Category: Gaming

Fallen Earth: Day 1

Posted on by Nimgimli

Today was the launch day for Fallen Earth pre-order customers. Which is kind of strange since I guess the game is now launching Sept. 22nd? So we get almost 13 days of Early Access. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

The launch hasn’t been perfect, but launches are such a small part of the long-term experience of an MMO that I’m not going to dwell on that. And Fallen Earth isn’t for everyone. If you think EQ2 is too complex, or if you don’t like to have to read tutorial screens, you’re going to *hate* Fallen Earth. It’s old school in a lot of ways, which means frankly lots of sharing data with other players and lots of figuring things out.

I’m enjoying the heck out of this aspect, frankly. I feel like I’ve stepped back 10 years in some ways. Actually, if you have fond memories of killing birds to harvest their feathers to make arrows to hunt with in Ultima Online, then you should give Fallen Earth a look.

The graphics aren’t state of the art, but the music is awesome and some of the voice talent is quite good. The ambiance works if you take the time to read quest text (or listen in the case of spoken quests). It’s a post apocalyptic world set in the Grand Canyon area. Lots of people ride horses and it has a kind of Old West vibe in some ways (the music really helps there).

I laughed when I got a quest to literally kill ten large rats because I know how many people would sniff with disdain at encountering such a quest, but the fact is I was hunting the rats even before I got the quest. Hunting them and harvesting the corpses to get meat and chemicals for crafting. So adding a quest to what I was already doing was just a bonus.

But yes, this is the kind of game where you start out weak and poor enough that harvesting rat meat is worth your time.

In fact so far my time has been split 3-ways. 1 part roaming around, getting the lay of the land and figuring out how the game works, 1 part hunting various animals to harvest crafting materials, and 1 part doing quests.

As a pre-order bonus, I got an ATV. It appeared in the form of a key in my inventory. Once I used that key, up popped an ATV. But gas is expensive and I really didn’t need to travel very far. I figured I’d be better off walking for now. I didn’t want to just leave my ATV sitting around where who knows what might happen to it, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get it to change back into a key in my inventory.

I finally found out that this can’t be done. So what to do with this ATV? Find a garage. Where’s the garage? Well someone told me it was on the outskirts of town, so I had to roam around until I finally found it, and then I parked the ATV there. Other pre-orders got a horse, and the garage also offered stables. (BTW, the horse seems a lot cooler than the ATV, but the ATV has more storage space.)

If that level of ‘reality’ sounds tedious and annoying, then you’ll hate Fallen Earth. But if you’re ready for a bit of a step back to a time when MMORPGs were a bit different, a bit more opaque but in many ways richer for being more opaque, then keep watching this space as I dig deeper into the game. I think I’m going to throw my lot in with the Vistas, a sort of post-apocalyptic Greenpeace offshoot. They can teach me to shoot with a rifle AND to farm. A good combo for us lone wolf types.

The one that got away

Posted on by Nimgimli

I hooked a striped bass that must’ve been 35 lbs if it was an ounce. I had it right along side the boat, net ready, when the line snapped…and there it went. It was huge though. One of the biggest stripers I’ve seen.

Last time I saw a fish like that, it was caught by some noob doing summer stock at the John Drew Theater in East Hampton (where I grew up). Guy had no idea what he was doing and he reeled in this monster while surf-casting. Don’t think he caught another fish the entire summer. Not having a clue what to do with it, he gave the beast to me. I had to ice it down in my bathtub while I gathered the prerequisite number of fish-loving party goers, then I butchered it, fired up the grill and they feasted (ironically I’m not much of a fish lover). It was a good spur-of-the-moment gathering, at least.

The 2nd paragraph is a true story, BTW.

