117 entries. 52,063 words.
2013-02
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Upcoming 2013 Games.
2013-02-23.
Looking at upcoming PC games for 2013, I’m only seeing three that I think I’ll buy when they come out: Bioshock Infinite, Elder Scrolls Online, and Neverwinter. GTA V is a possibility but I think I can wait for a Steam sale on that one. (Especially since GTA 4 sucked.)
- Musings
- Status
- Steam
2013-03
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MMORPG Micro-Reviews.
2013-03-08.
Being a little bored of Guild Wars 2, Tera, and Rift, I went looking on MMORPG.com’s list of games sorted by rating for free-to-play MMOs I haven’t played yet. These reviews are first impressions having played less than an hour of each.
Wizardry Online - Ridiculously old-school and very slow-moving. Supposed to be really hard, but in the beginning it’s just hard to have fun. The writers clearly aren’t native English-speakers.
- Reviews
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Beta Signups.
2013-03-09.
I’ve signed up for three betas: Neverwinter, Elder Scrolls Online, and just now I signed up for Defiance, a sci-fi shooter MMO (or something like that) from Trion Worlds, the same people that did Rift, so I assume it won’t suck.
- MMORPG
2013-04
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BioShock Infinite – Game of the decade?.
2013-04-05.
I finished Bioshock Infinite over the holiday weekend. I don’t often buy games as soon as they are released, because roughly 90% of the time they suck, and also 90% of the time they’re in a 75%-off Steam sale within a year. But like everyone else, I was blown away by the first Bioshock, so I knew there was a good chance this would be a great, culturally-significant game. Also, I knew there was going to be a twist in the story that I didn’t want spoiled by every jerkwad troll on the Internet.
- Reviews
2013-05
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My Top 5.
2013-05-22.
Saw this on MMORPG.com: The Best MMOs of 2013… So Far.
Darkfall: Unholy Wars. Haven’t seen it. Not going to look at it.
Age of Wushu. Really? Seriously? It doesn’t even have invert mouse!
The Secret World. Yes, but it should be in the top 3.
Star Wars: The Old Republic. Maybe, possibly.
Neverwinter. It’s not bad, but I’m not prepared to put it at #3.
EVE Online. No. I’m sorry, but no.
- Reviews
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Tera.
2013-05-23.
I pulled out Tera again for a bit. Tera is a really a great game for playing a melee character. My main right now is a berserker, and I just love that class. The combat is so visceral and engaging when you can block attacks. Also, each encounter is an epic battle. It’s not like most MMOs where it takes less than a second to kill most things. Fights in Tera go on and on, even against regular mobs.
- MMORPG
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Neverwinter Open Beta.
2013-05-23.
I discovered that Neverwinter is available in what they’re calling an “open beta.” Rabid fans will tell you that you should only play if you are willing to test the game and that you should expect bugs, but in truth, this is not a beta in the software development sense. It’s beta in the Google sense. It’s live, and there will be no character wipe at the end of it.
- MMORPG
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Defiance Beta Results.
2013-05-24.
From the unpublished archives: I tried out the Defiance beta. It was “kind of” fun but it’s not really my kind of game. MMO shooters never seem that great to me. Lag plays a significant factor in being able to hit anything. Also, maybe my expectations are wack, but I thought all TPS (Third Person Shooter) games were supposed to have cover mechanics. This one didn’t.
One thing that drove me crazy was the complete inability to see enemies and players in the environment until you’re standing on top of them.
- MMORPG
- Reviews
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On the Control Wizard.
2013-05-29.
I got my Control Wizard to 60. It’s really easy to level in Neverwinter, by far the easiest game to level in I’ve seen (after WoW, of course). I think it literally took two weeks (maybe it was three). Admittedly I played a lot in that time, but still, pretty fast.
Side note: What is the deal with the class names? Why is it “Control Wizard” instead of just “Wizard?” Why “Trickster Rogue” instead of “Rogue?
- MMORPG
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On the Devoted Cleric.
2013-05-31.
I’d been hearing a lot about how threat is “broken” in NW (Neverwinter) and that cleric healing generates too much aggro. I’d also been hearing that DCs (Devoted Clerics) need to be more versatile than simply healing. I’d also heard that DCs get into dungeons a lot faster, since nobody plays them (because of the first two items). Well, I wanted to see all of that for myself, so I started a Devoted Cleric.
- MMORPG
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Neverwinter Forums.
2013-05-31.
When I read the Neverwinter forums, I get the feeling that the only people posting have either a) never played anything but PnP D&D, or b) never played any other MMO, or c) have never played in PUGs before. I can understand some people fitting those criteria, but *everyone*? It’s like nobody has ever seen a “need or greed” loot system before, and they think they are the first people to notice it’s not a very good system.
- MMORPG
2013-06
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Anticlimatic Nevewinter Feats.
2013-06-01.
About those Neverwinter Feats. Is it just me, or is it really hard to get excited about spending points that only increase your damage/whatever by 1%/2%/3%? I mean, statistically speaking, there isn’t much difference between a 3% increase and a 0% increase, right? It seems very … anticlimatic. Two clerics side-by-side, one with 3% increase, and one without - you won’t be able to tell the difference. “Woohoo, I leveled up after all that work, now I get to increase my damage from 500 to 505 points!
- MMORPG
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Lair of the Mad Dragon.
2013-06-03.
I’ve read and heard a lot about how difficult the Lair of the Mad Dragon is (a level 34 5-man dungeon in Neverwinter). I’ve attempted MD five times in PUGs now, twice as a cleric and three times as a GWF (Great Weapon Fighter), so I have some thoughts of my own.
For comparison, MD is the third dungeon as you’re leveling. The first is the level 16 Cloak Tower, which is simple enough that anyone can do anything and still get through it.
- MMORPG
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Chortlefax Fail Number 6.
2013-06-04.
Failed again in Lair of the Mad Dragon with a PUG. (I think that was the 6th failure in total.) Group composition was a guardian, cleric, GWF (me), and 2 rogues. No control wizard, but it seemed like a balanced group that should have had the tools to tackle Chortlefax. Unfortunately we struggled through most of the dungeon.
I’ve noticed that the only people who queue for Chortlefax are people who seem like they haven’t done it before.
- MMORPG
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Why Chartilifax is so Hard.
2013-06-04.
I forgot to mention my theory for why Lair of the Mad Dragon is so difficult. I think it’s to get people to buy resurrection scrolls, plain and simple. When you’re sitting there dead on the floor, there’s a button that says “spend X zen to get life scrolls!” I expect that if everyone could rez after every death, the dragon would be a lot easier to defeat.
