Mordrambor takes Narchuil for himself. Laerdan seems to have been slain in the fight while a gravely wounded Amarthiel (or is she Narmaleth once more?) weeps over him before being taken prisoner by the Free Peoples.

Book 14 also serves to show where Turbine is taking some of the technology they’ve implemented over the past year.

Session play, for example. It started with “chicken play” where we can go to Sandson’s Farm in the Shire and temporarily become a chicken, perform some chicken quests or just attempt to travel around the more dangerous world. Later session play was added to the PvMP game in the form of Rangers for the freeps and Trolls for the creeps. Book 14 has two instances that make full use of session play.

In the first, we play an Angmarim Bloodletter in charge of preparing Sammath Baul, a tower in Carn Dum where Laerdan has been imprisoned, prior to Amarthiel’s arrival. After we clear up some rabble and wake up the lazy guards, Amarthiel arrives, interrogates Laerdan and leaves. Suddenly Laerdan’s allies arrive and we rally to attack, knowing it will be our deaths. Fade to black. Savvy players will add 2+2 and remember that in Book 12 it was a player fellowship who stormed Sammath Baul to rescue Laerdan. So this first use of session play for an epic book quest gave us additional insight as to what happened during that encounter from within the dungeon and from the enemy’s point of view.

In the second session play instance, we play Laerdan himself who has tracked his daughter Narmaleth into Eregion and seeks to save her with the power of Narchuil, which is in two pieces. In fact, it’s Amarthiel once more posing as Narmaleth to guide Laerdan along and claim Narchuil for herself.

Some players whine that they’re not playing, or advancing, their own character in these session play instances. That depends on your perspective. Are you not furthering the story, thereby advancing your character into new places, new encounters and being rewarded with new gear? The characters we portray during session play certainly aren’t receiving those rewards. It’s a story-telling technique many authors use to give the reader the full story by providing glimpses of all the characters’ motivations, both protagonists and antagonists. Rather than making us read a wall of text quest dialogue that players like myself will forget in quick fashion, we get to actually play through the events. I could liken it to the Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack where you play as a character from various stories in Guild Wars’ lore rather than playing your own character. But in the end, it’s your character who receives the reward for doing so.

Session play is here to stay in LOTRO, and will be further improved upon as the game progresses. We know the encounter with the balrog Durin’s Bane in Mines of Moria will be a session play instance, for example.

In yet another comparison to Guild Wars, the finale to Book 14 also makes use of a new cinematic camera technique in similar fashion to the cut-scenes in the Guild Wars missions. In this case, the story and interaction is purely between the NPC’s. It will be interesting to see if future cinematics give the player characters any dialogue like Guild Wars does, or if Turbine decides they’d be better off not putting words in our mouths. Regardless, the emphasis on story and utilizing various techniques to tell those stories are one of my main attractions to Guild Wars and LOTRO, so personally I couldn’t be happier that Turbine is trying new ways to bring us into the story in a traditional MMORPG.

Good times, and am eagerly anticipating the continuation into Moria and beyond!

A third Developer Diary went up today linking to the level 50+ advancement schemes for the Captain, Guardian and Warden classes.

Of the three, I only have a captain who’s level 35 and mostly parked other than doing a bit of jeweller work every now and then. I’ll probably be dragging him out of semi-retirement soon but I won’t be in any huge hurry to level him. I do plan on creating a Warden at some point, and I’ve already mentioned my Guardian dilemma so I won’t go there.

I did give the captain advancement a read-through, and it all sounds like great additions to a very versatile class. Since I am not actively playing a captain, however, I won’t bother compiling a list of my favorites for this post.