A weekend of endings

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ll beg your pardon while I ramble. This has been a strange weekend for me, full of things ending.

My EQ2 subscription ends this week. Realistically I do most of my gaming on weekends, so it feels like EQ2 is done for me, for now. I do hope to come back to it soon, though.

I was reading the last issue of EGM this weekend. There’s nothing really special about it, but knowing its the last one, reading the articles and knowing the writer had no idea he was about to be jobless, lends a sad sheen to the mag.

Angela and I have been watching an old Irish TV series, Ballykissangel, for the past few weeks. I’d seen the first couple seasons before, years ago when it played on PBS. There are six seasons in all, and yesteraday we finished the 6th. It’s a very good-hearted show. Ballykissangel is the name of a village, and even though characters come and go from season to season, the village remains and feels like the main character. Anyway, its done now, and the last season was filmed in 2001 (I believe) so not much chance of any more of it. What added to the sadness there was knowing that some characters left the show because the actors playing them passed away (Birdie Sweeny – Eamon, and Tony Doyle – Brian Quigley). Tony Doyle’s daughter actually played a part in the last season, and you can see a lot of her dad in her face, which in some ways added to the melancholy of it being the last we’ll see of this little village and the characters that hang out in Fitzgerald’s pub.

And today I watched the series finale of Stargate: Atlantis. I *loved* that show. Which is a totally separate issue from saying it’s a great show, because it isn’t. It was just a fun, entertaining sci-fi series with a cast of characters that felt like a family in a lot of ways. I’d *guess* that behind the scenes, the actors got along pretty well because there was always a feeling of  camaraderie when you watched. I love sci-fi and have since I was a kid. And I’ve noted in myself that I’m drawn to these shows that have a ‘family’ of characters that get along and don’t have a lot of interpersonal conflict. My own family life was pretty “lite” and I think in some small way I make these tv-show families my own. (I’m sure that’s not healthy, but oh well.) There’s no “bad guy” in the core cast of Atlantis, and very little friction between Atlantis team members. Every crew member is more or less a sci-fi cliche, but I’m just not bothered by that.

As to the finale itself, it was overly ambitious. It felt like they’d planned for a two-hour finale and had to whittle it down to an hour, because they stuffed a *lot* of stuff into that hour, to the point where it felt kind of disjointed and rushed. Not one of their best episodes, but I do enjoy when the writers of a series know they’re writing a finale (remember the last scene of Joss Whedon’s Angel? “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to slay a dragon.”) and can leave us with a poignant moment to remember the cast by.

So farewell EQ2 and Ballyk and EGM and Stargate: Atlantis.  Thanks for all the enjoyment you’ve brought me over the years. And in the case of EQ2…hope to see you again soon!

Tonight it’ll be the season finale of Sanctuary (hoping that one gets renewed) and then the conclusion of Tess of the D’Urbervilles on Masterpiece. More endings!

Just not feeling like gaming today, for some reason… this upcoming work week is going to be kind of brutal and I think I’m just recharging by watching lots of tv…

Size matters (EQ2)

Posted on by Nimgimli

So it’s time to buckle down and clean our Riowa’s quest journal. I keep trying to delete quests but my finger just won’t click that button (another of my many character flaws!), so instead Riowa partnered with Angela’s Moonbow (23 Warden), mentored down to her level, and voila, quests that were gray are now yellow.

The quests in question were in Stormhold, a zone I’m not all that familiar with, so I was following Angela’s directions while Riowa was leading Moonbow. One of the reasons I’m not familiar with Stormhold is that I hate the zone. All those tight corridors drive me crazy, and having a knee-high companion wasn’t making things any better — I kept ‘losing’ her.

I finally vocalized my internal grumbling, and Angela suggested I use my “Mystic Moppet Billy” that I’d gotten as a Veteran Reward at some point. This oddly named gizmo shrinks your character by 40%. Now a lot of MMOs have spells or potions or gadgets that shrink you or enlarge you, but I’ve always thought of them as just a lark…something to do for fun. And perhaps that’s the intent, but after activating Billy, my hulking Barbarian frame suddenly fit very nicely in Stormhold. Suddenly all those hallways seemed to be amply sized, and I could relax and have fun.