That being said, I do expect them to nerf Chortlefax at some point.
- MMORPG
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On the Great Weapon Fighter.
2013-06-05.
My current favorite class in Neverwinter is the Great Weapon Fighter (GWF). This came as a huge surprise to me, because when I sampled the five classes, the GWF was absolutely godawful in the first four newbie levels, and for a supposedly DPS class, it had terrible, horrible damage output. Even the Guardian Fighter did better, and tank classes are traditionally pretty terrible at damage.
Perhaps partially because of the challenge of it, I went back to the GWF to see what it could do.
- MMORPG
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Which Difficulty is Artificial and Which Is Real.
2013-06-06.
I see a lot of people on Neverwinter forums complain about the “artificial difficulty” added to boss encounters. The argument they use is that bosses aren’t difficult to kill, but the adds that spawn make it difficult to focus on the boss, so this was a cheap and lazy way for Cryptic to “artificially” make boss encounters hard.
This logic makes no sense to me.
Most of my instance experience comes from Rift, but I’m led to believe it is typical of what you might find in other raids and dungeons like from, say, WoW.
- MMORPG
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On The Throne of Idris.
2013-06-06.
My GWF dinged 36, so I can’t queue for Lair of the Mad Dragon anymore with him. Instead, I queued for the Throne of Idris, which I think is a level 38 dungeon.
Idris is a bit easier than MD, in that it is actually finishable. I’ve done it twice, and finished both times (though it took two tries on the last boss both times, too). And it’s very short, which is awesome.
- MMORPG
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Neverwinter's First Major Update aka. Launch Day Coming.
2013-06-07.
Word has come down that Neverwinter’s “launch day” (June 20) will bring major balance and gameplay changes. This coincides with the 1-month-after-launch massive patch that every MMO always does to address issues that arise after launch. To me, this also seems to be the time when the developer actually implements a lot of the feedback they got from their beta period. They hardly ever change anything but major breaking bugs between beta and launch.
- MMORPG
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Every MMO Forum Thread.
2013-06-07.
I just love how every single MMO forum thread goes something like this:
A. I don’t like this aspect of the game.
B. No, I think you’re complaining about nothing.
A. What are you retarded? Learn to read! I didn’t say I was complaining! You’re a total moron! You’re a scrub loser with a pathetic gear score, and you’re stupid! Can’t you even read? Rage rage rage.
B. Did you even bother to read my post?
- MMORPG
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Grey Wolf, Pirate King, Frozen Heart, Spellplague.
2013-06-10.
I have to say that the dungeons are my favorite part of Neverwinter. Everyone on the forums whines constantly about how poorly designed the bosses are but I find them rather fun. You don’t have to memorize any strategies beforehand - you just jump in and play your class and your role well, and chances are you’ll do fine. If you don’t play your class well, chances are you’ll get schooled and then have to go to the forums and whine about it.
- MMORPG
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Spellplague Caverns Death March.
2013-06-11.
So I hit level 52 on my GWF and decided to try Spellplague Caverns again for a Dungeon Delve event. That turned out to be a huge mistake. Do not ever go into this dungeon. Ever. It is just not worth it. There’s no way the loot justifies the time spent.
We had a GWF (me), cleric, wizard, and two rogues. At first. Somewhere before the first boss, one of the rogues disconnected and someone had the brilliant idea to kick him and get another from the queue.
- MMORPG
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Back to Rift For A Bit.
2013-06-13.
I think I’m going to lay off of Neverwinter until the big upcoming patch. I find that I have little interest in doing anything in that game except running dungeons, but since it is nearly impossible to get through a queue after level 50, I just stand there doing nothing most of the time. I’m rather hoping that the next patch will make the dungeon queue work a lot better. If not, then I doubt I’ll play it much more until they make some changes.
- MMORPG
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Fresh 60 In Rift.
2013-06-18.
Well the “big patch” for Neverwinter came a week earlier than I expected. Guess what? No changes in queueing - it still takes forever. So I’ve basically given up on Neverwinter, so it’s all Rift all the time for me!
My mage reached level 60, so now I’m a “fresh 60.” I’m not sure how long the total journey from 50 to 60 took, but it took a little over a week to get from 55 to 60.
- MMORPG
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Weekend Rift Accomplishments.
2013-06-24.
I finally got to Grandmaster Runecrafter (375), one tedious point at a time. Then I realized I could have been buying recipes from the Runecrafter Vendor all along … I never scrolled down below the 375 recipes heh. Speaking of professions I bought a fourth profession slot for Artificer, because I had removed it from my cleric to make him a pure gatherer. At the time I thought I would level it up and be able to runebreak the artificer items I made to get to grandmaster, which is still a sound theory, but I hit Runecrafter 375 before I even got to Artificer 150.
- MMORPG
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A Game’s Most Important Features.
2013-06-25.
All this hubbub over the Neverwinter cats and the 7-hour rollback has got me thinking something I’ve believed for a while.
It seems to me that the most important thing that an MMO developer should focus on during their game development is … not the game at all. They need to focus on logging and tracking functionality. They need to focus on being able to “undo” any item in the system.
- MMORPG
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Low-Level Tanking.
2013-06-25.
I’ve got MMO fever pretty bad right now - sorry IRL. :/ So I’m getting ready to start tanking RotF on my new Defiant warrior, and since I’m stuck at work for a while I thought I’d go lookup some up-to-date “low level tanking” guides first. Except there aren’t any. I found where someone asked for one on the forums, but the basic response from the tankerotti was, “Just do anything.
- MMORPG
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Mentored Healing Attempts.
2013-06-26.
I queued for healing twice with my mage last night. I ticked the “Mentor” checkbox and a Random Normal dungeon, because I’m a chicken, and wanted to see if I remembered anything at all about Chloromancer.
So first I got into Storm Breaker Protocol, one of the SL dungeons. First I hit as healer, then someone refused, then I hit as a DPS. When I arrived, the group had just gotten beyond the mech suits.
- MMORPG
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Drama Queen Tanks.
2013-06-26.
So I tried to get in a random expert with my mage, something I try to do at least once a day. It was Archive of Flesh, and right away the support guy says it’s his first time. No problem, it’s the right thing to say that up front and actually pretty ballsy because most people don’t admit it. :) For a while, he did basically no DPS so he was actually trying to play a support role - normally not required unless the healer requests it, but no big deal to me.
- MMORPG
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Tanking Realm of the Fae.
2013-06-26.
