Smart moves

Not one of them...

My story

I sharpened my Morning Star. It would be a long trek, but the Succubus that killed my father will have to pay! Erisean looked weary. Still, we continued our journey. No one expected a group of Vrocks to appear all of a sudden! While hacking away at our enemies, we could see demon Wasps clad in Canvas approaching from the east. Soon they would also be corpses. One of them nearly stabbed Erisean in the back, but being a Slow Poisoner he swiftly dodged the attack. Six of them were closing in on us, but my Tumor (Benign) V spell reduced them to ashes! The last leg chopped off, a Arcane Arrow of Foreboding found among the body parts, I dropped my blood-smeared Morning Star. The battle was won!

I am hardcore!

This epiphany hit me yesterday. I always considered myself casual and carebear. I am pretty sure I am actually still both of them. But somehow hardcore has been added to it as well. Although my hardcore-ness is not exactly the opposite of casual or carebear. I am hardcore in the sense that I like things to be (unnecessary) difficult.

When Vanguard got released you had to really run long distances, and I loved the idea that it really was a journey to go from Ca'ial Brael to Khal. It took me two months before I traveled to far away Thestra. But then they introduced the riftways and the world got a lot smaller. Now they even dumbed it down further to show all riftstones and routes on the map (and I suspect I don't even have to unlock them anymore).

Another example is from Age of Conan. Originally the harvest nodes where hidden on the regular zones. It was nice to roam around and bump into them. But they decided that it was apparently too hardcore, and it took all the fun out of random exploration nodes. Same with the caravan drivers that started service to all zones instantly, making travel non existent.

I was reading up on the ultimate hardcore game, Darkfall, and read about half hour travel times to some dungeon. I think that might be fun the first time, but it is going to be very tedious in the long run. They can't really fix that in that game, so I think it means another group of players will get bored with Darkfall very quickly. I think will never play Darkfall, but it is interesting to see some of these things in a game. Just too bad hardcore is associated with PvP and huge group raids.

A few posts back lani mentioned that Anarachy Online is hardcore. As usual there is wisdom in that statement. Nothing is obvious in AO. Trying to figure how best to get your implants sorted out and installed is more complex than a Windows DLL dependency. The end of the line for our AO adventures came when I mention the social clothing quests. I loved them, but Lani almost did an instant uninstall.

But the real thing that made me hardcore happened when I checked out the coreUI thing. It chews it all out for me. I don't want to know everything, and have everything perfect in place. I know it slows down my progress and even disturbs lani since I am lagging behind. But I am getting a kick out of doing it the painful way. And even a bigger kick when I can tell somebody else in a chat channel my clumsy discoveries.

Hmm, now my post sounds a bit like "Look at me, Hardcore Phe, a true gamer". But that is not what I meant. I just realized I am more hardcore than I thought I was. But since I am otherwise the opposite of what describes a hardcore player I might have a hard time finding my ideal game. I better make sure chapter 6 in the ideal MMO, 'Hardcore features', gets written and implemented.

Thoughts on Livegamer.

The Fantasy author Steven Erikson has in his Tales from the Malazan Book of the Fallen an interesting empire. The Malazan empire, when conquering a city-state would contrary to expectations not raise taxes or supplant the local governmental systems or cull the rich to fund the war effort. That's right. A regional governor would be set up but the old governmental bureaucracy would remain in place for the most part and the empire's secret police, the Claw, would take over the local crime syndicates instead.
You see the Emperor reckonned that since there's always going to be self-destructive elements to any society, willing to pay money for controlled substances and other vices, you might just as well have them pay for roads and bridges and other constructive things of benefit to the whole of society.
It's a pragmatic approach to governing that'd have Machiavelli drooling at the corner of his mouth.

In a way, that is exactly what SOE has been doing with Station Cash and Station Exchange servers. That section of the gamer population, and this section has proven to be large enough to sustain a million dollar industry so don't kid yourself by thinking it's anywhere less than one in ten players, is self destructive but also costing companies like SOE a lot of money. The accounts used for farming are generally shut down as they are found, resulting in Professional Gold Farmers inverting their Credit Card payments. This in return puts SOE in bad graces with the Credit Card companies. Sorting all that out along with having to provide Customer Support to people who've been scammed results in RMT mainly being a money drain for SOE. With Station Exchange servers, SOE tries to be your provider of gear for cash.

Livegamer however is different, it allows gamer-to-gamer trading within a game. With SOE getting a piece of the action in the form of a percentage on the transactions. This is a system used elsewhere for Free to Play MMO's as well. I wouldn't be surprised if it's implemented from the start in SOE's Free Realms either. On the whole, I'm not even against either concept. I have no illusions about RMT ever going away. it exists because people want it. And even though I probably fall on the Has Time side of the Has Time to Play vs Has Money to Play divide, I don't begrudge people who have more Money than Time their desire to Play. If people with the time and inclination to grind for rare drops can have their accounts paid for by richer people who have less time to play but would like to have some fun playing with some decent loot, I don't mind that at all.

