The end of living care-free in Albion

Posted on by Nimgimli

In a way, I blame this all on my dog. If he hadn’t found that treasure chest with the ring in it, none of this would ever have happened.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Things were going swimmingly in my new-found career as adventurer/wood chopper. I’d met up with the Abott that my mentor had sent me to, and while he wasn’t immediately trusting of me, it was clear that with not very much work the denizens of this sleepy hamlet would be eating out of my hand, and the Abott would judge me worthy of whatever hare-brained quest he had in mind.

But then I went down the Pub. You know how it goes. You have a few drinks, the bard sings a few songs about your exploits, you start dancing with the local girls and *of course* a few of them are going to fall for you.

I played it cool and all, but then she hit on me. Hard to have a tumble when you don’t have any digs to have it in though. Good thing I was flush with cash, cuz her cleavage was t3h hawt. I could buy a house but didn’t want the hottie to wander off while I got that sorted out, so what the hell, I proposed. After that she was happy to follow me around.

And then the damned dog found the treasure chest with the ring and I was out of excuses. Next thing I knew, I was married. Together we bought a house, and I wasted no time showing her to the bedroom. It was a night of unbridled passion, but I was barely done with breakfast the next morning when she announced she was pregnant!!!

So here I am, a young lad, full of potential, and saddled with a wife and kid. Now instead of spending my nights down the pub playing SpinBox and listening to the bard sing songs about me, I’m home making funny faces at the kid. And suddenly I have to worry about money. How much of a budget does the wife need to keep the house running and her happy? 25 gold a day? 35? 50? 100? I have no clue! And she’s all going on about how “We can do so much more for little Gemma” (she picked that name..who calls a kid Gemma??) and I have no clue what she’s getting at.

I need a new sword, some flash threads, coin to tip the bards! Instead I’m buying furniture…or will be, if I can somewhere to buy it. And as for that night of passion, you think that was repeated? No sir, no chance of that. Damned village girls all just want to hook themselves a flush adventurer hubbie. Once they get the house and the kid, they totally lose interest in the more interesting aspect of marriage. Harumph!

The Warhammer Worm Turns

Posted on by Nimgimli

So yesterday, not 12 hours after I posted a long, whiny, whinge-filled post, I logged back into Warhammer, and had a blast. Somewhat paradoxically, this only confirms the points I made earlier in the day. The game hadn’t changed in 12 hours. I hadn’t changed. What changed was the server population.

After 4 or 5 sessions of logging in, grinding Chapter 7 Influence with nothing to show for it but that little bar filling up ever so slowly, I finally found not just a group, but a couple of groups doing Chapter 7. We eventually formed a Warband and ran through the Plague Trolls PQ a few times, which finally got my influence capped, and got Gillain to level 16. It’s not a particularly inspired PQ but I was just happy to be out of there.

Finally free of the area, I traveled up the road a bit to the next quest hub. All the while it sounded like there was some pretty decent OpenRvR going on, but I was still licking those wounds a bit so I ignored it. The new quest hub offered a bunch of quests and I quickly knocked out several of them. I stumbled on a small Open group doing a Chapter 8 PQ with the aid of a high level White Lion, and tagged along completing that a couple of times and getting some nice new armor for the trouble (some blue witch hunter gloves dropped and I was the only witch hunter there).

So to recap: prior 4-5 sessions I gained Influence, a little XP, a little coin.

Last night in one session I gained: capped Chapter 7 influence, made rank 16, another half-level of experience, about a third of the influence I need for Chapter 8, explored a new area, read some interesting new quest lore, got sweet new gloves, a new sword, and some gold.

Clearly last night is the kind of gaming I’m paying to enjoy. So what can I do to maximize this kind of gaming session?

  • Play in Prime Time. I think I’ll Just Say No to playing during the day on weekends. I have plenty of other things to do that are more rewarding than drifting around an empty world.
  • Be willing to give up. If I log in and after ten minutes or so can’t find a group or something interesting to do, I’ll just log off and do something else. Being stubborn and forcing myself to stay and grind just makes me unpleasant
  • Stop being anal. Sharing a Tier 2 PQ with a level 30 White Lion was kind of a wake up call that its OK to leave content behind for now. I’m an A-B-C-D person. If I read a magazine, I start at the front cover and read through to the back. When I’m playing an MMO I feel driven to complete an earlier section before moving on to the next. I’m only hurting myself by doing this. The content isn’t going anywhere.
  • I’ll put this one in for Ysh: Ask. I’m part of a guild and I really need to get over my hesitation about asking for help from them. This has been a struggle for me. I don’t really think most of the guild even know who I am, and certainly they don’t know who my character is. That’s my fault, not theirs. If I never say anything and avoid Vent whenever possible, how are they supposed to get to know me?

