Pumping Irony

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!

I mentioned recently I was taking a break from Vanguard until my friend Daniel gets to a level where we can duo and group. Vanguard was included in my Station Access, which I canceled recently, and SOE advised that I needed to allow the Station Access to expire before I could renew Vanguard on its own. Station Access expired a few days ago, but I’m going to hold off re-subscribing to Vanguard just to make sure I give Daniel time to get his cleric leveled up. Otherwise, I’ve got Dolndruth right in the middle of the CIS chain and it’s just damn fun so I’d be tempted to keep at it and perpetually out-level Dan’s cleric. Having an inactive account rather forces the issue.

So, that leaves me with only DDO and LOTRO as active accounts, though it’s debatable if I should count LOTRO since I’m a lifetime member.

Speaking of DDO, I did get to participate in the final event in the 2nd Anniversary last night. My guild set up a raid in the marketplace. That was the first time I’d ever been grouped with more than a single guild member in DDO, and I have to say even though I don’t know most of them very well yet, seeing all of us banded together did instill a sense of pride and of family. It was a nice feeling; a bit surprising yet very satisfying and welcome. I have screen shots of various times during the event but didn’t get time to resize and upload them to my gallery before I had to leave on this trip. When I get home I’ll either just upload them to the DDO gallery or perhaps edit this post with a few screen shots. Otherwise, I’ll defer to DDOcast where stories were posted, many with screen shots and videos, with each change that occurred during the past week of the Shavarath invasion!

Synopsis: Devils from the plane of Shavarath instigated an invasion of Stormreach. Random portals appeared in the marketplace and small bands of devils attacked every few hours. A few days later a huge swirling portal appeared over the Bazaar tent. Soon all the NPC vendors moved out of the Bazaar and into the Rusty Nail tavern near the bank. A floating citadel appeared between the bank and the Bazaar tent, with platforms to climb to the top and meet Veheer F’Nord who is leading the research team to discover the devils’ intentions and a way to defend Stormreach. The vortex over the Bazaar grew in power and the tent flailed helplessly in its wake. Devils took up residence and posted guard at each entrance to the Bazaar and a magical force field emanated from the portal, protecting the devils from further attack. Last night the Stormreach wizards set up a counter assault, firing magical beams into the portal from points along the tent’s perimeter. The beams coalesced into a single beacon of power which succeeded in destroying the portal to Shavarath! However the ensuing explosion also destroyed the Bazaar as well, leaving a debris-filled crater in the center of the city! A quest is now available to defend from four waves of increasingly difficult devils, minions, and bosses.

This is my first live event in an MMO and I must say, the whole counter-attack thing was really cool and immersive to watch and experience. Seeing the magical blasts go up in sequence, merge, then get out of the mages’ control, destroying both the portal and the tent was awesome to say the least. The “Devil Assault” quest… much less so. The whole thing consists of two rooms, the second of which the group gets locked into as waves of devils, hell-hounds, etc. appear from three portals. I expected much more out of that. Some of the NPC dialogue over the past week makes it sound like we’ll eventually take the battle to Shavarath itself, so I hope more is coming and that simple portal room wasn’t the extent of this event.

Aside from the DDO event, I’ve spent time in LOTRO as well. I mentioned some potential kinship drama recently. Still not totally sure what was behind it all, other than the bottom line was both Exodus and Swifty & Hammo wanted more members available for raids. Why not simply create an alliance? I’ve been told that it was Swifty & Hammo’s idea for the two kinships to merge, though in reality it seemed more like an acquisition where Swifty & Hammo remains with the name and leadership intact, and simply absorb Exodus members. Whatever. It seems most of Exodus stayed and I’m now hearing it was mainly the upper echelon of (former) Exodus “management” who wanted to be in S&H. Regardless, all of us are welcome in Swifty & Hammo, though I still have to ask why there’s no Exodus-S&H alliance?

