Pumping Irony

Well, well… March saw me whittle down my list of active games a bit. After finally canceling the whole SOE Station Access last month, I didn’t immediately renew my subscription to Vanguard. I did get around to it, but I’ve decided to re-cancel and take a break from the game. The Vanguard guild seem to be dwindling in numbers at the moment, with Karen’s shift to EQ2 as her primary game. Dolndruth is to a point where the majority of his time is spent grouped in “dungeon” content and the targeting issues with Vanguard has finally pushed me to the breaking point where it’s hindering my ability to both play and enjoy the game. The whole developer shift drama notwithstanding, new VG team? This is an easy fix. Read carefully: if the mob isn’t loot-able, and it’s either not skin-able or I don’t have a skinning ability, the corpse should not be click-able. Period! Not to mention the “hit boxes” (for lack of a better term) for interacting with any object in the game is way too big. The combination of those two factors makes tanking more of a chore than it need be. While I do think the whole leveling process of VG is pretty fun, like many others I just have to wonder where all this is going, especially with the direction the new team leader wants to go. Which is: more like WoW, it seems. Some of the changes they’ve mentioned I’m totally in line with, others… let’s just say I won’t be surprised if VG sees it’s own NGE treatment. I’ve said before that my own observation of the “MMOsphere” is that players don’t forgive and forget; they move on. Permanently. They might stop back in a year later for a month or less out of curiosity, but by and large once a player moves on in their heart, they move on for good. I think pulling an NGE 2.0 will serve only to demonstrate to the public that SOE does not in fact listen to feedback nor learn from its own mistakes. Perhaps Vanguard will gets its due rather than becoming yet another Matrix Online or SWG barely surviving on life support (ie. Station Access), but I’m taking my rose-colored glasses off when it comes to SOE.

I’m also having too much fun again in LOTRO with the kinship. Which means, just like the first time, I have to temper myself and my playing because it’s truly a bunch of fantastic guys and gals and we all really enjoy chatting and grouping together. As it turns out, Oakstout also started up LOTRO on my server, so we’ve been chatting it up, and Troy (formerly of Voyages of Vanguard fame) also just started LOTRO. Troy and I may even be kin-mates soon! We were both in the same Vanguard guild as well. I’m not sure if either of them will end up sticking with the game after the initial 30 day period, but in the meantime April should be fun having new friends to adventure with from the blog scene. I’ve also heard through the grapevine that pΘtshΘt might be doing a bit of LOTRO this month, although he’s on a different server. Perhaps I’ll send the Middle Earth Mafia over to “coerce” him to starting fresh and joining the rest of us?

Arwellyn just reached level 39 today as well, so that’s very exciting! She’s questing nearly full-time in Evendim now, with a few stints in the Trollshaws as she gears up to start Book 4. One of her kin-mates made her a set of the Scholar’s armor today, and Gandalf himself awarded her with a new staff after she walked around Rivendell with Frodo, who shared his concerns about everyone depending on him. Nice little fellow, I’m sure he’ll come into his own… After grouping with several high-level hunters, I’ve been in awe at their sheer single-target DPS abilities, so I now have a third LOTRO character and he is already level 14!

I’m actually pretty happy with the way this is turning out. LOTRO can be my full-time MMO, and I have both DDO and Guild Wars when I’m in the mood for them. Oh, I just looked at my desktop and saw the Hellgate: London icon! I guess that counts too? Maybe someday I’ll spend more time with it and try to get a group, but that hasn’t worked so far. The whole point of buying that was group-based, Diablo-esque game play, and it’s been nothing but solo so far. Very disappointing in that regard.

For my non-MMO gaming, I’m still very much into Battlefield 2142. I’m sorta-kinda debating joining a clan but I play so casually I don’t know if that would be such a good idea. I do play primarily (well, in the evenings) on two clan servers if they have any open slots. One in particular I really enjoy playing on, and I’m always getting invitations to normally clan-only squads so that’s been great. I haven’t played Team Fortress 2 since the recent update, so I can’t comment on that. I downloaded the Enemy Territories: Quake Wars demo 2.0 on Steam but… it just seems very “meh” to me, so I don’t see myself getting the full game at all. I’m extremely curious about Frontlines: Fuel of War (also on Steam) but I’m also going to wait until they get a demo out the door. Releasing an FPS with no dedicated servers? In 2008? Sorry… I’ll hang til you guys get your act together…

I did play a single round of World in Conflict this month. I’m still having a hard time sitting down from the spanking I received… If any very friendly and patient bloggers are WIC players and want to give me some “WIC For Dummies” schoolin’, let me know.