Of course I'm someone who doesn't give a fig about my own virtual wealth. As a rule over half my kit was given to me by people who wouldn't take no for an answerand stuff I find that a friend can use is sent to them without strings attached. If I really identified with and calculated my self-worth based on my richess in a Virtual World, I might feel different about other people using Real Life Money to purchase Virtual Wealth. Luckily I can see the irony in all that.
I also never bought the Great Equalizer Theory that in MMO's CEO's play elbow to elbow with 14 year old kids. Anyone with that illusion should check all the snobbish elitarian BS going on on every forum or global chat or Guild Application. It may happen, but those are the extreme cases, not the rule at all.

People worry about the extremes. Like the Son of RichGuy who's an arrogant jerk running around with his bought Uber Character with his bought Uber Gear and he still doesn't have friends. Life sorts out the assholes. Or more often it doesn't. Not because they're rich, but because the rest of us wants to get our hands on some of those riches too and will hang out with a Little Prick with Ears just because his da's got money and we hope that Little Prick is generous.
I do believe that the people who buy and sell RMT, in the context of a subscription based game, are the Virtual World equivalents of the self-destructive elements mentioned in the first paragraph. I don't have a problem with them funding my game. In a F2P RMT enabled game, I don't care whether they're self-destructive or not. That's a whole different moral playground.

What I do have a very personal problem with is the idea of Buying or Selling Characters.
I don't have any level 50's in Vanguard but even if I had, not a hair on my head would consider selling one of my characters. I was there when they took their first wobbly steps into the world, I was there when they took down their first mob, looted its corpse and then skinned it. I nurtured them through hardships, PUG's and Guild Drama's. I stood beside them as they gazed upon the beautiful soul-touching vistas that this virtual world has to offer. And I'm going to sell them? No way in Hell! The same as for buying. For some this might be like buying a second hand coat and if so, good on ya. I won't judge (much). But for me personally the idea is just ICK!!! It's been likened to prostitues and such. That's not really it. it'd be playing a lie. As involved as I get with my Characters, it'd be like living a lie. No thanks. The whole idea just gives me the willies.
Selling items? Go ahead. Maybe a different take on the Brotherhood even, some means to collect and gather XP you can sell off might be possible even. Anything but selling off the memories that go with, or buying an empty soulles husk without any, in the form of an actual character.

I wouldn't mind it though if they'd allow us to buy character names.
There's a Character Concept I've had for the longest time, a sister to my Halfling Cleric Kettle.
A Druid named Nettle. Even though they'd never be able to play together I'd get such a kick out of imagining and playing out their different personalities and how they'd quibble. But the name is taken on Seradon by the person who made the first Nettle on some pre-first-merge server and hasn't played that character since 01/30/07...
Anyone belief that this account will get reactivated and that whoever holds the account will pick up this particular toon and go play with it? Me neither. I'd love to pay a full month's subscription fee to have access, to reserve that name for myself. I know, I know there's probably tons of technical, maybe even legal issues involved that'd make this impossible. But I'd still be willing to pay that price for that service.

Silly me.

Psychadelic Bloom

Since two days, when I turn on Bloom (to costly outside, but nice inside Dungeons) this happens.
Oh well, I guess HDR and or Tone Mapping will do fine too.

Vanguard teaches you to be philosophical about the little things.

My Perfect MMO part 5: Moral ambiguity

My last piece in this series got an interesting reaction by Phèdre that I'd like to start this topic with. She objected to the Organ Harvesting subset of the Gathering Sphere of My Perfect MMO.
I can fully agree with that sentiment. I'd probably not parttake of that part of my Perfect MMO myself. So why put it in there? Because I'm not 'designing' this just for me. My Perfect MMO is one that ideally appeals to a wider audience than us Nomads. Geek wasn't so phased by the idea and mentioned Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Which incidentally is one of the best Single Player RPG's out there and has one of the highest replay values as well.