So I tanked Realm of the Fae on my level 16 Bahmi warrior for the first time, using a Reaver/Paladin/Tempest build. (Technically you can queue for it at 15, but I waited until 16 so I had an AoE attack.) I was pretty nervous beforehand - tanking is stressful for me, and I had not seen RotF in about a year, and who knows what they might have changed for Storm Legion.
- MMORPG
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Newbie Tanking Realm of the Fae (Normal).
2013-06-27.
I now present my newbie tanking guide for Realm of the Fae (Normal). I am roughly two years late in writing this guide, but it’s actually hard to find a guide like this that isn’t written by a theorycrafter who is used to max level tanking.
You can queue for RotF at level 15, but it’s probably better to wait until level 16 so you can bring an AoE attack ability with you.
- MMORPG
- Guide
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Healer Meltdown.
2013-06-27.
I did one random expert 60 last night with my mage and got into Golem Foundry, which is one I know fairly well now (thanks to many previous PUG wipes). Everything went fine until the tank accidentally needed on a green dimension item before the last boss (the aptly-named Manslaughter) and for some reason the healer had a complete meltdown about it. None of us even noticed (including the tank) but the healer took it as a personal insult or something and we had to kick him because he stopped healing the tank.
- MMORPG
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Stranger Guildies.
2013-06-28.
It was a light, ordinary evening in Rift. I did a blissfully un-dramatic random expert SL dungeon (Archive of Flesh) with a good tank/healer duo and ended up with a nice purple mage dagger at the end, which is probably the best I will ever see until or unless I start raiding.
So I’m in this guild, right? But it’s one of those guilds that basically takes anyone, no-questions-asked, so it’s got thousands of random people in it, so I see a lot of fellow guildies out in the wild even though I don’t know any of them.
- MMORPG
2013-07
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Rift Mage Maxed Out.
2013-07-01.
Hrm. Over the weekend I started to realize that Rift is actually not as much fun as I thought. My mage is 60 and has a bunch of expert dungeon gear, so the only way left to advance that character is raiding with the guild, but the thought of setting up ventrillo and signing up for schedules and all that crap is not very appealing. Even the expert dungeons are kind of painful.
- MMORPG
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Newbie Tanking Iron Tombs (Normal).
2013-07-05.
Again, it is hard to mess up Iron Tombs on Normal. My Bahmi warrior uses a Reaver/Paladin build, with more points into damage abilities than armor/endurance abilities for better threat. I also now have a Cleric that I tank with, for which I use the standard tank preset.
When you start, first determine if people need the quests. If they don’t, you can skip a lot of side stuff.
The trash mobs are straightforward all throughout.
- MMORPG
- Guide
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Newbie Guide to Dungeons.
2013-07-09.
I am writing this newbie guide because there are a surprising number of people who go into the first couple of normal Rift dungeons without knowing these basics. Perhaps they have never played Rift before, or they have never played an MMO before, or they have never played in a group before.
General
Do remember that playing in a group requires different skills than soloing.
Do avoid using tank pets because they interfere with the actual tank.
- MMORPG
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Rift Is Too Easy.
2013-07-09.
Since there are a lot of new people flooding into Rift, there have been complaints on the forums from the usual suspects about how easy it is to level. I can confirm that yes, it’s really easy to get from 1 to 50, and it’s now easier than ever. It used to be harder, but even back when it was hard, it was still pretty easy for a veteran gamer to get to 50.
- MMORPG
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Newbies in the Lowbie Dungeons.
2013-07-09.
I spent most of the holiday weekend queuing for lowbie dungeons with my new collection of lowbie Defiants.
I’ve realized that I don’t like tanking with a warrior … dealing with the builder/finisher mechanic interferes with focusing on the tanking. Maybe I just need to forget about finishers. Anyway I generally prefer the cleric tank, where you don’t have to really do anything but spam the AoE attack. (I say that knowing full well that you almost never see cleric tanks in raids or expert dungeons.
- MMORPG
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Healers and Tanks are like Cats and Dogs.
2013-07-12.
I got into a couple of particularly bad Rift dungeon groups all in one night, and they both basically came down to a fight between the tank and the healer. “You’re a terrible tank” vs. “you’re a terrible healer.”
One group was in Realm of the Fae. The tank was a dwarf warrior who clearly didn’t have a tank soul setup, and played with a two-hander generating no threat whatsoever. He didn’t attempt to gather any mobs that got away from him either.
- MMORPG
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Dark Souls on the PC.
2013-07-15.
I watched some very amusing “Let’s Play” videos of two of the GWJ guys playing Dark Souls, and decided that I finally needed to get this “killer” game. By killer I mean it has a reputation of being mercilessly difficult. So I got the “Prepare to Die” PC version from Steam.
Okay. So yeah, it’s hard. But it’s not hard in the way you might think. It’s hard because the controls and camera management are impossibly obtuse for a PC game, at least initially.
- RPG
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Taurus Demon Down.
2013-07-18.
I finally defeated the second boss in Dark Souls. I say “finally” because I spent quite a lot of time wandering around dying in the Undead Burg, leveling up with the meager amounts of souls I could accumulate from the skeletons there, and gathering bits and pieces of gear. I feel like I know the stretch of the map between the campfire and the boss like the back of my hand now.
- RPG
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Firefall Founder By Accident.
2013-07-22.
I played a fair amount of Firefall over the weekend, which they are still saying is in Open Beta, driven mainly by boredom with everything else I’ve been playing. After you go to an Internet guide and read up on what it is you’re actually supposed to *do* in the game, it’s a bit more fun.
Of course, that means the game itself is not providing any bread crumbs for the player, which one could argue is poor design.
- MMORPG
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The Walking Dead Game Bites.
2013-07-24.
Ha ha! Wasn’t that hilarious? Anyway I’m currently bored to death with all existing MMOs, so I’ve turned to my Steam library to find a game that will hold my attention for more than a few hours.
I tried Rogue Legacy, which the GWJ people raved about. I can see why they liked it, but it’s basically a side-scrolling platformer and I’ve never liked platformers. It would take me a long time to get the hang of the controls, and at least in the first hour of play, I didn’t see where there’s any reward for spending the time to learn the controls.
- Steam
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The Walking Dead Game Episode 3.
2013-07-25.
Finished The Walking Dead (game) Episode 3. This one seemed considerably longer and to drag a bit more than the previous two. There were times when I just wanted it to move forward without having to go through the adventure-style puzzle solving. In those times I would say that the gameplay was getting in the way of the story.