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.

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.

Poor Dolndruth has been in an utterly foul mood of late. See, I’ve left him camped way out on Skawlra Rock for four weeks attempting to find a group for the final Hunter’s League quest. He complains there’s not enough shade and he’s tired of eating nothing but those giant crabs. Tonight, Dolndruth and I have huge smiles on our faces — it’s done! The Chaotica’s Greataxe of Protection is ours!

In retrospect, January ends as a slow month for me in MMO’s. I spent time each day home (granted, my January schedule was rough so I wasn’t home as much as I like) attempting to complete the final Hunter’s League quest in Vanguard, but I am not willing to sit on my thumbs for hours on end looking for a group. I’ll give it 15-20 minutes and I’m out. I did finally notice people forming a group the other night just before I logged out but as luck would have it, I did not have the time for it.

I did a little bit of Guild Wars here and there, also. Benjeth has still been incredibly unsuccessful at winning more than a round or two in the Norn Fighting tournament in Gunnar’s Hold, and so is still lacking the ever-elusive dervish, Kahmu, to complete his list of acquired Heroes.

I did login to LOTRO briefly to check my inbox for kinship mail and I decided to go ahead and get the Bree Horse for Arwellyn, my Lore-master. I was sorely tempted to go ahead and pick up where I’d left off questing and such, but I still want to take a little more time away. Book 12 will be out soon, perhaps after that? I’m perfectly fine with LOTRO’s low-fantasy take on things, provided I have a high-fantasy alternative game (GW and VG) to balance things out. My kinship is just awesome, and wanting to do more and more with them is actually the reason for my break. When I agreed to allow myself to return to MMO’s after my WoW burnout from a couple years of fairly hardcore play, I vowed to not get sucked back into that mentality and I felt it very strongly in LOTRO so I had to take a step back. I’m still playing other games but only casually. This laptop is a piece of junk and while it did perfectly fine with WoW, it has difficulty even running GW on low settings so I’m basically game-less at work, which was not the case in the WoW days.

I also see DDO’s Module 6 will be out by the time I get home, so perhaps I’ll try picking up some DDO in February?

Otherwise, I spent a little time re-discovering the FPS genre this month. I bought Team Fortress 2 on launch day and I love the fun little skirmishes but it’s not something I can do for very long stretches of time. I also bought Call of Duty 4 on Steam and, while I’m enjoying the single player campaign here and there, the online game hasn’t been very compelling to me. A good friend has become completely addicted to the Insurgency beta 2 Half-Life 2 mod but it seems just like a “hardcore” (ie. no hand-holding, no frills) version of COD4. Small-ish urban combat skirmishes. That can be fun in small doses for me, but I’ve been there, done that years ago. I like the sensation of being in a war not a skirmish, so the Battlefield series fits the bill for me. I fell pretty hard for Battlefield 1942 back in the day. Vietnam did not run well on my system at the time so I didn’t bother with it. On my current system, 1942 crashes with dual-core CPU’s and I’m not willing to hassle myself with manually setting the game to only use a single core each time I run the game. So I’ve been back in Battlefield 2142 and loving every minute of it. I’ve even been playing the demo version so I could introduce the game to a few friends, one of whom used to team with me back in 1942 and was instantly addicted to 2142 and purchased the new Deluxe Edition (fully updated 1.4 game plus the Northern Strike booster pack) from the EA Store so we’ll get to play the full version when I get home next week. I’m hoping to get the Insurgency addict hooked on 2142 as well!

As for the blog, I’ve played around with a few extensions and I think I nearly have things where I want them on that end. I did end up installing the Sabre plugin to combat spam registrations. Overall the spam commenting wasn’t bad and Akismet caught all of them anyway, but I kept noticing one or two bot registrations every day, all of the form ab123456@yahoo.com (random letters and numbers but always yahoo.com) and I quickly tired of manually deleting them each day. So I apologize if capcha tests are aggravating for new users to register but at least it has put an end to the daily stream of bot users. Tom added the ‘random header images’ I’d asked for in the new Mandigo theme so I need to get busy and upload some next month. Ironic that I’m the one who got the ball rolling on this option, but will be one of the last Mandigo users to actually utilize it — I’ve noticed all the other MMO bloggers jumped on it as soon as Tom released it. Such is life… I did pick up some traffic and some new registered users this month, largely thanks to Brent at Virgin Worlds linking my STO post, and a few other blogs referring here as well. Discussions are still very quiet, usually just SmakenDahead and I, but I’m hoping to regain some of the activity I lost last year with the server crash.