And have fun we did. Moonbow made four levels, we both snagged Achievement Points (well Riowa got one, I think she got two) and I’m finally starting to be able to find my way around Stormhold. Sadly Riowa did *not* finish any quests though. Stormhold is old-school (ie, annoying) EQ2, and the mobs he needed to kill just weren’t spawning. I’m so glad Sony seems to have moved away from long spawn timers, or tiny numbers of mobs, (or both!) in the later expansions.  One quest had Riowa killing 15 goblin soldiers. As far as I could find (both via running around, and using EQ2Map), 2 spawn in all of Stormhold. I think he’s up to ten killed at this point, and he’s had the quest since level 25 or thereabouts.

Ah well, the point is, sometimes there are tools right in front of us that we just don’t see. I never thought I’d find a ‘practical’ use for Mystic Moppet Billy, but I sure did!

New digs (EQ2)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I decided that Riowa should celebrate hitting the 50’s by getting his own apartment. He’d been sleeping on the couch at Raffe’s (50 Alchemist) place since forever, which had been ok since most of the time Raffe crashes at the Guild Hall and Riowa is on the road a lot. The two never saw each other and only communicated via notes left to each other.

That said, Riannon (Angela’s 80 Templar) and Kharri (Angela’s 80 Carpenter) had decorated Raffe’s pad very tastefully, but Riowa wanted to try his own hand at decorating. Plus he was constantly hitting his head on that stupid spiral staircase that leads to the second floor of the Irontoes East, where the rented rooms are.

He first looked at some three room apartments, but quickly saw through the marketing hype. One room downstairs, one room upstairs, and then a walled yard with a tarp overhead! That’s not a room! Bah! The five-room homes are lovely but he didn’t quite have the status in the community to swing one. Actually he didn’t have anywhere near the status to swing one.

Treasure TroveIn the end, he rented a two room place in The Lion’s Mane, that cozy Inn in South Qeynos. It was very comfortably affordable, particularly once he did up the place with fancy items that appealed to the snooty housing committee [bringing the Status cost to 0] and placed a Treasure Trove [knocks 25% off the weekly Gold cost] in there. First thing he did was make an ice sculpture out of all the frozen goblins he’d collected in the icy keep.

Then he finally hatched the Mysterious Egg that he’d left unclaimed for several years, and look what hatched from it!

Aviak fighter

Next he bought a large cat, and brought his other pets over from Raffe’s place, taking particular care in transporting the baby dragon.

Baby Dragon

Next he arranged his trophy weapons around the door, so every time he left he’d be reminded of past successes.

Trophies

An ice sculpture of some hot warrior chick rounded the place out. A real bachelor’s pad!

Ice Statue

Not at all like Raffe’s girl-ish place, with his hearth

Raffe's Hearth

and his poncie bedroom

Raffe's Bedroom

Admittedly the eating is better at Raffe’s, though.

Raffe's Feast

The new suite has a long way to go, but Riowa is thinking me might wait until he can afford to five-room place before he really gets started on any serious decorating.

* * *

And while I’m in the image posting mood, here’s two shots of him with his new ice gear. One without the chest piece, and one with. You can see how over-done the ‘snowflake’ effect is on the chest piece. I think that’ll be the first piece I replace! (BTW, it is *uncanny* how simliar Riowa’s physique is to mine!!)

Without Snow EffectWith Snow Effect

Ice, Ice, Baby (EQ2)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I finally got Riowa the Berserker to level 52, which meant he could finally don all that neat Frostfell ice-themed gear he’d earned the tokens for. Woot! I made sure to take a portrait of him all decked out, then of course never uploaded it. Doh.

I’m not actually a fan of the ‘frost’ particle-effects that comes with the gear, and I didn’t have enough time (it was midnight by the time I dinged) to see if it was one particular piece that triggered it. If it is, I’ll have to cover that piece up with something.

The trinkets, sword, shield and bow are all good gear that I can use for a while, but the armor and jewelry all has a big negative to heat damage resistance. So Riowa now has heat resistance of zero — thank goodness they don’t allow negative numbers!! Angela glanced over at my screen, saw the stats and quipped “Don’t go adventuring in Lavastorm!” 🙂

But EQ2 vets will probably be horrified to learn that my level 51 character was still wearing level 32 armor (granted, mastercrafted but still) so even with the lack of heat protection, this stuff is a tremendous upgrade and was free.