Much like Shadowrun the Masquerade is all about morality and humanity and losing them. In the Masquerade you've all but lost your humanity when you became a Vampire and in Shadowrun you're constantly at risk of losing it to Cybernetics, which reduce humanity making you more like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or to the mutation that turned you into an Elf, an Orc, A troll or worse... But above all the struggle for humanity revolves around the inhumanity of the corporate world and the way they try to squash your very soul.
As a result, I very much think morally questionable things fit in with the world of Shadowrun. It's not simply because you're a criminal.
The Pen & Paper versions of both Shadowrun and Vampire allow you to focus deeply upon this aspect. Not that fun can't be had, like accidentally summoning an Anima in your partner's appartment then locking him out (also by accident) of his appartment where you spend the night having sex with the summoned anima only to (once again accidentally) burn down the place the following morning when you try to make a light using your magic, only to discover your "Candle Light" spell is about a 100 times stronger than before due to your congress with a certain Anima.
I think the GM got a bit jealous or something.
Or as we did once in Vampire: Dark Ages; burn of all the wings of the Heavenly Host in a moment of pique, not realising what the book you toss into the fire to keep it from the local prince you're flipping the birdie to is actually for.

Yes deep brooding moral ambiguity, that's what the two backgrounds are about.

But how to put that into an MMO?
I'm immediately reminded of all the so-called good characters in Vanguard choosing en masse to slaughter 30 villagers to get a vampiric float ability (handy for jumping off cliffs) rather than take the good path and kill the vampires which would get you a bugged fairy fluff pet. A lot of gamers will go for that which works best stats-wise rather than stay in character unless this is somehow enforced.

Bloodlines had a Humanity stat which you didn't want to see reach zero. Or you'd become a raving beast. Having it high would have people react friendlier to you. Doing good deeds built it up, being bad lowered it. The lack of Humanity really isn't Evil, but Bestiality. A total loss of morals. (much like your average MMO player in that regard) Evil isn't lack of morals, it's a concious choice if anything. It may still sound like a run of the mill good-evil scale that Bioware is plumbing for all it's got, but it isn't. Nor is it the cartoonish overdrive Fable II uses. Bloodlines somehow does it so much better, it's really integrated into the storyline and Evil doesn't equate to petty or childish as it does with those other titles.

Peter Molyneux made a nice game with Fable II, but of all his so called "new concepts and ideas" only that dog is truly original. Bread crumbs? EverQuest II has had a similar feature for years and pretty much for the same reason. it's generally called the Quest Umbilical. It doesn't snake across the ground like the bread crumb trail. It floats a bit higher and looks a bit like a transparent, well you get the idea.
Renown as a requirement for accessing quests? Sorry, but that's been used often enough. Call it faction, or keep it integrated with Experience, but the basic premise that of a treshold statistic that unlocks additional content is anything but new. The idea of sucking up to any number of NPC's isn't new either to anyone who's played the Diplomacy Sphere in Vanguard. Nor is wearing the right clothes for the right social group. I'm not entirely sure if the whole being good/evil affecting your appearance thing was done before the first Fable game. But it sure isn't the first game to blatantly associate being Good with blond blue-eyed Germanic appearance. Still, I'm not complaining. I much like Renown as a concept and the whole sucking up to the locals too. It's something I'd like to see adopted into My Perfect MMO. Not the good means blonde approach though.

In fact, I think there's room for Renown, Reputation, Faction, and even Social Status.
To start with the latter, Social Status is something I see as purely gear based. In Part 3: Thoughts on Gear I mentioned a scale for your kit and how you'd be received in uptown zones and downtown zones as a result. This is of course skin deep and superficial. Almost like real life in fact, accept it'll be a measurable statistic. It determines the basic reaction of the people around you to you. Full combat armor amongst the shoppers at Tiffany's will naturally draw armed authorities, but walking around in urban (Cyber) Punk kit will also have you stick out. Similarly a three-piece suit in the down town Sprawls will not be shiny long.

Renown I'd like to be something you need to build up and then dissipates relatively fast over time. Doing a highly visible mission that benefits the locals will get you a huge boost in Renown and people will like you better for it, shops might give you discounts, tramps will offer freebies and Fixers may set you up with hitherto unavailable jobs. To let this reflect real life a bit, people soon forget you in favor of The New Blue. Additionally I think it'd be fun to be able to build up your Renown in a Civic Diplomacy like fashion, with tresholds to reach. Except without the city-wide pulse that causes everyone to hitch like in Vanguard. Renown is something you build by doing nice things. Renown unlocks Quests/Missions, so you want to be able to build it up.
Renown unlocks will be tougher missions with higher rewards. So it pays off to work as a team and run a few missions together then do the tough ones. The equivalent of overland Quests and Dungeon crawls in EverQuest II. They smartly put Dungeon entrances well within hostile zones so that you had to learn to fight as a team before actually entering. Allowing you to find out the Tank's a noob or the healer attention-deficit before you're deep inside the bowels of the earth.
In effect people'd all run individually to the entrance, some would die along the way, some would complain and leave e.t.c.