Oh, just curious… I know Heartless Gamer has his own little TF2 Steam Community, which I’m member of (it’s tiny and I don’t think the gang has ever actually done anything as a group yet) but I don’t suppose there’s a blogger group or clan for BF2142 is there? That would rule… I know PvtHudson over at Wife Aggro mentioned last week he’d like to get back into BF2142 but in the very next post he said he was back into EQ2 for the long haul. Meh.

Ok, the good news: Game Update #3 Phase 1 is being implemented as I write this!

UPDATE 3 – PHASE 1

· Ksaravi Gulch
· Guild Hall Trophies
· Player Housing / Guild Housing
· Optimizations/Bug Fixes
· Spam Filter

1. Ksaravi Gulch
The low to high teens adventuring area of Ksaravi Gulch in Qalia has been revamped. It now features new group and solo content, with many quest lines for either type of player as well as an enhanced storyline, additional items and the chance to fly into battle on an elite black wyvern mount.

* 3 all new solo quest lines offering 20 new quests
* 12 group quests in an exciting new group quest line
* Fly into battle on an elite black wyvern
* All-new rewards, like Coronarian Gloves and Ice Ember poison

2. Guild Hall Trophies
The Guild Hall Trophy item can now be placed in a house or any Guild Headquarters. The buff from the trophy will be shared by all guild members that are online. There will be three trophies to choose from (one for each of Vanguard’s icon characters).

The Guild Hall Trophy can only be picked up by the person who placed it.

3. Player Housing / Guild Housing
All player housing areas should have a crafting center within one chunk’s distance. You will find crafting trainers, vendors, taskmasters, and stations. In addition, a few select areas (including all of the islands) have had flying mount renters added.

In addition to that, Guildhall adventuring drops should now be much easier to obtain. Mnalus Fungus will now rarely drop off most mobs in Lair of the Mnalus. Mummy Dust will now rarely drop off most mobs in Nusibe. Fiend Blood will now rarely drop off most mobs in Rhaz Inkur.

4. Optimizations / Bug Fixes
Fixing bugs and optimizing the game have been a big priority for us. We’ve put in fixes for over a dozen high-profile client crash fixes as well as hundreds of bugs. We’ve fixed a major memory leak and even made some sound optimizations. On the whole, a lot of players’ performance should improve with this patch.

With this patch, we’re also laying the groundwork to start implementing optimized NPC models. You should see them start showing up in the near future (likely in Qalia first).

5. Spam Filter
Ask, and you shall receive! It’s been in the works for quite some time, but Game Update 3 unleashes the code that should help eliminate a lot of the spam you may receive in-game. The code works similarly to those featured in other SOE games, in that it automatically filters messages flagged as spam, and reports them to Customer Service.

Source: VGPlayers.com

When I first saw the bit about the black wyvern, I got all excited, hoping they’d completed the first true flying mount quest ahead of schedule, but as it turns out, the black wyvern is a temporary mount in the Ksaravi Gulch zone which they had mentioned in a post I’d skipped over a few days earlier.

Now for the bad news:

Vanguard Development Moves to the San Diego Studio

The Vanguard development team is relocating its offices to SOE’s San Diego campus effective Monday, October 15, 2007. As part of the integration into the SOE family, the developers will benefit from having access to shared resources and the combined experience of SOE’s other game development teams. As a result, not every Carlsbad employee has been invited to stay with the development team.

Under the new leadership of Thom Terrazas, an eight-year SOE veteran, SOE will continue its commitment to Vanguard and its players. The remaining Vanguard team members are going to continue to deliver on an exceptional product. They are a creative force in the online games space and we look forward to continuing the vision for Vanguard and to continue to deliver groundbreaking game play. SOE remains committed to seeing Vanguard grow and prosper.

Source: VGPlayers.com

That’s right, SOE is integrating the Vanguard team yet again and letting go more developers. This time the axe has fallen on Director of Development David “Hasium” Gilbertson and Steve “Aruspex” Williams, who was interviewed in Episode 17 of the Voyages of Vanguard podcast.

Forum links courtesy of Jaye:

Hasium’s goodbye post
PhAtHoM’s hello post