Anyway, back from the virtual fishing trip after a shorter-than-expected break. Part of the reason I cut the break short is that it just felt like a self-imposed gag order. I just like to talk, in case you haven’t picked up on that. 🙂 [Except in-game where I rarely speak up. What’s up with that?] Second was the amount of negativity being directed at Champions Online (though I’ve procrastinated to the point that has died down a bit, but more on that later). Thirdly was a post made by Professor Beej that reminded me of something I already knew. I wasn’t replacing blogging with any other kind of writing, so that meant I just wasn’t writing (well, other than a daily blog post for ITWorld). And that’s no good.

Anyway, I’m still tired of arguing, but I think know there’s a place for positive blogs, like MMOQuests and OverlyPositive. So I’m going to try to blog about the good side of gaming and let the bad stuff be handled by others.

Thing I realized is, negativity is important. I came to this rather obvious revelation during the aforementioned Champions negativity. Right after launch, people were really slamming Cryptic and the game for a last minute patch that folks felt nerfed a bunch of characters too much. Additionally, the cost of retconning (respeccing in the CO vernacular) was much too high.

I was having a great time and was kind of dismayed that so much bandwidth (somewhat in blogs, but more in forums and in-game) was being devoted to slamming Cryptic and the game. My instinct, being a hot-headed internet denizen, was to try to shout down the people promoting the bad aspects of the launch. But I knew that’d just lead to arguing and no one changing anyone’s mind, so for once…for this ONE TIME, I actually kept my mouth more or less shut.

The irony of all this is probably not lost on regular readers of Dragonchasers, because 2 weeks ago I was ready to burn Cryptic HQ to the ground over their yanking of the Lifetime Membership option. And I ranted and raved about it like an f’ing lunatic. All too frequently we don’t see ourselves for the comic & hypocritical entities we are until after the fact.

But this time I caught myself and I finally realized that negativity is important. Users and potential users voicing their unhappiness over a company’s policies or game design decisions is what gets the company to reconsider those policies and decisions. If a bunch of us hadn’t gotten really really mad about the premature end of the 6 Month & Lifetime special offers, would Cryptic have decided to re-open them? Probably not.

Cryptic has also promised to get early entry players a free respec of their characters so we can rebuild them under the ‘new rules’ that came in the Day 1 patch. Would they have promised this if the outcry hadn’t been so loud? Again, it is doubtful.

The flip side of the coin is that we, the consumers, can’t just assume that if we scream loudly enough things will change. We need to find that point where it’s time to let go and move on. I’m not sure where that point is, and I’m sure it changes on a case by case basis.

But all that negativity is *tiring* isn’t it? Well it is to me at least. I don’t like arguing, in spite of the fact that I do so much of it. It drains me. So for now at least, I’m going to pass the Baton of Righteous Indignation on to someone else, and try to focus on what’s good in the world of gaming.

Right now I’m playing Champions Online (I did spring for the Lifetime Membership once they re-opened it…how could I not?) and I’m having a blast. I’ve pre-ordered Fallen Earth, mostly because I got caught up in the moment when Ethic from KillTenRats was talking about it (jeez, I hope it’s Ethic who runs the KTR twitter account) and it was a digital thing — moments after reading his tweet I’d pre-ordered, before I had a chance to think fiscally, but what’s done is done and I’m happy to be supporting a small developer and seeing how the game came out. I’m in the Open Beta of Aion but that’s not going too well for me, but I didn’t really expect it to. But its so darned pretty! And of course my Lifetime sub to LOTRO and my EQ2 account are both loitering in the background waiting for me to get over the latest infatuation.

I’ll probably be talking about Champions for a little while at least. I think the game makes a tepid first impression and that a lot of testers never got into the good stuff, so it’ll be my mission to expose some of that goodness to Dragonchasers readers.
infernal_fight

Champions Online Gamepad UI

Posted on by Nimgimli

Someone on Twitter was asking me how Cryptic handles all the skills with a gamepad.
gamepad_ui
See the X, Y & B indicators on the first 3 skills? Those are the ‘unmodified’ bindings. If you hold down a modifier like one of the triggers, those little indicators move to show which hotkeys they now map to. So they jump around dynamically.