Backtrack a bit back to Morality and Mechanics.
I mentioned Bioware with their rather arbitrary Good vs Evil scale. They first adopted this for their Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic which of course epxlains the rather stark Black & White element to it and we can savely blame George Lucas' limited philosophical sophistication for that. No, I still haven't forgiven him for Episode II. But the mechanic has its roots in older Bioware games and a more complex three-way axis. The first two Bioware games were set in the Forgotten Realms background of Dungeons & Dragons (Baldur's Gate I and II) and those used the Good - Evil axis combined with a Lawful - Chaotic axis resulting in 9 alignments ranging from Lawful-Good Palladins to Chaotic Evil villains. For reference, a Chaotic Good character would be a bit of a vigilante. Sergeant Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon is a Chaotic Good character. While Danny Glover's character Sergeant Roger Murtaugh is of a Lawful Good alignment, slowly being pulled into Neutral Good by his association with Mel Gibson's character. Superman is Lawful Good, Batman is Chaotic Good. Lex Luthor is Neutral Evil while the Hobgoblin is Chaotic Evil. Druids who seek balance in all things are True Neutral. Some classes had a fixed alignment and the mechanic in the game was that if your alignment shifted too far from your classes moral centre, you'd lose abilities of that class.

A dual axis also allows for more interesting choices in conversations. Bioware's dialogues, as good as they are especially in latter games like KoToR, Jade Empire and Mass Effect, all tend to have one blatantly Good, one blatantly Evil and one non-commital but I'll do it anyway option. Mass Effect goes so far as often highlighting these Blue and Red, but these are linked to charm and intimidate game skills too. Mass Effect really could have used a second axis though, one for Xenophobic - Alien lover. As it is they lugged Alien lover on top of Goody two-shoes and Xenophobic onto Mercanary/Evil. There wasn't really an Evil choice.

Anyway, I'd like to use axes for Good - Evil but also Humanity - Lack thereof to make it just a bit more sophisticated, liek D&D did. Lawful / Chaotic doesn't really apply as nearly every MMO player I've met is intrinsically Chaotic/Self-centered.
The latter axis would work a bit different depending on your class. For instance a Street Samurai (cyber-buffed melee class) loses Humanity the more he puts cybernetic enhancements into himself. More or less the same for a Rigger (mind-chip using vehicle/robot controller. A Pet Class if ever there was one) or a Decker (the Hackers of Shadowrun, which I'll probably end up delegating to NPC status for practical reasons). But the mage classes have their mana focus to content with. More power means corruption means less humanity. I'm walking away from Shadowrun dogma now. In the original game, Cybernetics reduce a Mage's Humanity and thereby his Mana Focus, but I'd like both classes to have to choose between types of powerups and Humanity.

There need to be a choice, and little humanity should have consequences, otherwise you'll end up with tweaked to heck 0.0001 humanity left cyborgs. One use is that your Humanity rating directly affects your Renown in a modifier kind of way. A 0.0001 humanity Cyborg will get very little in the way of Renown and can forget about grinding Civic Renown altogether.
One of the mage classes, the Shaman has another problem. Much like the D&D alignment system, they need to stay true to their totem's traits or lose their abilities. I'm thinking about a map similar like the nine points of the D&D alignment with a totem for each. But rather than have you completely lose your abilities, a Shaman will be allowed to shift totems as his alignment shifts. I.e. if Wolf loses faith in you, you pick up Coyote's interest, or Raven's. I'll get back to these points in a Classes post.

Your current Good - Evil / Humanity - Lack thereof rating is your Reputation.
Not really a good term, but the alternative was a voting system in the style of Steam's proposed server rating system. Which wouldn't work for an MMO anyway. Your current Reputation, maybe Karma is a better term, can be of influence on grouping which had me thinking of Reputation first. I'm mixing too much things into this post maybe. I should've done one about morals in MMO's and one about the other slides. Then again, they all relate and I ramble either way.

These stats so far determine what kind of Quests/Jobs/Missions you'll be able to pick up from and from whom. But missions affect your axes as well. that's how they change as well as through things like implanting cybernetics. A very Low-Humanity & High Evil Mission might mean deliberately dumping toxic waste at a spot where it would clear out a neighbourhood wanted for a corporate building site. But completeing a few Lowish Humanity but neutrally Good/Evil mission to dump some toxic waste for a corporation at some out of the way location will open up doors that will eventually lead to the first-mentioned mission.

The Mission selcect stats affect only you when soloing and the choices of your Team Leader (i.e. what kind of missions he accepts) will not affect you as a member. This'll be a toggle you can turn on though, for RP purposes or to allow you to have that content unlocked for you for later.