I’m thinking in particular of a time on the train toward the end of the episode, when you had to get a map, but someone was in the way and wouldn’t move, so you had to find a way to get him to move on his own, but I didn’t really realize that’s what I was supposed to be doing, and the way you had to do it was pretty convoluted and strange.
- Steam
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Finally Finishing up Assassin's Creed II.
2013-07-29.
Over the weekend I decided to press on with the Assassin’s Creed series, since I rounded out my AC game collection in the last Steam sale, picking up Brotherhood, Revelations, and AC3. I played AC2 last year but for some reason I just stopped in the middle. I decided that I should finish it before I went on to the next game so I wouldn’t miss any of the cool story stuff.
- RPG
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Assassin's Creed II Finished.
2013-07-31.
I finished Assassin’s Creed II last night. Man, the storytelling in this series is really good. It ended in a cliffhanger just like the first one did. And there was actually some light gameplay *during the closing credits*. How cool is that?
Anyway I started in on Brotherhood right away, which is a noticably better-looking game. It also feels a bit more like Uncharted. That is, it feels more action-oriented, with less buttons to worry about pushing.
- RPG
2013-08
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Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Finished.
2013-08-11.
Finished Brotherhood. Cool game - shorter than Assassin’s Creed II but I think more polished. (By the way, when I say I “finished” I mean I finished the story; I’m nowhere near 100% completion, because I’m not a completionist gamer. I think it was somewhere around 40% actually.)
Another cliffhanger ending. Can’t really say anything without spoiling it, but I was a little bit suspicious of that person anyway.
Started Revelations.
- RPG
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Tomb Raider, the 2013 reboot.
2013-08-13.
I was getting a bit tired of Assassin’s Creed Revelations, so I took a short break and finally played Tomb Raider, which I had gotten in a Steam sale. There’s no doubt it’s one of the best games of 2013.
For the record, I’ve never been a fan of the Tomb Raider games. Originally, they were largely nothing more than jumping puzzles, but honestly I haven’t played any of the hundreds of TR games since the original few, so I’m not sure what they’ve evolved into.
- RPG
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AC Revelations Finished.
2013-08-19.
Finished the main story in Assassin’s Creed Revelations the other day. Other than the horribly inaccurate face models of Ezio and Desmond which made them look like scarred zombies, I thought it was pretty good, as all Assassin’s Creed games are. The endings always give me a chill, when they bring together the past, present, and future. Well — the past, the past, the past, and the present would be more accurate I guess.
- RPG
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Assassin's Creed III.
2013-08-29.
I started Assassin’s Creed III unsure of what to expect. I had a general feeling that AC3 had not been well-received, but other than that I knew little about it, except that it was a departure from the previous versions.
First thing’s first: The game’s new engine looks beautiful. I mean, drop-dead gorgeous. I’ve always thought Assassin’s Creed was one of the most realistic-looking games out there, even back to the first version, but this new version raises the bar higher than ever.
- RPG
2013-09
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Bored with Everything.
2013-09-18.
After I moved into a new house, I instantly became bored with all computer games. I still load up Assassin’s Creed III now and then, but I can only get through a mission or two before getting bored. I also tried to play Europa Universalis IV for a while, but I just can’t get into all the details of a Colonial Europe Simulator. Which is a shame because I think the game map looks very pretty.
- Blog
2013-10
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Red Alert.
2013-10-07.
No, not the game. I don’t know anything about Red Alert the game. I’m talking about Final Fantasy XIV, A Realm Reborn. It’s a relic of the past: A new subscription-based MMO. Although it’s apparently been out since 2010, it’s just that they recently re-released a version that actually works and that people might actually want to play.
Anyroad, it’s cheap so I got it and have been playing it, and it’s actually kind of fun and not terrible and most importantly, not boring.
- MMORPG
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FFXIV.
2013-10-09.
So I’ve been sucked into Final Fantasy XIV. It’s all the fault of Gamers With Jobs, just so you know. They generally liked it, and I usually like things that they like, so I had to try it. Especially since it was only $30 for the first month.
They’ve stolen one idea from me. In the MMO that I want to design and write but of course I never will, you could advance in three different areas: PvE, PvP, and crafting.
- MMORPG
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Things That Are Different In FFXIV.
2013-10-16.
I’ve played quite a few MMOs in my time, including a few that I thought were sort of JRPG-ish in nature (Aion and Tera come to mind), but I have to say, FFXIV in some ways is a brand new world to me.
It is freakishly weird how quiet the general chat is in this game. I can’t recall the last time I played in an MMO where the general chat wasn’t filled with a constant stream of random subhuman noise.
- MMORPG
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Welcome to Endgame Viable.
2013-10-17.
I stumbled onto this thing called the Newbie Blogger Initiative (NBI). I found it by reading a post on a blog called Inventory Full, which is an awesome blog name, by the way. That post, which referenced a bunch of other blogs, got me thinking that I didn’t have enough MMORPG gaming blogs in my feed reader, so I went and added a bunch. Then, when I looked over the recent posts on all of those different blogs, they all had one thing in common (besides MMORPGs): The Newbie Blogger Initiative.
- Blog
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Can Rift Really Be Fading Away?.
2013-10-17.
TAGN wrote* that the Happy Time for Rift is over. Meaning that its resurgence in popularity after it went F2P is over, and now it has nowhere to go but down. It’s hard to disagree since when I last logged into Hailol up in the Dendrome, it was a ghost town.
He also had a fair number of negative things to say about Rift going F2P, saying that he immediately unsubscribed when he heard about it.
- MMORPG
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What Is EQLandmark?.
2013-10-18.
I read on Inventory Full (still an awesome blog name) about this thing coming out called EQLandmark. I do not know what it is, but it sounds like some kind of new game in the EQ universe.
Bhagpuss then mentioned something about making a Heroic character in EQ2, and I got sidetracked. Because I have some EQ2 characters too, and I figured I’d better log in and make my own Heroic characters, too.
- MMORPG
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FFXIV Opening Movie.
2013-10-19.
I had to stick a link to this movie in my blog. I think it’s the best opening sequence for an MMORPG I can recall seeing, and also a really fantastic computer-generated short film in its own right. Even if you have no clue what an MMORPG is, you might like this.
Updated the link.
- MMORPG
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Tequatl’s On The Juice.
2013-10-20.
I usually stick to one MMORPG at a time, play it until I get bored, then move to the next one. This week though I’ve been firing up a different one every night. The latest one was Guild Wars 2.
I got sucked into this session right away. I had last logged out in Sparkfly Fen on the beach where Tequatl attacks. I went there to see the new-and-improved Tequatl event I keep hearing so much about, but it wasn’t running when I got there, so I just logged out.