Anyway, my original “rule” (and we know the rule about rules…) in LOTRO was that I would have two “mains” and each would get equal time. I did great with that up until the low twenties where I wound up taking the Lore-master out more. She is now level 33, and had a great time last night (stayed up way too late though) with a group in Garth Agarwen, an instanced outdoor dungeon in the Lone Lands. She’ll need to go in at least once more to get a few more quests complete, and she’ll also need to get a group to complete some quests that are outside the instance but still in that general area, where all mobs are elite. She also has her first quest from Radagast the Brown to get non-combat pets, so I am very much looking forward to getting those completed. I also spent some time with my Captain, Gared, who’s been stuck at level 24 for some time. I thought I’d get him through some quests and up to level 25 where he could ride the Bree-horse he was given as a holiday gift from Turbine. We did that, and got a few groups in the Lone Lands and Gared is already level 26! Thankfully, one or two of the quests also rewarded a piece of heavy armor. Gared is woefully outfitted with a smattering of both heavy and medium armor. He’s a prospector so I’ll need to take him out gathering rich iron and ask a kinsman armorsmith to hook him up with a full set of heavy armor. Gared fellowed with a kinswoman, Elibeth, who was also level 24 at the time, who had crafted her own set of heavy armor appropriate for that level and she graciously offered to make Gared a set as well if Gared provides the materials, so that will be his mission next week, provided Arwellyn doesn’t take all my LOTRO time.

Turbine is preparing an event for DDO’s 2nd Anniversary, and they’re being pretty tight-lipped about it. We do know the Module 6.1 update, released yesterday, contained the “live event” code from LOTRO and the anniversary event will be its official unveiling in DDO.

Jerry from DDOCast and player VonBek did a “first impressions” writeup with screen shots of Stormreach yesterday. I ran around the city and snagged a few screen shots as well last night and today.

Stormreach is suddenly beset with dark clouds, giving the city a gloomy and somber mood. Stormreach has frequent rain showers normally, but none since this strange new storm appeared, though there is the occasional lightning burst.

A mysterious glowing rune or glyph has suddenly appeared on the street in Soulgate, near the entrance to the Catacombs of the Church of the Silver Flame.

VonBek reported mysterious flashing lights, and took some nice up-close screenshots of some. I’ve only found one so far, and it always flashes as I’m rounding the corner down the street, never up close. I thought perhaps it was timed, but after testing that does not seem to be the case. Pretty much every time I’m near the rune/glyph at Soulgate then run near the intersection where the Market and House Deneith meet, this light flashes very quickly.

Turbine is, of course, hamming things up with role-playing style news updates on DDO.com. I’m sure more will follow, culminating with the anniversary event itself on Sunday and lasting until March 9th.

I’m wondering… is that rune/glyph a clue? Since it’s next to the Catacombs, will there be an undead invasion of Stormreach? All we know is from MMORPG.com’s interview with Kate Paiz at GDC, Kate said “the city of Stormreach will never be the same again, and you can quote me on that.”

Thankfully, I’m a Founder on LOTRO with a Lifetime membership, so that’s working out great. My super-awesome kinship has been very understanding that I didn’t want to get sucked into the “must.play.all.day.and.night” rut that I found myself in with WoW. I want to do the dungeons and raids with them badly, but I want to make sure I can keep things casual so I’ve been on break from LOTRO.

Turbine recently announced a special $9.99 per month plan for DDO which I jumped on. I’m also in a super-cool casual family-style guild in DDO and, while I love the adventures in the game, the problem with a totally group-focused game is that if I can’t find a group, I can’t play the game. I do look forward to playing the high-end content, and it sounds like some amazing and awesome content is coming this year. In the meantime, if I can save $5 per month to keep the subscription active and pop into Stormreach anytime I want, sounds great to me.

My final subscription was the SOE Station Access, where I have Everquest II, Vanguard, Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside active.

However…

I haven’t bothered to play Planetside in months because I never saw more than 10 players on a server and it has an atrocious UI along with horribly flaky mouse movement in the menus. I understand it was great in its day, but apparently that day has come and gone so even as a curiosity, Planetside was a failed venture for me.

SWG. Whoah. Not that I necessarily mind adding quests and all but SOE did such a poor job of it in their misguided NGE overhaul. I could even adapt to that but, much like Planetside, the game has serious population issues. To date, I’ve encountered a grand total of six players and have seen not a single line of chat from anyone. The graphics are badly dated and I truly resent being hard-locked at 30 fps when I could be having a much smoother experience. SWG was my first MMO and I have fond memories that nothing else will ever replace, but I guess it’s true: sometimes you just can’t go home again.

EQ2. I have created several characters of different races and classes and the farthest I’ve managed to advance any is level 9. Other than the random bit of music, I have struggled to find even a single enjoyable element to the game. EQ2 is quite popular and arguably has more content than any other MMORPG on the market. Originally, I decided I would put up the fight and work my way towards whatever quality content surely must be out there, but I finally had to be honest with myself. With other games out there willing to “show me the money” with quality content from Moment One, why should I have to punish myself wading through this muck? It’s a shame, and I wanted to like EQ2 but it just wasn’t in the cards.