Faction, you thought I'd forgotten that eh?
Well, faction works like and yet unlike faction in games like EverQuest II and Vanguard.
If you kill a security guard of Corporation X in some back-alley there will not be some ubiquitous yet ephemeral order of auditors giving you a -1 to your Corporation X Faction. Lucky you.
Doing a mission for a Mr Johnson (or Ms Smith) and succeeding with that, possibly with secondary objectives too will alter your Faction with that corporation. I say alter, not boost. This is because you're only taking Mr Johnson's word for it that Corporation X will be pleased. yes, paranoia is a way of living in my Perfect MMO. But if Mr Johnson is on the up and up, you'll get a nice little Corp X Faction boost.
But if your mission negatively affects Corporation Y, there's a chance of them finding out. And how you perform your mission may influence the chances. if this occurs you'll take a hefty hit to your Faction rating with that corporation and worst case even a strike force. Yes you can get royally screwed this way, that's life for the SINless. The Strike Force would be part of an ongoing story-arc though. Doing it at random might be a little harsh. Your Faction rating with corporations will determine whether or not they will consider you elligible to do jobs for them.

So we have Renown unlocking missions. We have your Humanity/Moral compass unlocking missions and we have Faction unlocking missions. All this has as a result that people have access to different missions and mission types. I.e. the idea is not to have inhumane ultra-evil diabolical missions turn out to be rescue missions, as often happens in City of Villains. And the result of that is that you can use this to either have Heroes & Villains in one game, or it encourages grouping to get access to content your own character isn't elligible for. The idea is not to exclude anyone from getting content, but story-arcs will be alignment based. So within each level tier you'll have x amount of story-arcs (quest chains) for your alignment. When those dry up, you can play generated missions or join with others to do their arcs. Maybe arcs should be repeatable if done in team-form?

In closing, playing the organ harvesting mini-game in the Gathering Sphere would have two drawbacks.
One, it will lower your humanity and /or make you more evil.
Two, the hunter can at anytime become the hunted. There's things out there that look human but aren't.
And again I didn't get round to the Fixer, an archetype suited to Humanity raising Diplomacy-like Gathering Sphere gameplay. We need activities that slowly raises or lowers each stat.

Just a quick screenie

I agree that Age of Conan has the prettier engine in terms of photo-realism and lushness.
On the other hand I sometimes feel Vanguard has the prettier engine in an art sense.

Some things to look forward to.

So I was wondering about the Racial mounts that were introduced in Game Update 5.
It turns out you'd better start gathering Faction at level 10 in order to get your mount at around level 30. You even need to wear a special amulet while doing it which you can get from City Faction Rgeistrars. It's probably worth it for Taqe and Twanni to look up the Kojani Faction Registrar when they leave Isle of the Dawn. Apparently we ride Dire Lobsters.

I don't know if it's possible to do this for a city not your own, but I suspect Vanguard isn't that flexible. So I think it's a shame that the Goblins ride Wolfspiders rather than Okami as the Orcs do. Guess that if I want Coilla to ride a wolflike mount she'll have to go through the Shadowhound Quest arc instead. Luckily she's on that already.

Going back to your roots:
It's also recommended to visit your racial home upon leaving the Isle of Dawn and find the newbie trainer there. In order to get your Recall spell, something that's very useful. On that note, it looks like my favorite recall spot has had its nearby Travel Stone removed. I always bound at Lomshir Plains, the horsetrack as you had a broker, a mailbox, trainers for every class and a Travel Stone within a hundred yards and a two minute ride to the nearest bank in Khal. It now looks like the Travel Stone has shifted position Southward, to the Temple of Something-or-Other. Makes sense as that's a more active 10-20 Adventuring area and it's nearly exactly in between Khal and Ahgram, two of the major cities of the continent.

Phat Lewt Recovery:
It also looks like the loss of Kettle's cabin may not be as disastrous as first advertised. The Cabin itself is gone along with the materials that went into building it but the contents should be in escrow with the housing merchant. So with any luck all Kettle's flowerpots food supplies and chests full of Legion uniforms e.t.c. will still be there. That might be nice for our new alts as well. We are returning to a game that had huge mudflation during its first half year already.

Being a Vet has its rewards:
Something else that's of interest is that SOE apparently decided to do Veteran Rewards for Vanguard a bit differently than for EverQuest II. Rather than reward you for month subscribed only, they just tally the numbers since your account was created. It may even be so that our freshly nubbed alts can /claim the same rewards our old mains can, after leaving the Island.