- MMORPG
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Warhammer Online Comes To An End.
2013-10-21.
I found out from all the gaming blogs that WarHammer Online is shutting down in December.
WAR ran for five years, which seems like a pretty decent run for any game. I was there at launch, struggling through the bugs and lack of content with everyone else. The biggest problem I remember was not being able to play for several days because my pre-ordered copy of the game was late and I couldn’t put in my game code.
- MMORPG
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Whoa, Elder Scrolls Online Character Creation.
2013-10-22.
From what I can tell, the two most anticipated MMOs “coming soon” are WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online. WildStar I can only assume because it’s made by some former WoW developers, and ESO because, well, it’s Elder Scrolls, man, come on. Anyway, a video was recently posted showing ESO character creation options, and wow, it looks pretty awesome. I’m not sure why I thought this but I figured ESO would be a lot more graphically simplified than Skyrim, but it actually looks pretty similar.
- MMORPG
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WoW, Relaxing Trinquility.
2013-10-23.
Perhaps as a result of a post on Inventory Full and a post on Herding Cats, I found myself playing WoW over the weekend. It was not one of my better weekends in terms of getting productive things done in my life, but I choose to think of that as the cause of playing WoW, rather than the effect. Anyway, I made a number of observations about WoW as compared to more modern MMOs.
- MMORPG
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FFXIV Tab Targeting.
2013-10-24.
Can we talk about the tab targeting in FFXIV? And when I say “talk” I mean “rant” and when I say “we” I mean “me.”
The tab targeting in FFXIV is the worst I have ever seen. It makes absolutely no sense. When I hit tab to switch to the next target, I expect the “next” target to be somewhere in the same vicinity as the first target. But for some reason, when you hit tab, suddenly you’re targeting some monster a mile away from everyone else who isn’t even attacking.
- MMORPG
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Rift Server Merges Meh.
2013-10-24.
Rift completed server merges. I didn’t notice any change, personally. I logged in for a few minutes, decided I still had no interest in the Fae Autumn Festival thingy, then logged out again. It kind of sucks that nobody is playing it anymore. Where did everyone go? FFXIV, the newest shiney? Or back to some other game?
- MMORPG
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Book 3, Chapter 5, Part II of III.
2013-10-25.
When I logged back into LotRO for the first time in a long time, I remembered one of the main reasons I stopped playing:
On the outside looking in...
It was Book 3, Chapter 5, Part II of III. I’ve probably been stuck on that quest for well over a year. It says you can do it solo, but I was facerolled every time.
Lies! The Elf-stone's inspiration is no help at all.
- MMORPG
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WvW Season In GW2.
2013-10-28.
I saw an announcement recently about the start of the Guild Wars 2 World versus World “season.” I personally have never gotten into the WvW thing in GW2, so I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about a new season. Conceptually I like the idea of jumping in there, zerging around for a while, and leaving, but it never seems to work out that way.
First of all, I’ve never been a fan of PvP in any MMO, because it’s inherently random.
- MMORPG
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WoW Doesn't Take Itself Seriously.
2013-10-29.
Playing WoW again recently, it dawned on me why it’s been so popular. It’s a good game and all, and it’s more addictive than blue meth, but I think that one of the main things that pushes it over the top from niche game to mainstream hit is: It doesn’t take itself seriously.
Most people would probably be embarassed to admit that they play a game involving elves and dwarves and knights and dragons.
- MMORPG
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FFXIV First Month Ending.
2013-10-30.
My first month of FFXIV ends on Nov. 1 so I need to decide whether to subscribe or not. I think I will, because it is definitely the “freshest” MMO I’m playing right now, although perhaps not right away. (I’ve also been on a weird WoW kick lately, but that’s another story.) There is an endless number of things to do in the game if you bounce between adventuring, gathering, and crafting, particularly since you can change classes at will.
- MMORPG
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Halloween in the MMO.
2013-10-31.
Autumn (aka. Halloween) celebrations are a staple of modern MMORPGs.
Ye gods what is that?
(I was going to put another picture captioned “It’s always Halloween in Kingsmouth!” but I couldn’t find my screenshot.)
- MMORPG
2013-11
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Tower of Nightmares.
2013-11-01.
I stopped by GW2 and discovered a big ol’ patch had happened, and when I logged in to see if there was any chance of defeating Tequatl, I had mail telling me to go to Kessex Hills to save the world again. I could describe it, but Inventory Full did a nice summary already: http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2013/10/next-stop-kessex-hills-all-change-here.html
I haven’t played GW2 seriously in a long time but I was able to get through the initial Tower of Nightmares instance.
- MMORPG
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Maybe It’s Time For A Break.
2013-11-04.
Herding Cats has an interesting post up about how we, the gaming community, may have shot ourselves in the foot by telling MMO developers to limit cash shop purchases to cosmetic items so that the game won’t turn pay-to-win. But she argues that when you play an MMO only for cosmetic items, a cosmetic cash shop is pay-to-win.
I’m one of those people who unofficially agreed that cosmetic items are fine in cash shops, because I personally don’t care that much about cosmetic items.
- MMORPG
- Discussion
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When WoW Tanks Go Rogue.
2013-11-05.
I had an odd, somewhat amusing experience in WoW recently. I’ve been playing a lot of dungeon instances lately, partly because I’ve never actually done any WoW dungeons before, and partly because I wanted to level a mage without going through the hassle of soloing. Almost every instance has been an enjoyable, workmanlike experience … until this tank decided to be an ass.
So the random dungeon selector came up with the Scarlet Monastary.
- MMORPG
- Tanking
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Is WoW Leveling Really That Fast?.
2013-11-06.
So my WoW mage has Enchanting as a profession, and he’d leveled way past the point where he could disenchant the magic items he picked up at the measely skill level of 15. I had a couple of other characters in the 25-30 range that I could have used to farm items from dungeons, but I didn’t think those items would be any better. So I got the brilliant idea that I would level another character to 15 and just keep doing dungeon instances and send all the excess low-level magic items that I picked up to my mage.
- MMORPG
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GW2 Tower of Nightmares and Story in MMOs.
2013-11-07.
I saw a lot of negative reactions around the blogosphere to the GW2 Tower of Nightmares update. Surprisingly, the main criticism seems to be that people aren’t interested in the new story. It isn’t engaging enough.
This is puzzling to me for a couple of reasons. First, I didn’t even realize there was a story in the new GW2 update, and second, I didn’t realize people judged new MMO content on the new storylines brought into the world.