Anyway, now that I’m in my new duds, it’s time to go back and clean up a bunch of gray quests (probably mentoring one of Angela’s younger girls to get ’em green) and working up harvesting skills. I only have 8 days left on the account and I have to confess I’m going to miss it.

I had a nibble on some freelance work… it’s a Gift of the Magi conundrum. If I pursue the work, I’ll have money to play games, but no time to play them in (it feels like it’d be an on-going gig). If I skip the work, I’ll have time, but no money to pay for them…

In which Saylah does my job for me…

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was going to rant on about why I enjoy solo play in MMOs tonight, but I’m feeling pretty talked out (thanks to a long comment-discussion at Stylish Corpse) and generally snarky (thanks to spending 90 minutes in a Verizon store today) and anyway, Saylah said in a paragraph pretty much what I was going to say in like 10,000 words. I’m referring to the last paragraph of her post.

I’m not some kind of solo zealot or anything, but my style and my personality (yes, I know you all think I’m warm and cuddly, but really I’m pretty much a prickly bastard with very little patience in real life) just lend themselves to solo play a lot more often than to group play. I like having other players around me to talk to, trade with, and most of all, just to watch (I love the aspirational aspects of seeing high level characters with crazy gear and knowing that eventually I can get there too). I just often don’t want to, or don’t have time to, join myself to these people at the hip. I really don’t do well with waiting, and that’s my biggest problem (along with rather extreme shyness). I start to go bug-nuts after waiting around for 5 minutes to get a group rolling.

And single player RPGs are static. I actually *do* play them, but its a different experience than playing an MMO solo. Anyway, I also like games that change constantly as the developers roll out new features and content. And lastly, I like that MMOs are endless (well, not literally, they’ll all get shut down eventually). This preference of mine often makes me laugh at myself since I so rarely stick to a single game long enough to finish it (in the case of a single player RPG) or hit cap (in the case of an MMO). But we’re often not logical in what we like or dislike.

Anyway, I’m gonna go solo in some MMO or another. 🙂 Like I said, Saylah said it better and more succinctly than I ever could.

MMO Soloers get some love from Turbine

Posted on by Nimgimli

As an oft-time solo MMO gamer, I’m used to being spat upon by the herd-mentality masses. “Go play a single player game!” they scream at me. “Your [sic] an idiot for paying a monthly fee to play a game by yourself!” Or even, “Hey solo player… YOUR MOM!”

OK OK I’m being a bit over-dramatic but seriously, there’s a big component of the community who seems to think there’s something “wrong” with preferring to play an MMO solo. And some day I’ll do a big long whinging post about why I do it, but that day is not today!

No, today I just want to direct you to this guide to Solo Leveling in LOTRO. Why is it worth noting? Because it comes from Turbine themselves. So apparently they acknowledge and appreciate that some of us prefer the solitude of a quiet walk through The Shire to a booze-laden Tavern League Quest Marathon.

Actually, the article doesn’t feel all that solo-oriented and if you’ve never played LOTRO it’s a decent “Getting Started” article for anyone to read. If you’ve played a grouped character and want to start a solo alt, the article isn’t going to teach you very much. Hopefully future installations will be a bit more meaty with regard to the soloist.

Bloggers: Check your RSS feeds

Posted on by Nimgimli

This is a public service announcement from me, your faithful reader, to all you bloggers out there.

RSS feeds rock for those of us who read a lot of blogs. It gives us a 1-stop location to see what new posts are out there in the blogosphere. I urge you to subscribe to the RSS feed of your own blog and take a look at it now and then, and think about it from a reader’s perspective.

There are basically 3 choices as to what you’re going to put into your feed: the entire post, a title and summary, or just a title. Let’s look at these options.

Putting the entire contents of a post into your feed is perfect for your readers, but of course it means no one needs to actually come to your website (unless they want to comment), which can be a problem if your site is ad-supported or you just want to analyze traffic patterns at your site.