If anyone has suggestions to add to this list, *please* leave a comment. I’m not alone in this “Warhammer is a good game when it isn’t sucking” kind of opinion. Maybe we can help each other to help ourselves to maximize the good times and minimize the sucking times.

Empire in Chaos

Posted on by Nimgimli

Empire in Chaos by Anthony Reynolds is a Warhammer novel written specifically to go along with Warhammer Online. It follows the trip of a motley band of adventurers from point A to point B where they encounter a battle. If that sounds dull, well, you’re right.

While there’s some fun early on in the book as you figure out what class each character is supposed to be, overall there’s just not much plot here. Annaliese Jaegar (a shameless surname ripoff from Felix Jaegar of the Gotrek & Felix stories) is a peasant girl who becomes a Warrior Priest, so at least she grows and changes over the course of the book, but the rest of the gang — Udo Grunwald the Witch Hunter, Thorrick the Ironbreaker, Eldanair the Shadow Warrior and Karl the Knight of the Blazing Sun — are caricatures of their classes who for the most part arrive at the end of the book unchanged from when they entered.

There are a *lot* of battle scenes and writing these is Reynold’s single strong point, but after a while you just start skimming “mighty axe blow opens him to the waist…blah blah blah…bits of brain spatter across her face…blah blah blah…screams of dying men and horses…yeah ok when does the *story* start again??”

But as for the rest of the writing, it is *abysmal*. I imagine what happened (since Reynolds seems to have written some other novels that have decent Amazon ratings) is that this was a super rush job that no editor ever looked at. The point of view drifts aimlessly from character to character to third party back to another character until you can only guess at whose internal voice you’re hearing at any given time. There are just bad passages all over the place; the kind of bad that makes you stop and read the line aloud to someone else so you can both marvel at its spectacle. Y’know, Angrily he said, “You must follow me now!”, with anger in his voice. That’s not an actual quote; I should’ve jotted some of them down.

I could (and did) go on and on, but to prevent another huge wall of text I’m just going to hit delete and say: this is a bad book. It’s badly written, badly edited, has a bland story and a bad ending. The most horrifying thing about it is that the epilogue seems to set up a follow-on volume.

Oh, and the whole thing is written from the point of view of Order. If you play Destruction you won’t see much about your side other than them being a big old bag of evil.

Warhammer Bullet Points

Posted on by Nimgimli

Since my last post was exceptionally whiny even for me, and a typical Pete Wall Of Text, I figured I’d summarize:

  • Warhammer is primarily an RvR game
  • When the game is firing on all cylinders, it is amazingly fun
  • Whether or not it is firing on all cylinders is totally up to the players *on both sides*
  • Warhammer fun cannot be scheduled. Every log in is a roll of the dice; you might have an awesome time and you might be bored to tears
  • The only consistent way to more-or-less control the experience is playing scenarios

Most of this is based on Averheim. On Ostermark (an RP server) things feel somewhat different.

What I realized from summarizing these points is that maybe people don’t grind scenarios because they’re the most efficient way to level. Maybe they grind them because they’re a more controlled play experience.

Point 3 is a biggie. For as much trouble as it can be forming a group in a PvE game, you have twice as much trouble in an RvR game. You need a group on each side that is interested in doing RvR. And of course you can’t LFG on the other side.

War’s ups & downs

Posted on by Nimgimli

While playing Warhammer last night I had some quests to do in RvR areas. A few times I ran across a member of Destruction, and we did battle. The experience buffs make a huge difference. I’ve been grinding plague trolls for like 2 weeks (obviously not literally). I’m level 15, they’re level 15. They give 400 experience per kill. Up the road a bit are these pesky sprites that are level 16. They also give 400 experience. When I ran into a level 15 Destruction character and fought him 1 on 1, I got 2000 experience for the kill. Later I encountered a level 17 Destruction character and beat her. 3000+ experience for that. So yeah, the xp buffs make a marked difference.

WARNING: Moping, whining part of the post begins here.

This morning I log in and go back to grinding plague trolls, fantasizing about a day when I can get a group to cap Chapter 7 influence. Then amazingly, more people show up. I join their open group and we churn through stage 1. Finally I’ll be able to do stage 2 on this infernal, hateful, spiteful, vile Public Quest. And then… they all leave. And I’m left alone again doing this quest.

Ah well. I go grind sprites while the trolls reset. At one point two of them attack me. Things are looking bad, so I pop a health potion. “That item cannot be used yet.” WTF? The icon isn’t dimmed, there’s no cooldown timer on it. I try a HoT Potion. “That item cannot be used yet.” Bam. Respawn. *sigh*

At this point I’m not having fun and thinking that maybe cleaning the toilet would be more rewarding than grinding more trolls and sprites. I decide to say the hell with it and move on, leaving Chapter 7 incomplete. And then Mandred’s Hold comes under attack. There’s chatter about it in /regional and I head out there to defend the homeland. Destruction has a sizable force attacking the Keep. Order has… me. At least that I saw.