- MMORPG
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Rift Song of Dreams – Where Is It?.
2013-11-08.
I got an email from Trion saying that the Rift Song of Dreams patch 2.5 was live, so I eagerly patched up and logged in. What I saw was … nothing. Nothing looked different in Tempest Bay, so I checked my mail to get what I was sure would be a nice invitation to participate in the cool new Mini-Saga and … there was no mail. I knew all the action was supposed to happen on Ember Isle so I took the nearest porticulum over there and … nothing was happening.
- MMORPG
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GW2 Thank God I’m Not An Achiever.
2013-11-08.
I was reading a post on Why I Game which talked about lackluster enthusiasm for GW2, and I started to feel really bad for him. I cannot imagine what it’s like to feel such a compulsion to obtain achievements that you’re willing to log tons of game time doing things that aren’t fun.
I certainly agree about the lack of enthusiasm for GW2. This Tower of Nightmares update is more of the same.
- MMORPG
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Achievements – The Journey Is Part of The Reward.
2013-11-09.
Lots of talk about achievements. Are they good? Are they bad? MMO Gypsy hates them (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RagingMonkeys/~3/UCUa6ra8IUg/achievement-hate-exploration-and-mystery.html), Herding Cats defends them (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/machiavelliscat/xgUW/~3/EBQ0bOGdQLk/), and CuppyVille relies on them (http://cuppyville.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/in-which-i-defend-achievements-in-mmos/). Me? I tend to ignore them.
It’s true that I’m an Explorer on the Bartle test, so you might think I’d be siding with Syp in saying that achievements have destroyed the MMO genre. Well, first of all, I don’t think the genre has been destroyed at all; I think it’s far better now than it’s ever been.
- MMORPG
- Discussion
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LotRO Mithril Coins Rule.
2013-11-11.
I know that the Mithril Coins are just a way to force people to buy from the shop, but I still cheerfully bought a big bagful of them. Being able to zip back to quest givers is an incredible time-saver. Way more worth real money than, say, a fancy cape or horse or whatever. (Actually, I had a trove of Turbine Points sitting around so I didn’t need to spend any (more) real money.
- MMORPG
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Is Chain-Pulling Harder?.
2013-11-12.
I was in a dungeon recently with a chain-pulling tank, and it got me thinking. I’ve always associated the chain-pulling tank behavior with a more advanced tanking technique, but is it really harder to chain-pull?
Chain-pulling, if you don’t know, is where the tank runs at full speed pulling mob after mob after mob without stopping, until he gathers a big group of them together, and then he takes off again before the group is even dead.
- MMORPG
- Tanking
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MMO Pinball.
2013-11-13.
Just so you know, I have been a veritable pinball of MMO playing lately.
First FFXIV leveling an Archer/Bard to level 30. Then WoW leveling a Mage from around 17 to 50, and leveling some other characters. Then GW2 to check out the Tower of Nightmares. Then LoTRO leveling my hobbit Hunter from 38 to 45. Then Rift to check out the Song of Dreams patch. Even a little bit of Neverwinter and TERA and (gasp) Aion thrown in there between.
- MMORPG
- Progression Report
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Flying Mounts In WoW.
2013-11-13.
The Burning Crusade has been out since January 2007, which makes it nearly seven years old. Since that time, there has always been a contingient of people on every new MMO forum who scream, “Where are the flying mounts? I keep getting hit by mobs!” I, like most everyone else, always scoffed and thought, “Just run around the mobs. Jeez. We don’t need no stinkin’ flying mounts.”
Flash forward to today, when my Hunter finally bought a flying mount on the Hellfire Penninsula.
- MMORPG
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WoW Dungeon Guides Are Terrible.
2013-11-14.
There is one area where WoW is woefully far behind other games like Rift and FFXIV. That is: Normal dungeon guides on YouTube. Good ones, I mean. They don’t exist for WoW. Or maybe they do exist, but they are so deeply buried within the noise that you can’t find them.
I don’t want to see some guy rambling about nothing for twenty minutes of unedited game footage. I want a little intro telling me what the trash mobs are, then I want to see the first boss and his special mechanics, then the second boss, and so on.
- MMORPG
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Rift Song of Dreams Mini-Saga Completed.
2013-11-15.
It took me a while, but I finally found the new content for Song of Dreams. Looking at the map around Ember Isle, I noticed there was a shaded area off to the west of the island that looked new, so I started running that way and found a little island at the extreme western edge with new stuff! (If you think Ember Isle looks like a reverse Pac Man like I do, it’s in the mouth.
- MMORPG
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Side Note On New Consoles.
2013-11-16.
This isn’t MMO related, but here’s a couple cents on the new consoles. I have a PS3 Slim so I don’t expect I’ll be getting a PS4 until developers stop making games for the PS3. However, since I’ve never owned an Xbox, I will probably get an Xbox One in the somewhat near future, possibly after Christmas, at which time I will also have to get a TV to connect it to.
- Consoles
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GW2 Go Blackgate!.
2013-11-17.
Oh hey, according to the mid-season WvW report, Blackgate is winning. Go Blackgate! When I randomly chose Blackgate to play on, I picked a winner! (Actually it wasn’t random. It was a choice between Blackgate which was the “coolest” sounding server, or Yak’s Bend which was the “funniest” sounding server, and in the end I went for coolness.)
My only contribution to the war effort was capturing one empty Ruins and escorting one yak.
- MMORPG
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WoW Warlords of Draenor Impressions.
2013-11-18.
Here are some first impressions of the newly announced WoW expansion Warlords of Draenor. I’m not a hardcore WoW player but recently I’ve been playing more than I usually do, so I have more of an opinion than “meh, whatever.”
New Character Models. It’s about time, I say. I can’t believe anyone would oppose this. I found it rather annoying that they made these nice, smooth panda models and animations for MoP but left everybody else with like fourty-seven triangles and six frames of movement.
- MMORPG
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Making Sense of EQ Landmark.
2013-11-19.
I’m trying to wrap my head around this EQ Next/Landmark thing. If I’m understanding this correctly, what we’re buying in Landmark is the toolset that a game developer would use to create an MMO game world. SOE must have looked at their tools and said, “You know, these tools are so fun and intuitive to use, maybe we could polish them up a bit and sell them, because people really seem to like building virtual things.
- MMORPG
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The Delicate Balance of Beta Testing.
2013-11-20.
I think it’s safe to say this: I got an invitation for this weekend’s TESO beta test. I assume it’s okay to say that because they made a big public announcement that they were sending out the invitations. I had to accept a rather harsh-sounding NDA though so I don’t think I’ll be able to say much of anything else.