Vanguard, surprisingly, I’m having a blast with and I’m in a friendly, fun and helpful guild. Even though Karen has abandoned us like red-headed step-children to go adventure in Norrath. Grouping has been incredibly fun as well as challenging, and I’m thoroughly enjoying being the “Rock Star Tank” again. Actually, I may be enjoying tanking more in Vanguard than I did in WoW, because the Dread Knight class simply oozes coolness and I enjoy the challenges it presents. I also have a real-life friend playing Vanguard now (also a new guild-mate, yay!) so that’s an additional compelling reason to play. Well-known population problems aside, I can honestly say I’ve seen quite an influx of brand-new players over the past few weeks since GU3 was released, and it’s been wonderful. I’m seeing players in nearly every town I visit, the chats are active, friendly, and Chuck Norris-free (well, mostly).

I wasn’t having any financial issues, but I finally had to come to terms that I was paying an extra $15 per month to play Vanguard, because as wistfully nostalgic as I may have been, I’m not going to return to SWG, nor can I tolerate being logged into EQ2 for more than a few minutes, so it’s wasted money.

So, as of a few minutes ago logging out of the Java chat with an SOE customer service rep (thanks for the help, by the way, Eric) I am now left with only a normal monthly subscription to Vanguard and the new 33% discounted subscription to DDO. Should another game roll down the pike, I can add it without batting an eyelash as the total cost would be close to what I’ve been paying anyway with the Station Access and full-price DDO, but right now there are no titles current or in the immediate future that are piquing my interest whatsoever.

I just logged into DDO and the following alert popped up: (Note: only active subscribers can read the links)

Dungeon Closures: Depth of Despair, Sanctuary, The Vile Apothecary.

We have discovered a serious issue in the following dungeons, with Large Violet Slime, dividing infinitely.

Think of it as a cell dividing repeatedly and infinitely, until the dungeon is filled with thousands of slimes.
The dungeons affected are:

Depths of Despair, in House Deneith (CR 4)
Sanctuary, in the Catacombs in the Market (CR 2)
The Vile Apothecary, in the Market (CR 4)
The Slime Infested Warehouse - Search for the scrolls (For Goodblade)

For more information, click here.

I’d imagine that would suck to have your adventure brought to such an end, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that crashed the client too, but what a hoot it would be to intentionally pop into one of those dungeons just to see the slimes dividing and filling the dungeon! Quarion even posted a screenshot attachment of it happening. Reminds me of some of the “whoops!” moments in WoW such as the “Corrupted Blood” plague when Zul’Gurub was released.

In other DDO news, Module 5: The Accursed Ascension went live yesterday. Module 5 Final Release Notes. My patcher got me updated as soon as it went live but I was occupied with Vanguard. I don’t have a high level character in DDO yet so I can’t see the new content yet but I immediately noticed improved performance and a few nice looking UI elements. I’m curious if this update implies UI skinning, etc. just like LOTRO does? Also they finally fixed the textures on the lighthouse island in the Harbor as well as replacing the ocean textures and effects with all new ones that are LOTRO-quality. LOTRO has some of the most beautiful water surface effects I’ve seen, and certainly the best I’ve seen in the MMO genre. Waterfalls, however, they botched but this isn’t a LOTRO article. I was already impressed with DDO’s graphics but with the new engine improvements, texturing and water effects, it’s just downright gorgeous. I also noticed in the options we have the texture cache and crowd quality options that LOTRO has, which is a very good thing. I’ve been hoping that Turbine would take measures to keep both their games on the same engine build and it looks like my hopes will be answered after all.

The release notes are quite a huge list, as usual, but I did spot this way down near the bottom, which confirms my initial observations:

Engine Upgrade

• We have significantly upgraded the game engine for Module 5. A short list of improvements is as follows:
  • Client Performance: Users should see an improvement in performance at all graphics details. Hitching, rubber banding, and momentary freezing is reduced while overall rendering performance is much better.
  • Graphics Improvements: Several graphics options are new or optimized. Antialiasing will produce better image quality, windowed mode has better controls, and graphics effects have been rebalanced to produce better results at different graphics qualities. Because of these changes we recommend that users go into Options -> Graphics and select “Detect Optimal Settings”.
  • Bug Fixes: Many engine related bugs (both minor and major) have been fixed.
  • Network Performance: The network code has been optimized to use less bandwidth.
  • Water Shaders: Most water has been significantly upgraded, and now produces scene reflections depending on detail level. The medium graphic quality experience has also been greatly improved around water.