I try to pick off a straggler but get noticed and killed. Respawn, head into the Postern Door. Destruction is inside but I get up the ramp and aid the NPC Keep Lord in defending as best I can. Still no Order. Destruction pushes up the ramp, I die. Run back…and just as I get to the front gate the guards change to Destruction. Keep is lost.

In /region there’s much moaning and groaning. I give up, go back to finding quests or something to do. Then Destruction hits the other Keep. Much more moaning and hand wringing in /regional, with a side dish of finger pointing. Finally it sounds like maybe someone other than me might actually think about perhaps defending, so I turn around and start running back. But by the time I get into the area, the keep has fallen. More moaning and groaning, and then someone suggests “Well let’s take it back!” but they’re shouted down by some self-professed Leader of Order who explains that its not a good time because there are defenders.

WTF? Isn’t that the BEST time to have a fun battle?

At this point I realize that my day is slipping away and a long unpleasant work week is drawing near and having to work this hard to have fun just isn’t an efficient use of my time, so I log.

Yes, I’m pouting & whining instead of acting. I could’ve shouted down the self-professed Leader or Order. Or I could’ve done what most others did and just let Destruction steam-roll the BO’s and Keeps and keep grinding trolls. But by this point the wind had gone completely out of my sails.

Warhammer is great fun with the planets align and you find a group and there’s some openRvR happening. But for me, that’s maybe 25% of the time that I play. And I’m really starting to question whether its worth $15/month for that 2 hours of real fun I get out of it every week.

Another stroll through Albion

Posted on by Nimgimli

I played another few hours of Fable 2 tonight. I guess it says a lot about the game that 2 hours can go by without me completing a single step of the main quest line, but still having fun.

I bought a couple of vendor stalls, I explored some random caves full of bandits (and dispatched said bandits), I flirted with a dozen villagers, I earned some coin making blades and chopping wood, I gambled that money away, I listened to a Bard’s awful song about me… but I never quite got around to doing the next step of the main quest.

Fun stuff. Feels a bit like a MSORPG (Massively Singleplayer Offline RPG) though I’m not really sure how big the world ultimately is.

More blogrolling

Posted on by Nimgimli

Cleaned up the blogroll some more.

I re-ordered links in reverse alphabetical order. Why? Well I wanted to organize them in some kind of objective fashion, and since almost everyone goes with alphabetical, I figured I’d give the late-alphabet folks some love by moving them to the top for once.

The blogroll is a perpetual work-in-progress. If you want to be on it, or know a blog I should be reading, feel free to leave a comment. Here’s a repost on my criteria for linking to you, reprinted from my last post on the subject:
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If you’re not on there and want to be, drop a comment. My criteria for inclusion on my blogroll are pretty hazy but generally: 1) if you have Dragonchasers on your blog roll, I’ll almost certainly include you unless your blog is actively offensive to me (not very likely). 2) If I read you regularly, I’ll include you as a “public service” for other Dragonchasers readers because I think you rock. 3) If you’re a frequent commenter, I’ll include you as an indication of what great taste in blogs you have. 🙂 Plus I probably read you as well…I often follow links from commenters to check out your blogs.

First Impressions: Rock Band 2 Guitar (PS2/PS3)

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m now the proud owner of a Rock Band 2 Wireless Guitar for PS2 & PS3. Huzzah! Figured I’d list a few impressions.

First, the visuals. The old guitar had an ugly neck & head (it was a kind of “bone” color that really looked like a shade of “this was white once but sat in the room of a heavy smoker for 5 years” yellow) but a plain black and white body. The new guitar has a nice black neck, and the head is a wood grain pattern. The body has a solid white “plate” and the rest is wood grain fading into black around the edges. I’m not a huge fan of the look of the new body, but you *can* get face plates for these things, but I’ve never seen a neck plate.

The guitar once again comes in two pieces, but now there’s a push button so you can remove the head if you need to. The new dongle has 2 USB ports on it; a nice convenience feature for folks with fewer than 4 ports on their consoles.

The new guitar is very quiet: both fret buttons and strum bar. If you like the ‘click’ of some guitars, this might be a problem, but I really appreciate the silence. The strum bar feels very sensitive. It only takes a light touch to get notes to register. The Start button has a ridge of plastic around it making it less easy to hit by mistake. The tilt sensor feels adequate. Honestly the tilt sensor on my old guitar was so borked that I’m not sure what a “good” tilt center feels like. In a silent room you can hear a spring flexing inside the guitar when you move it; I worry a little because it sounds pretty fragile.