Beta testing is a delicate balance. On the one hand, it’s super exciting to see a new shiney and possibly shape the course of its future (though to be honest, in my experience, beta reports are largely ignored unless it is a game-breaking bug), but on the other hand, you don’t want to play so much that you burn out before the game even launches.
- MMORPG
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Trove Triggers 8-Bit PTSD.
2013-11-20.
Trion Worlds is working on something called Trove. Now when Trion does something, I tend to take notice, because Rift is hands down the best themepark MMO out there right now. Any arguments you might have against my statement are invalid, because I said so.
(Defiance, on the other hand, was a bit meh.)
I anxiously looked at the screenshots for Trove and … drooped with disappointment. Really? 8-bit crap graphics?
- MMORPG
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Black Desert?.
2013-11-21.
We all know that blockbuster MMOs EQ Next/Landmark (the minecraft one), WildStar (the cartoon one), and The Elder Scrolls Online (the D&D one) are “coming soon.” But a while back some posts I saw about a Korean-made MMO called Black Desert caught my eye.
I hadn’t heard of it before, so I did some investigation. ( That means I went to Wikipedia .)
Wikipedia says it’s a “sandbox-oriented” MMO, but I’m not entirely sure what that means.
- MMORPG
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On the Removal of Leveling.
2013-11-22.
With the announcement of Warlords of Draenor, there was a bit of buzz around the MMO-sphere about the role of the leveling process. I was struck by a post on Healing the Masses suggesting that it’s time to remove the leveling game entirely from MMOs so that we no longer segregate the players into groups that can’t play together.
… an ideology that is slowly dying, an ideology that never really belonged much in the first place in this genre.
- MMORPG
- Discussion
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LotRO Helm's Deep Skill Trees.
2013-11-23.
After a patching process that seemed to take hours (possibly because I was playing another game while I waited), I spent a couple of minutes in LotRO to see the class changes in Helm’s Deep. (I am only 45 so I am nowhere near seeing the content of Helm’s Deep.)
It looks like all they did was integrate industry-standard “skill trees” into the game, so you have to choose one of three specializations for your character.
- MMORPG
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EQ2 Status Report, 43 Warden.
2013-11-25.
I thought it would be fun to write a series of posts talking about where my characters are in various games. Lately I have been bouncing back and forth between MMOs, so I’ve touched base with a lot of them recently.
At the time of this writing, my main character in EQ2 is a level 43 Wood Elf Warden (one of the many classes of healer, if you don’t know). After a recent spate of playing, he moved from the clockwork-kobold-infested Steamfont Mountains to the icy island of Everfrost.
- MMORPG
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WoW Tanks Are Top DPS??.
2013-11-26.
I realize nobody wants to read about WoW, but historically I haven’t played it much, and about 90% of it is still new to me. Well “new” isn’t the right word exactly-it’s more that WoW’s implementation of familiar MMO tropes is new to me. For example, I’ve made a shocking observation in my low to mid-range dungeon runs: The tank almost always does the most damage in the group. Sometimes by a very large margin.
- MMORPG
- Tanking
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Rift, Great For Introverts.
2013-11-27.
I’ve been trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that I love(d?) about Rift, and I think I figured it out. It was perfect for an introvert like me who enjoys solo play, but also wants to do group activities without a lot of hassle. Rift’s dynamic rifts and zone events fulfilled that requirement perfectly.
You’re out doing quests to level your character, enjoying the scenery. Then a zone event breaks out, and you rush to the spot marked on your map and find a big group of players there.
- MMORPG
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Happy Thanksgiving.
2013-11-28.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! No posts until Monday. Have a great weekend!
- Administration
2013-12
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Impressions of Wizardry Online.
2013-12-02.
Has anyone seen Wizardry Online? It’s free-to-play, and another one of those hardcore old school MMORPGs that SOE seems to like. It’s clearly Asian in origin, but it’s weird because it’s an Asian vision of standard European medieval tropes like elves and dwarves. The graphics are odd as well. It looks a bit like everything is a low-contrast sepia-toned image.
WO seems to be one of the “hard” MMOs that everyone clamors for (but never actually plays).
- MMORPG
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LoTRO Status Report, 45 Hunter.
2013-12-03.
When I last left LotRO (Lord of the Rings Online) a couple of years ago, my highest level character was only a level 38 Hunter. I stopped playing largely because of this one Epic quest that kept defeating me, and nothing will drive me away from a game faster than a required quest that keeps killing me and/or requires a group. I discussed that quest in another post. When I came back this time, I got past that quest, so progression could resume.
- MMORPG
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Aion – Surprise, It's PvP.
2013-12-04.
In playing Aion again, I made a shocking* discovery: It’s open world PvP! I had no idea. I always thought the PvP was voluntary. But nope, I found out the hard way when I was out in Morheim. I got killed by some guy on a skateboard in like four shots. I didn’t even realize it was another player until I was almost dead. Well that sure puts a new spin on things.
- MMORPG
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Stanley’s Parable.
2013-12-05.
One night I didn’t feel like playing an MMO. It happened to be a night where there was a Steam sale on Stanley’s Parable, a game I’ve heard a lot about, so I got that and played it.
First of all, it’s not a game. There needs to be another category for this kind of thing. Something like Interactive Art Project or Interactive Entertainment. (It’s similar to Gone Home in that regard.
- Steam
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Twitch.tv.
2013-12-06.
Over the holiday weekend I started a new Twitch channel for EndgameViable, because I like to do weird stuff like broadcast my gaming sessions for the entire world to see. Plus, all the kids are doing it. (Actually I’m not sure if I like it or not, but I like it when other people do it.)
So yeah, tune in and watch me play games you’ve already seen before! Follow @endgameviable on Twitter and you’ll get an obnoxious tweet every time I go live.
- Streaming
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Which Fingers for WASD.
2013-12-09.
I’ve always wondered something. Most of the world uses WASD for their keyboard controls, right? I’m assuming so because that’s how every game is pre-configured. I, however, use ESDF for my keyboard controls, so I have to change the defaults on every single game I play. I am not bitter about that. Mostly.
I chose ESDF when I re-did my Quake keyboard binds way back in the day because it seemed like the natural choice, because my ring finger, middle finger, and index finger naturally rested on SDF anyway.
- Gaming
- Discussion
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Slumming in EQ and AC.
2013-12-10.
I did something odd over one weekend. I installed and played both Everquest and Asheron’s Call for a little while.