It works pretty well, and the game is a ton of fun to play with a gamepad.

Hope this helps someone.

Hall of Champions

Posted on by Nimgimli

In lieu of blogging, I’ve been having some fun writing up silly little ‘origin stories’ for my Champions Online characters. But since these are ‘Pages’ and not ‘Posts’ they aren’t going out on the RSS feed. I’ve linked to them in Twitter but figured if I did a WordPress ‘post’ then the RSS feed would pick them up. This is not a blog post! 🙂

Warning: I’m a blogger, not a fiction writer, and it shows. 🙂

The format of these pages is a little origin story, then some thoughts on what I’d doing with the character.

The best one is probably The Highwayman‘s page, since I ripped the fiction off from a famous poem. He was my first ‘live’ character and is the highest level so far (which isn’t very high…level 10). Mundane guns and mystical swords.

My next favorite I think is The Collective. Ever hear an author talk about how his or her characters “won’t behave” or take on a life of their own, seemingly out of control of what the author had planned? That’s what happened with The Collective for me. So now I have a glimpse into how these authors feel.

CanTANKerous was my attempt at filling a “trinity” roll, but CO doesn’t really have the tank/healer/dps trinity set up quite that clearly. You can make a character that fills one of those roles, but most characters are hybrids of some kind. Anyway, CanTANKerous had a long-ish origin story and is, I hope, an unlikely hero.

Last is Electric Blue Angel. Her story was an afterthought…I just wanted to make a character with flashy powers and birds wings, and I wanted to have at least one, and eventually a couple, of female characters in my stable.

You probably don’t want to read all of these, and you quite possibly won’t want to read any of them, but a few people who’ve read them have gotten a kick out of them so I figured I’d share; if you aren’t in Early Start and are chomping at the bit these might scratch that itch for you, at least a little.

Personally I’m having a blast with Champions Online so far, but in some ways it feels tailor made for me. Very alt friendly, huge character customization, both at creation and as you level (you can craft enhancements that unlock costume parts assuming you have the associated powers slotted). I’ve created 4 characters and they all feel and play differently, and I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of what is possible.

If you’re considering giving CO a try, disregard any opinions (good or bad) that are based on less than 5-7 hours of gameplay. The game that CO seems to be when you first launch it is very different from the game it actually is. I’m not saying you’ll like it — you might hate it. But it’d be a shame for you to miss out on a game you might enjoy because someone plays it for 2 hours and passes judgement as it being like all the other MMOs out there.

A humble thanks

Posted on by Nimgimli

All my fishing gear is packed and it’s almost dawn. Time to head out to the fishing hole, but I couldn’t resist one last post to tie up a few loose ends.

First of all, the response to my last post has been personally overwhelming to me. So many supportive comments, and just knowing there are people who’ve been reading this blog. I know, that’s silly..I see the page stats and I know how many page views a post gets, but putting names on those numbers…that was pretty special. Thank you all for taking the time to comment and for all the kind words. I had no idea you were all out there. I feel truly honored that you’d take time out of your day to read this silly blog.

Second of all, I wanted to elaborate a bit on something I said. I was talking to someone whom I’ve locked horns with in the past today, and he said (and I paraphrase) “I hope I wasn’t one of the arrogant assholes that caused you to make this decision.” (He wasn’t, btw. Not in the least.) But I felt bad. I didn’t mean to call anyone an asshole. I said many bloggers are pompous, pig-headed and arrogant. I do still believe that, insofar as games are concerned. And I do very much include myself in that description. But not all bloggers, and most of us who are pompous, pig-headed & arrogant kind of phase in and out of this mind-state; we have our good days and our “Clearly I’m an expert in everything related to games” days. At least I know I have those days.