Putting a summary of your post in your feed gives readers an idea of what the post is about so they can decide if they want to ‘click through’ and read the rest of the post. If you do this, you should probably write a custom summary, not just let your blogging software grab the first paragraph or something. If you don’t feel like writing a summary at least keep in mind that for some segment of your readers, that first graph is going to determine whether they read on or not. Using a summary forces readers to come to your site to read the entire post, which gets ad revenue and good analytics for your website.

The last option is title only. This is a bad idea, unless you write incredibly intriguing titles (I’ve yet to see an example of this). When a reader is deciding which posts to read and which to skip, it becomes really easy to skip just a title with no more information about what the post is about. Presumably your #1 goal is to get people to read your posts (if your #1 goal is go make money, you’re in the wrong business!) and by only giving readers a title, you’re working against your own best interests. You have to entice readers to read you!

This may all seem really obvious, but I have a few blogs that I follow that only offer a title and I have to confess that even though I’m interested in reading this bloggers, I often find myself skipping them because I’m not sure what the post is about. It’s so much easier to hit “Read Next” and bop on down to the next blog in my reader’s list.

For your sake and mine, at least give us a summary!

War Wishy Washy

Posted on by Nimgimli

I haven’t gone back to check, but I think in my Warhammer posts I alternate liking the game and griping about the game. Maybe it’s because I have fun in one session and it raises my expectations for the next one and then I get disappointed, so have low expectations for the following session and get a pleasant surprise? 🙂

Today’s gripe is once again back on the lack of polish and slow leveling speed. My Witchhunter was level 18 doing quests that required killing mobs level 21-23, and had rested experience. I completed 3 kill ten rats quests, a fed ex quest and a couple of Kill Collector turn-ins and earned maybe 1/6th of a level over the course of the session. That’d be fine for 3 easy quests, but if felt pretty paltry considering they were tough quests for my level (I died a lot…level 23 mobs are dicey) and the fact that I had to clear a lot of trash mobs of level 20-21 to get to the 23s I needed.

I mean, it wasn’t horrible, but I would go back to turn in one of these quests totally psyched to see the EXP bar zoom up and then it’d just nudge over a smidge. 🙁 A tad disappointing. And all the rewards are too high for me to use! LOL.

Worse though was more evidence of the lack of polish. I was fighting big cats that could stun me. What would happen would be my hotbars would suddenly go dark. Then I’d get a text message saying something about being stunned. Then finally my character would switch to a prone stance. These were distinct sequential events. And note how I didn’t say “my character would fall down” because he didn’t. One frame standing, next frame prone.

Plus the old ‘stuck in the shooting animation’ bug when I use my Trial By Pain (I think its called) skill to kill something. This is the Witchhunter skill where he rapid-fires his pistol at point blank range. If the target dies, the Witchhunter keeps firing and firing until you do something that’ll make it stop. I finally figured out jumping would do this. That one’s just aesthetic though and it impacts you *after* a fight, not during it. The stun thing, where seeing your character get knocked down is important feedback, is a bigger deal.

Quote of the day, heard on the regional channel where a warband was doing OpenRvR: “Get ready, I can feel the lag of their approach!”

I can’t wait to try Warhammer next Fall after Mythic has had plenty of time to polish and flesh out some thin spots. There’s a gem of a game hidden in there somewhere!

EGM: Rest in Peace

Posted on by Nimgimli

So the official word is out. Electronic Gaming Monthly is dead. The issue on the stands (or possibly in your hands) now is the final issue. It’s not a surprise, of course, Ziff-Davis has been hurting for a long time, and the print magazine business is in a bad, bad way.

But I can’t help but be a bit sad. EGM has been around for something like 20 years. Seeing anything with that kind of heritage die is never fun.

Not that I’ve always been a fan, mind you. I’ve always been in the situation of being unusually old as a gamer, and when EGM first came out it was writing to a 12 year old audience when I was in my late-20s. And it was about those lame console games when I was a computer gamer. A *real* gamer! 🙂 But the magazine seemed to grow up along with the first generation of gamers (and consoles) and for the past few years I’ve been reading EGM regularly. And it was OK. Which sounds like damning with faint praise, but OK is pretty good in the world of gaming mags. I’ll miss it.