Everquest is free-to-play now, if you didn’t know. You can download the client and log right on in there, and there are a surprising number of people who apparently do just that. The little newbie cave must have had a dozen people in it wandering around trying to figure out how to play.
- MMORPG
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Re-Using Character Names.
2013-12-11.
I’ve been thinking about character names. Normally I make up new names for all my characters, but I know a lot of people carry over their names from one game to another. You always see people trying “get their names” when a new game launches. One day on a whim I decided to re-use a couple of names from Rift characters for some EQ2 alts to see what it was like, and I found it very weird.
- MMORPG
- Discussion
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Trove Alpha Impressions.
2013-12-12.
I was moderately shocked last night to receive an email from Trion with a code to get into the Trove Alpha. I was even more shocked to discover a complete lack of an NDA. Although, if you think about it, I did actually pay $20 (or whatever it was) to see this alpha, so it would be weird for them to restrict me.
There are very few options in the game right now, which I found surprising.
- MMORPG
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Mortal Online – Travel Back to the 90s.
2013-12-13.
So you say you wish you could play an MMORPG like the ones in the old days? Something like UO maybe? Well get yourself a copy of Mortal Online and experience what MMORPG life was like in the late 1990s.
Previously, I thought that Wizardry Online was a pretty old school, hardcore MMORPG. But WO is a total cake walk compared to Mortal Online.
Here’s the first thing you need to know about MO: You’re going to die and lose everything.
- MMORPG
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WoW Progress Report.
2013-12-16.
I bought a 3-month subscription for WoW when I suddenly got interested in playing again. Now that I’m running out of interest, the subscription will be expiring in January. It’s obvious that game developers are not doing subscriptions anymore, but I have to say, it’s pretty awesome to play a game where you aren’t bothered with cash shops or gems or other alternate forms of cash-based currency.
Anyway, my highest-level character in WoW is a 66 Night Elf Hunter.
- MMORPG
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Invert Mouse Forever.
2013-12-17.
Why doesn’t everyone use invert mouse? I simply cannot comprehend it. Yet informal polls show that only about 30% of people use invert mouse.
I choose the invert mouse setting because I want to mimic the controls of a flight simulator, which is pretty much the de-facto standard 3D environment control scheme. In a flight simulator (and presumably a real airplane), you push the stick forward to go down, and you pull the stick back to go up.
- MMORPG
- Discussion
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FFXIV Free Company Housing In 2.1.
2013-12-18.
Wow. I just read an article on Massively about the pricing for Final Fantasy XIV guild housing. It’s rather high, and it has enraged the FFXIV community. At least according to the article. For myself, I’m not into housing on a good day, but I’m definitely not into housing if it’s going to cost me a bazillion jillion gil for a starter house.
Before we get to the housing, I’ve got to say, Square Enix knows how to put out some friggin’ patch notes.
- MMORPG
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Bye Warhammer!.
2013-12-19.
Bye Warhammer! I wish I’d been able to log into you before you left, but your publisher apparently can’t manage simple things like letting people easily login and play you, even when you’re free. Gotta think that might have something to do with your departure. Anyway, you weren’t a bad game. Certainly better than EQ1 or AC which are inexplicably still running approximately fifty years later.
Warhammer Online is the first MMORPG I’ve played a significant amount that shut down, and only the second MMORPG from which I’ve lost significant characters.
- MMORPG
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Why Don’t People Like Poor Desmond?.
2013-12-20.
Tobold recently was not impressed by Assasin’s Creed 1. He expressed the same baffling opinions that I often hear about AC, which gives me a chance to be baffled in a public blog post.
I’ve always like Assassin’s Creed. At the time AC1 came out, I thought it was mind-bogglingly revolutionary. It was the best mo-cap I’d ever seen, the graphics looked realistic as crap, the city landscapes were amazing, and it had so many friggin actors on the screen at once.
- RPG
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Fallen Earth Impressions.
2013-12-23.
Fallen Earth is one of the sort-of kind-of AAA-ish quality MMORPGs that I haven’t ever played, so being generally bored with all other games, I recently started playing it.
The key word there is “started.” This is actually the second time I’ve started it up. The first time I made a character and took one look at the 1990s-era graphics and promptly uninstalled it. This time I am deliberately overlooking the weird graphics so that I can evaluate the game itself.
- MMORPG
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GW2 Winter Wonderland of Doom.
2013-12-24.
I ducked into GW2 to check out the Christmas event. As usual, there is nothing to gain from doing the events except some cosmetic fluff, because god forbid you actually get to advance your GW2 character in any way. But I set aside my anti-horizontal-progression Scrooge-like sentiment for a bit and did the events anyway, and they’re kind of fun.
Most of them, anyway. There’s a dungeon which I skipped because I didn’t want to deal with a group.
- MMORPG
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Mortal Online – Why is this Fun?.
2013-12-26.
I’m at a loss to explain it, but I’m digging Mortal Online. When I’m staring at my desktop full of MMO icons trying to decide which one to play, MO is the one I usually click on.
I’d be hard pressed to tell you why this game is compelling. I log in. I run out to the Graveyard and kill some undead to make some money and practice my blocking and swordfighting.
- MMORPG
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WildStar Gushing From MMO Reporter.
2013-12-27.
I’ve been hearing more and more about people’s WildStar beta experiences lately. Apparently they lifted some of the NDAs. They pretty much gushed about it on MMO Reporter Episode 152, and what they described sounded like a solid themepark MMO with action-oriented combat, and how can anyone not like that? No word on the endgame yet, though.
I like The MMO Reporter podcast, by the way. It’s one of the best ones if you like a more “casual” style of podcast.
- MMORPG
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2013 MMOs In Review.
2013-12-30.
I hate these year-in-review kinds of posts. So what do I do? Write one, of course. Because everyone’s doing it.
This is my review of 2013.
2013 began with GW2 fizzling out because of its lack of endgame progression. I still popped in now and then throughout the year to look at the Living Story but it’s just an occasional diversion.
I played in one of the last betas of Defiance before it came out in April.
- MMORPG
- Discussion
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2014 MMOs Coming Soon.
2013-12-31.
I hate year-end posts, so here I am writing another one to talk about MMOs I’m looking forward to in 2014.
Rift 3.0. I haven’t seen a release date, but they’re talking about releasing it in stages anyway, so I expect we’ll see the bulk of it in 2014. I hope to get a month of entertainment from the new stuff, maybe not contiguously though.
WildStar. I’m planning to pre-order and play at launch, because I suspect everyone and their mother will be playing it and I don’t want to miss out.
- MMORPG
- Discussion