Third and last, I was (and this is probably obvious) really angry when I wrote that post last night. I’d had an all-day argument with another blogger (who was being EXTREMELY pp&a), and the frustration I was feeling at his — hell, I don’t know what he was doing; whether he was dense or just trying to spin me up (Angela looked at the comment thread and to her it just seemed like he was getting a kick out of frustrating me…it was her who finally talked me off the ledge — suffice to say that’s a blog I’ll never visit again) — whatever he was doing, it combined with my frustration at the Cryptic situation to just push me over the top. You might be surprised to learn that I actually dislike arguing. I know, I do it an awful lot for someone who dislikes it. I find the act of arguing to be personally destructive but justice is worth personal sacrifice to me. I’m pretty old school in that way. Anyway, I’m getting off-message and you don’t need any more convincing that I’m a bit off-kilter. The point I’m trying to get to is that I’d like to apologize for the acerbic tone of that last post. The tone was uncalled for even if the feelings in it were genuine.

Anyway, another wall of text. Thanks again for all the support. I’m pretty confident now that this is “So long for now” and not “Goodbye.” I need to find my inner Stargrace and learn to focus on the joy I’m taking away from the games I’m playing, and learn to focus my posts more on the positive aspects of games & gaming — it’s such a wonderful hobby and such an amazing time to be a gamer and there’s way too much negativity coming from the general press. I need to stop adding to the negativity, for my own sake. I also need, very, VERY badly, to stop taking things so seriously; they’re just games. (This rather obvious fact had to be pointed out to me by a few other bloggers today.)

I’ll be playing Champions Online, now that Cryptic re-opened their special deals (kudos to them for doing the right thing). And I’ll be hanging out on twitter at @pasmith — and I hope you’ll all still be around when Dragonchasers re-opens with a bright, shiny positive attitude… OK OK who am I kidding… with a moderately less snarky attitude!

I’m turning off comments on this post because I’ll never get out of here otherwise… it’s too easy to get caught up in talking to you fine people.

I’ll bring you all back some fresh trout.

Cryptic and the community

Posted on by Nimgimli

So yeah, I’m not yet able to let this go.

Since last night my irritation with the whole situation continues to grow. However I feel myself become less irritated with Cryptic, and more and more irritated with the blogging and forum-using community.

Here is the situation:

I spent $5 for a pre-order box at Best Buy. I took the box home. I created a Champions Online account. In the process of doing this, the web site popped up a “Take advantage of our Special Offer” interim page. The offer said I had to buy before Sept 1st, as this was a limited time offer. I clicked “Not now, thanks” feeling I’d like to at least sample the game before I made that decision, and in addition I saw no reason to fork over $200 ahead of time.

The Best Buy pre-order came with Early Access. I figured if the launch went well, I’d take advantage of the special offer comfortably in advance of the Sept. 1 deadline.

Following creating the account, I was sent an email, again soliciting me to take advantage of the special offer. It referred to the offer as “Limited.” This was moments after seeing it referred to as a limited time offer.

I assumed, since there was no physical component to this offer, that Limited referred to the Limited time.

Then, Monday night they announced, on their website, that they only had a limited quantity available. By the next morning they were gone. Monday night I was playing in the Open Beta Ending event; I never even saw the announcement until they were sold-out. I pause now to point out that they have a directed means of communicating with players: the launcher. We see that every time we start the game. They chose not to use that avenue to convey the “limited number” nature of the special deal.

I have since read that Cryptic announced that there were limited quantities of these deals in their forums. Have you been to their forums? They’re disgusting. No more disgusting than any other game’s forums, but I avoid gaming forums as much as possible since they are all vile places.

The fact remains that when Cryptic ‘pushed’ their marketing offers to me, they didn’t mention limited quantities. Just limited time. My bad for not accepting things at face value and digging through their forums in case they’d posted info there that they hadn’t bothered to ‘push’ to me.

OK, so that’s that.

I have a beef with Cryptic. I’m not saying they’re evil. I’m not hoping they go bankrupt. I don’t want Champions to fail and I’m not saying they’ve broken any laws. I personally disagree with the way they’ve handled the issue, and I would very much like for them to reconsider the decision to artificially limit what is a virtual product.