Now keep in mind I’m a very casual music-gamer. Since coming back to the genre with RB 2 after a 6 month+ break, I’m still playing on Medium. *pauses to let the laughter die down* 🙂 My set up has audio going from PS3 to an old receiver via digital optical cable, and video to a 52″ LCD via HDMI.

The feature that blows my mind with this new guitar is the auto-calibration. You hold the guitar up to your center speaker and hit a button and let it calibrate the audio, then hold it up to the tv to calibrate the video (via a series of blinding white flashes..those woke me up!). The system “auto-calibrated’ the guitar far differently than I had it manually calibrated, in particular the sound delay.

And OMG! What a difference that made!!!! Suddenly, at least for songs that I know really well, I could play with my ears as well as my eyes. I’ve always taken it for granted that you almost had to ignore the beat of the music and play these games by watching when the notes crossed the strum bar. What a fool I’ve been!! So I fired up Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up”, an oldie that is burned into my brain, and I can actually look away during certain passages when I know the note is going to stay the same. I can play the song by ear and by feel, and damn, but that feels great! When I make a mistake, I know I made a musical error, not a ‘screen reading’ error (where I fail to correctly anticipate when the game expects me to hit the note). I got a 98% of “Pump It Up” the first time I’ve played it. I know I know, it’s still on Medium so I’m a noob, but now I see how I could get better by learning the songs better.

So is it worth it to get a new guitar to go with your new game? In my opinion, absolutely. The instrument feels a lot better made and more sensitive (though it may be a bit more fragile, too). And if you have a mixed setup like I do, the calibration tool alone makes the purchase worthwhile.

Important info for Fable 2 players

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m at work so can’t wall o’ text ya, but saw this in an RSS feed and figured it was worth sharing asap:

Fable II players report game breaking glitch – Xbox 360 Fanboy

The glitch occurs during the quest called “Monk’s Quest,” in which players are tasked with speaking to the Abbot of the Temple of Light in Oakfield. Apparently, if players run into the temple, begin the conversation with the Abbot, and then leave the region before the conversation is finished, they are be unable to resume the quest, thus preventing them from completing the main story.

Fable 2 First Impressions

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I finally got a chance to get in some quality time with Fable 2. Before I get into that, I have to say XBox 360 #3 performed flawlessly (*knock on wood*) and is a lot quieter than the first two I’ve had. I didn’t hate using the 360 last night, and its been quite a while since I could make that claim.

So let’s get the bad out of the way first. Fable 2 could use a final run through the polishing cycle. It feels a bit rough in some pretty subtle ways. You can often get ‘stuck’ for a moment on a small change in height of the terrain, for instance (there’s no Jump so normally you just step up automatically). It can feel “fiddly” targeting a specific individual in order to interact with them.

I’d heard there was treasure underwater at times, and I’d envisioned swimming down, breath bar dwindling, exploring the bottom of a lake. Instead, you swim on the surface until you see a DIVE icon floating over the surface of the water, at which point you hit A and your character vanished below the surface then reappears with treasure. It works but feels like a missed opportunity.

These are certainly not game breakers, though. On the positive side, the game looks very nice and I’m really enjoying the voice acting. There’s a ton of stuff going on all around you and towns really do feel “alive” in many ways. Combat is still simple at my low “level” but that doesn’t prevent it from feeling fun and satisfying. The story hasn’t really gotten underway, but feels like it has potential.

A lot of fuss was made about your dog in the previews, and it was warranted. You know how most games indicate enemies near by via “combat music” starting to play? In Fable 2, you know there’s danger near because your dog starts growling and barking. This sounds trivial but it makes a huge difference to me. Feels very immersive. And your pup does all the nit-picky exploration for you, too. No need to look into every little crack and crevice; if there’s treasure in there your dog will point it out to you.

The only major downside for me is the glowing quest trail thingie. At all times, there’s a glowing trail showing exactly where you need to go. This isn’t a bad feature, but I’m a bad player. I feel like I’m being nagged by it, so rather than wander around and explore I find myself constantly chasing the trail. You can make it dimmer, or even turn it completely off. I’m going to try playing that way next time, and see how much of a chore turning it on and off is. In an ideal world, there’d bit a quick button press to toggle it.

Again, this isn’t a generalized complaint about the game; its more a psychological glitch in my internal systems. Nothing in the game prevents you from totally ignoring the glowy trail and doing whatever you want. But I just find its constantly tugging at me, urging me to stop messing about and get on with things.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I know is in the game (from reading about other’s experiences) and I can’t wait to dig deeper in. I don’t own a home or have a wife yet. I don’t own any businesses. I still only know one spell. I did take on a job as a blacksmith for a while; this exists in-game as a mini-game of timed button presses that felt curiously satisfying. I was even excited to get a promotion. 🙂

So far, so good. I’m not loving it as much as some people who are totally over-the-moon about the game; at least not yet. But it’s definitely an awful lot of fun so far. Let’s hope it holds up!