And then there's the usual ICA's (Ill Conceived Acronym's) to look forward to:

Places:

IoD: Isle of Dawn

BoD: Bridge of Destiny (lvl 50)

SoD: Shores of Darkness (lvl 50)

PotA: Pantheon of the Ancients (lvl 50)

PoA: Plains of Anguish (lvl 40+)

OT: Old Targonor (lvl 43+)

NT: New Targonor (n/a)

CIS: Coterie Infineum Sanctuary (lvl 20+)

Thel: Thelasean (sp? and lvl 40+)

ToT: Temple of Tehatamani (lvl 40+ or so)

TK: Trengal's Keep (lvl 21+ or so)

LN: Leth Nurae (lvl 1+)

IoG: Isle of Gargazumat (sp probably TOTALLY wrong, lvl 50+)

APW: Ancient Port Warehouse (lvl 48+)

TG: Tawar Galan (n/a)

NN: Nusibe Necropolis (lvl 44+/- or so)

BC: Bordinar's Cleft (starting area)

TJ: Tar Janshir (mmm... high 30s iirc?)

CW: Celestine Ward (30s?)

RK: Renton Keep (20s)

Creatures/Mobs:

Heg: Hegnarian

Terms:

BOE: Bind on Equip

BOP: Bind on Pickup

MT: Main Tank

MA: Main Assist

OT: Off-Tank/Secondary Tank

Questlines:

HL: Hunter's League

URT: United Races of Thestra (armor questline, 10-20 or so iirc?)

Items:

BP: Breastplate

Hooray! or Oh noes!

I love the auto screenshot and blogging.
But it looks like somebody is about to get clobbered.
(the picture is clickable.)

Checking out Coilla

So I again went against the wisdom of Phedrè and started up a game with Coilla, my hyperactive kleptomanic from Martok who married a people tossing Ogre...

Dang! I'd forgotten how many Reactions a Rogue has. That row of 6 isn't even all she'd eventually get. And all those black boxes with white text are her pickpocketing macro's.
Boy were those fun to use :-)
The purple, yellow and blue orbs are grenado's she can toss. Half the attacks only work if used from stealth or from behind your foe (something you could accomplish with a Reaction)
Rogue class was pretty complicated.

It looks like Vanguard's putting the sexy back in struck Coilla's belted armor as well.
I like this look for her, but the Gultheror kit she also has looks even better. Not sure why I didn't screenshot that. This 'skin' also had a darker version she wore in her teens. That already looked pretty awesome, so I'm kinda hoping they didn't give that the belly-button treatment. I also wish she still had it so I could put it on her Social armor tab.

Khal also got sexied up apparently. There's loads of brightly colored yards of cloth hanging around now, as well as potted plants 'n stuff that weren't there before I believe. The city's still a resource drain though.

Here's an oldie showing both the dark belted armor and Coilla's hubby:

God, I loved that little rascal :-D

The joy of exploring

Yesterdsay Twanni and Taqe were running around doing the chores of the various characters on the Isle of Dawn. We ran into some tough Ulvari but managed to survive. As we went with the flow we eventually got to talk to some guard that wanted to us to scout the area. Busy as we were killing the Ulvari we both went "yeah, yeah, we'll do it. Just tell us where to go." And off we went.

When we reached about half way to the first marker we bumped into a rather high and steep hill. We figured there must be a path somewhere, so we turned left to find it. As we actually got further and further from the marker we ran into several camps filled with bad guys. At one point we even found an extra huge hobgoblin in fancy armor. We couldn't resist but to poke him a bit. An epic fight broke out with several of him buddies come to help him. But we managed to survive with only a few scratches, and we got some snazzy loot.

A little bit further down the foot of the hills we finally found some sort of path going up. A rather tricky climb along the peaks we managed to almost reach our first marker. But only almost. A double high hill was still blocking us. We had clearly taken the path. So we backtraced to the beginning and tried to tackle it from the right side (as in opposite of left, not opposite of wrong). But it became clear pretty quick that this was not going to work either. We had some fun playing with submissive imps, but the marker remained unattainable.

So finally I decided to check what that guard had really told us. As it turned out he had told us to go rent a pegasus and fly to the markers! We struggled in the foothills for nothing. Well, actually not for nothing at all. Since I doubt we have had half a much fun if we would have listened to him in the first place.

Heroes and Henchies - Good or bad?

By Heroes and Henchies I'm referring to the Guild Wars NPC's, in the early days it was just 'henchmen', AI controlled characters of both genders who you could use to boost your numbers to get the required number of members in your group. Those early henchmen were often the subject of many jokes espicially regarding their efficiency as healers, their rather random behaviour caused us to often wonder how much I was in the AI but nonetheless if you couldnt make a full group they were there, never went on strike, never bitched and only took a small percentage of your drops as payment, after all you shouldnt always get something for nothing.