I’m told the European gaming magazines are still quite good, but they’re a bit pricey for my tastes. In the US we’re left with GamePro (terrible the last time I looked at it; granted that was years ago) and Game Informer (house organ to that vilest of chains, Gamestop) and a few smaller niche mags like the curiously titled Beckett Massive Online Gamer.

I sometimes miss the heyday of gaming mags, when titles like Computer Gaming World and Strategy Plus (later Computer Games Magazine) were densely informational magazines packed full of great gaming info. And I hope you will forgive me that arrogance since I was an editor at the latter for a while, but it was a great mag way before I joined them and for a good while after I left.

Gaming blogs fill in the gaps to some extent, but there are so many of them that missing great posts is inevitable. Plus you can’t spend a lazy Sunday afternoon stretched out on the couch reading gaming blogs. Well, not as comfortably as you can a print mag.

1Up.Com has been sold to UGO and hopefully will stay 1Up.Com, but I guess we’ll see. I’ve managed to remain unaware of UGO, and I went there tonight and left quickly. Way to busy and EXTREME!!!! for my tastes, but then 1Up pretty much feels the same way.

Anyway EGM, thanks for all the information and entertainment you’ve offered over the years. John Davison (now at http://whattheyplay.com) was probably my favorite leader of that battle-weary clan of game journalists, but I was really looking forward to what James Mielke was going to do (he took over just a few months back). Ah well, the only constant in life is change, as they say.

Lover’s spat

Posted on by Nimgimli

I don’t usually get real personal on this blog, but I think I know you all well enough now that I feel comfortable telling you about this. I just need to tell *someone* y’know? Just need a willing ear to listen to my tale of sorrow.

Y’see, Valkyria Chronicles and I have had our first fight.

Things were going so great, and even when the fight happened, I just thought it was a little thing that we’d just get through. A speed bump on the way to our long term bliss. But days later, we’re still at an impasse.

I just can’t beat Chapter 7.

Worse, it’s a *long* battle and I’ve played for over an hour before hitting the “Game Over” screen. It isn’t that I’m a poor battlefield commander: rather, the problem is the mission is one big fat puzzle, and you pretty have to resort to trial and error before you can get past it.

## CHAPTER 7 BATTLE SPOILERS FOLLOW ##

The goal is to stop a mammoth tank that follows (it turns out) a pre-set route through the battlefield. The tank is bristling with turrets that’ll kill a squad member in one turn if caught out in the open. And the tank can’t be hurt until it blasts a stone wall (which it has to do every so often in order to move forward), at which point some vulnerable Radiators are exposed for 1 turn. Classic boss-battle stuff. There are 3 of these radiators, and after you knock off two of them, enemy reinforcements arrive, including an unkillable character with a 1-shot=kill weapon. Worse, by the time these reinforcements show up, the AI has a so many Command Points that the newbies sweep across the battlefield all at once. So you’d better have everyone in deep cover when they show up.

There are 4 stone walls that the enemy has to blast, and 3 radiators to destroy, so you can muff one attempt. Basically you need to use your tank and lancers to destroy the turrets, then when the radiators appear, charge the tank with a grenade-carrying troop (ie, not a lancer) and stuff a grenade down the opening of the radiator (and once you destroy one, the others drop, so its not good trying to get 2 from 1 wall blast). So far I’ve gotten as far as trying for the 3rd spot, and I gosh-darned MISSED throwing the dang grenade (and really you’re just dropping the thing in a hole). ARGHHHH!

Each play through I get a bit farther along, but again..we’re talking an hour each attempt. I just now googled and there are some walk throughs for this mission, and I guess I’m going to resort to them. It’s just been such a shock and a disappointment to find such a puzzle-based, trial & error dependent mission after all the fun I’d been having finding my own way to fight each battle.

I’m hoping this battle is an anomaly and not the way the rest of the game plays out. I hate “puzzledy” strategy games. I want to develop *a* winning strategy, not find *the* single pre-programmed ‘win’ strategy through trial and error, y’know? [Having now read a few of the aforementioned walk-throughs, it’s clear there isn’t literally 1 way to beat the mission, but still all the methods are pretty similar, and you’d still never be able to beat the battle until you played a few times to learn where and when the triggers were.]