The only ‘leverage’ I have to work with is this blog (and let’s face it, Dragonchasers isn’t a force in the industry — if I get 10,000 visits a month I’m doing great) and my wallet.

So I’m doing the only thing I can do to dispute the decision: opting not to buy the game. And really, this is between me and Cryptic, as far as I’m concerned.

So what I don’t get, and what is really, really starting to annoy me, is people on the sidelines chiming in to take pot shots at me and other people in the same boat as I am. For the most part, this is happening in those wretched, vile forums (which I continue to monitor in case they do opt to re-open the offers.. apparently the forums are Cryptic’s primary way to communicate with their users), but there are bloggers jumping on the bandwagon too. (I’m still trying to puzzle out what Tipa meant by her comment “Did the game become less fun because of the ending of their pre-launch offer?” Was it a legit question? I’m honestly not sure if it was, but I accepted it as one, and answered her as honestly as I could in the comment section of her blog.

So my question is, if you weren’t interested in these special deals, or if you were interested and took advantage of them and are all set, then what is your interest in the situation? Why do you feel the need to snidely comment on something that has nothing to do with you? Does it just feel good rubbing salt in the wounds of people who are already frustrated to begin with? What do you, the bloggers and forum posters telling us we should have known better, or just “QQ more, crybaby,” hope to accomplish by your blog & forum posts?

I’ll reiterate what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m trying to convey to Cryptic that I feel strongly about their decision and have $250 that I’m ready to hand over to them if they decide to change their minds. If they don’t, I’m sure there are other developers who’ll be happy to sell me product.

Comments CLOSED on this post. I’m too angry to have a rational discussion about this topic at this point. (And yes, I realize how foolish it is to close topic on a post that I asked a question in…my questions were for the most part rhetorical.)

Champions Online crossed off my list

Posted on by Nimgimli

Early on, I scoffed at the idea of Cryptic offering a couple of special subscription offers (a Discounted 6 month sub, and a Lifetime sub) before the game released. All their marketing material said these were limited time offers that ended on Sept. 1st.

I scoffed, but I kept playing preview weekends and “open” beta, and found myself enjoying the game and slowly being sucked in. Finally I decided that I’d snag one of the two special offers, but I wasn’t sure which one. I had until Sept. 1st to decide, so there was no rush.

Last night, Cryptic posted a notice on their website shifting their story and saying now that “Supplies were limited.” By this morning, they were sold out. I didn’t see their site last night as I was busy taking part in the end of beta event. Nothing about this was in the launcher.

How can you sell out of a virtual product?

When I found out I’d missed out on these special deals, I was pretty upset. Had I known the offer was a limited time one, I would’ve purchased early. And I know now that I would’ve actually sprung for the Lifetime Sub. First of all, it comes with 8 extra character slots, and this was clearly a game I would’ve gone alt-crazy in. Second, it feels like the kind of game I’d play casually… a little bit at a time, over a long period, so a Lifetime Sub made sense for me (and I’d just earned a $200 bonus from a freelance job, coincidentally).

Anyway, now that this sweet offer has been dangled in front of my nose, then retracted, I find that I’m no longer interested in giving Cryptic any of my money.

Unless they decide to re-institute the offer. The one legit concern I can understand is that the special offers included entrance into the Star Trek Online beta, and I can see where they’d have to put a limit on those.

So maybe, hopefully, they’ll re-open the offers, just with the STO beta entry removed. I’d be fine with that.

I won’t delete the client, in the hopes that Cryptic does the right thing by their customers.

MMO Soloing: A bedtime story

Posted on by Nimgimli

As a confirmed soloer, I get subjected to a certain amount of bs from the grouping contingent. One of the most frequent quips these people fling at me is “If you’re going to solo, go play a single player game.”