Later came the 'heroes', heroes are different to your poor hench' who now became your continual second choice after you had chosen the max number of heroes and couldnt get any real players (or didnt want to) to fill the gap. Unlike hench' heroes had a skillbar that you could modify, atts you could modify and their own character panel so that you could assign weapons, armor, runes and insignia etc. Not only could you customise these NPCs but with their introduction came a degree of direct control of their actions, each could be set to attack, assist or avoid depending on your uses and they could be 'flagged' individually or en masse to go where you needed them or to stay out of your way (yes they were still noobs).

GW has so far been the only MMO I've played that utilises this system so extensively and with my fellow contributors talk on lack of options in games for differing group sizes I can see the uses of such a system in games which have content designed around group and level requirements, ideally it would be great if such design decisions weren't made when developing content but the added problems of developing a useful scaling system for all encounters probably stretches things too far otherwise we should have seen more of it, right?

Are Heroes/hench the answer ? Arguments against on a social level are about discouraging group play in a multiplayer environment but honestly, I think there will always be less-social people, I also think that for us social butterflys there is also the need to have that game 'me time' or that smaller 'us time' which as we know isn't often very well catered for.

Thinking aloud (well in type) a hero/hench system could be an answer to the grouping problem of many MMO's, of course the AI would never be as dynamic as human interaction and as such those social MMO players should only be using them as the final option.

I'm sure you both will have something interesting to say on the subject :)

Comparing VG to AoC, just to be unfair

Geekz0r's problems accessing the game of Vanguard last night prompted me to think about comparing Age of Conan and Vanguard in a post instead, to keep him motivated to try it out or at least give him an idea of what he's missing out of.
Here goes:

Introduction:
In general gameplay terms, both games follow the guidelines laid down by DikiMud loyally.
There's tanks, Damage Dealers and Healers which form an unHoly trinity, gear is important and there's raiding in groups of 24. The symbols floating above NPCs' heads look somewhat different, but the system's intimately recognizable to anyone playing MMO's of the post 2003 era. Age of Conan has the combat combo's. Vanguard has too many attack types to mention. Age of Conan has lush instanced areas cordoned off by inaccessible mountains. Vanguard allows you to anywhere, except that flying into floating castles that they only want you to enter through a quest chain results in your flying mount despawning and you plummeting to your death. Both games have death penalties in the form of having to retrieve your tombstone with gear.

Vanguard is definitely the more grindy sandboxy of the two, whereas Age of Conan is closer to the guided amusement park tour. Neither is an extreme example of the type and both have elements of the other side of the coin. What distincts the two to me is that Age of Conan's guided tour is that of the rollercoaster, with highs and lows. As I've said often before, the content is some of the best out there, it just needs to be three times as much as it has. Vanguard's ride is flatter.

Overall Graphics:
I would have to say that Age of Conan wins this one.
Both games have pretty high-end graphics but Age of Conan manages to do more with less due to instancing. As a result even Old Tarantia performs somewhat better than Khal on Qalia even though the latter is less complex. Of course, if Tarantia would be like Khal, you wouldn't have load screens between the harbor and Noble District, or at the entrance to Conan’s castle, or the sewers, you’d be able to jump of the bridge, walk on all the walls and roofs e.t.c. It'd also "pulse" every minute as tons of stuff gets updated server-side.

Textures:
Mixed. Age of Conan wins on character skins, especially since VG's seem to have gotten a tone down character models to spare some resources and because its engine doesn't differentiate between the way light reflects of plastic and of hair. On the other hand Vanguard's textures for buildings e.t.c. are more detailed than anything I've seen in Age of Conan, but it comes at the cost of performance.
Both games use the trick of recoloring a given armor texture to denote it as different / of a higher tier. Vanguard does this somewhat better than Age of Conan though, since they don't simply darken the same brown burlap every tier but dare to use more colors of the rainbow. Having three (more actually) actual recognizable cultural styles to each armor class also adds to a more rich fashion experience. Both games have a small segment of non-standard armor skins scattered throughout. Gut feeling says Age of Conan might secretly be winning on that particular score, but this is mitigated by the fact that the burlap looks better and is more varied on Telon.

Effects:
Again I'd have to say Age of Conan. Vanguard uses Bloom Effects, HDR and Tone Mapping. Age of Conan does the same, but without the bursts of Bright Light that Vanguard will occasionally present you with if both HDR and Tone Mapping are on. Rule of thumb, pick one of them, HDR in my case and stick with it. Tone Mapping is (normally) used mainly for water effects, that's where AoC uses it too. Vanguard uses it everywhere. So Telon armor is more sparkly than Hyborian equivalents. Specular Lighting is pretty similar in both games. Spell- and other effects are better in AoC as well, but that probably falls under the header of

Animations:
This is an area where Vanguard performs mediocre at best while Age of Conan shines nearly as bright as the Champion of (character) Animations that is City of Heroes/Villains. Vanguard's development had its share of troubles, and that animation suffered some budget cuts is obvious. A very limited set of attack animations must serve, as there's only one animation frame, rig or skeleton (whatever the term used) is used for several distinct body types that's almost a must.
One of my pet peeves about Vanguard is the knockback animation, which looks like a chess-piece being moved rather than like someone being bowled over.