Now no amount to logical explanation has been able to push these folks off-message. As far as their concerned, people who solo are a) stupid for paying a monthly fee if we’re not going to group, and b) ruining the games.

So instead of logic, I’m going to tell a quick little story before I put the weekend to bed and start another long work week.

I was exploring the western shore of Lake Evendim tonight. It’s a place I’ve never been before. I wasn’t hunting for anything more dangerous than the boat back to the eastern shore, which I’d been told existed somewhere. I was staying along the water’s edge, dodging anything mean looking up on the slopes above. Then I saw a large white boulder behind some bushes. An outcropping of platinum! As a jeweler, I need platinum, so without thinking I charged straight through the bush and tried right-clicking on the platinum to harvest it.

Only it wasn’t an outcropping of platinum at all, it was a huge bear. It hit me a few times as I parsed what was going on (the bush was still obstructing my view). By the time I got my wits about me and starting fighting back I was at 50% health, and the bear was yellow to me. I hadn’t eaten anything, had no consumable buffs up; as I said, I wasn’t looking to fight. I knew this was going to be mighty close.

Then a shaft of light came flying over my shoulder. Another attacker! I shuffled around the bear so I could see and… no, not another attacker! A dwarf named Grain, and he was hitting the bear with some kind of magic. Next thing I know, my morale was surging upwards, and the bear lay dead at my feet. I turned to Grain, bowed low. He bowed back, then opened a book, read from it…and vanished.

This kind of totally random and unexpected encounter is why I played MMOs even though I mostly solo (it should be noted, Grain was soloing too). A few moments later he sent me a tell, and we chatted a bit about our adventures in Evendim — it was his first time there too, as best I could tell.

Anyway, so that’s my answer to a) and why I’m happy to pay $15/month to play in a living, breathing, ever-changing world, instead of some static single-player RPG. As to us ruining the games…I can’t help you there. If you want to group a lot, make some friends and group with them. Best way to make friends? Stop trying to shove your world-view down other peoples’ throats.

Now I’m off to bed. Hope you all had a fun weekend of gaming!
bog_guardian

Worlds that end, worlds that change

Posted on by Nimgimli

After the Matrix Online crashed for the last time, some bloggers talked a bit about the death of an MMO, and what it means to the players.

What about worlds that don’t die, but undergo radical changes?

I haven’t lived through one of these, to be honest, so all I’m going to do is ask questions.

What do the die-hard fans of DDO think about their beloved game going free-to-play? There they are at their picnic enjoying themselves, and they look up to see a tidal wave of noobs about to crash down on them. Let’s face it, free-to-play games are going to pull in a younger demographic, which could impact the culture quite a bit.

Spellborn players are faced with this too, but Spellborn wasn’t nearly as established.

And now there’s this Cataclysm expansion for WoW. I haven’t studied the info coming out of Blizzcon (I don’t pay much attention to games until they’re near-future events), but I watched the trailer, and it made me feel a little sad. I spent so many hours romping around those “old” zones in WoW. To see them shattered and broken… it was a little like visiting your hometown and finding the park you used to hang out in after school was now a Wal-Mart.

Don’t go twisting my words. I actually think Blizzard is pulling off something pretty brilliant and pretty ballsy, shaking up their old content so drastically — look how many people are excited to go revisit those old lands in their new iterations.

I’m a little excited, too. Put it this way, I’ve never felt any desire to purchase or play Lich King, but I can see myself visiting the post-Cataclysm world. But I’m saying my excitement is tempered a bit by the knowledge that the places that hold so many fond memories will be gone forever (at least as I remember them).

Honestly, maybe Blizzard is doubly brilliant, because it just struck me that I might re-visit WoW *before* Cataclysm (like, a week before), just to take one last stroll through the old zones and think back on all the friends I made and all the adventures I had there. And I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking about doing that.

I guess the moral of the story is that we should enjoy what we have now, because it won’t be there forever. This applies to both the virtual and the real world.