General atmosphere:
Both worlds are beautiful, Hyboria a bit more so. That engine wins on flora and fauna. Both have beautiful skies. Vanguard wins on a sense of wide open expanses, while Age of Conan wins the vibrant award.

Sexiness /Toons:
That Age of Conan wins this is a given. Vanguard at launch could have been called Saga of Prudes if you like. The "grandma's curtain robes" were tied of at a very high neckline and reached to the ground. Telon grandma's having somewhat better taste when it comes to colors and patterns does mitigate things a bit, but can't compete to the bare breasted (female) glory of Funcom's creation. At some point during 2008 SOE decided to 'put the sexy back into Vanguard' as they put it. This resulted in a new set of strapless underwear to choose from and several robes were modified so that a strip of flesh and a belly button shows between hips and bust. Necklines are still at chin-height though. All in all it looks a bit ridiculous.
Both games have pretty extensive body customization options but Funcom steals the crown even without taking nipples into account by having more than 4 faces and hairdo's to pick from, not to mention having (slightly) animated hair. It's funny though that for all their customization options and high detail armor textures, neither game has you looking very unique or even distinctive unless you spend months on raiding and even then the choice is limited.

Combat & Classes:
While Age of Conan has the gimmick (Unique Selling Point in marketing speak) of using combo's for the melee end of the fight, Spell casting / Ranged combat is pretty much mundane. As a result Vanguard wins this on account of every class having very distinct play styles, what with Stances (think 60|40 or 40|60 ATK|DEF power configurations), Finishing moves (on a critical you get to use a special attack of your choice) , Reactions (think intercepting attacks or just special parry's and some other spur of the moment effects) and the sheer number of classes. Age of Conan doesn't perform poorly in this area either. There are some pretty distinct classes there, but Vanguard steals the crown by weight of numbers. Ironically both games have pretty much the same issue with Rogues (the Assassin in AoC).

Crafting:
Ok, this is mean. Age of Conan's Crafting simply looks and feels like an afterthought whereas Vanguard intended to have it be one third of the whole game from the get go. The three spheres of Adventuring, Crafting/Harvesting and Diplomacy were to be equal; it ended up being 50|30|20 due to the travails of making an MMO while living a Soap.
Vanguard uses a system where the outcome isn't purely decided by whether or not you have all the materials and are capable of dragging them, or clicking on them. You can even loose your ultra-rare materials in a screwed up attempt. Crafting an item has phases! During each phase you have a set nr of points to distribute in turns. Each action you take has the chance of going wrong and if it does, you have to compensate. Compensating for calamities means you aren't boosting the quality. There's a sleuth of tools and materials you need to use for this as well.
Vanguard Crafting is the most advanced / complex Crafting in any MMO out there at the moment. Second comes EverQuest II, which uses a kind of combat system.

Harvesting isn't that much different in either game. The difference being that in AoC foes will randomly appear while your hammering away at a piece of rock while in Vanguard you constantly have to keep an eye out to your surroundings lest an ambulant critter stumbles across your path. Both have their appeal to me. Vanguard's system is more "realistic", but you could end up running around in a hypnotic circle, dodging the mobs on auto-pilot. While Age of Conan has people materialize out of thin air to attack you, this at least has the effect of keeping you on your toes. Both are a nice downtime / waiting for a group activity.

Character advancement:
Vanguard has 50 levels, Age of Conan 80.
Vanguard has a more or less fixed progression, no alternative advancement, at first blush.
Age of Conan enforces, sometimes artificially, at least two different paths within each class.
Secretly, Vanguard allows you to specialize within a single class as well, but this often occurs later in your character's progression. Both have skill / attribute points that can be assigned. In Vanguard the stats even make sense. In the end it's a toss up which is more flexible. Both games depend heavily on gear though.

Gear:
Ignoring fashion sense for the moment, gear is important to both games. Age of Conan suffers from a lack of clarity what all the stats mean. It was quaint and fun that you needed Excel skills to manage your Anarchy Online Character, but ten years later in Age of Conan it's a bit annoying that you're basically clueless about what stats should be buffed and which armor is "better". Both developers seem to take a distinct pleasure from putting the best stats on items with the least esthetic appeal. This doesn't mean Vanguard is without its own weirdness.
For instance there's Item Level and there's the Required Level, which is typically 10 levels lower for jewelry, and 5 for chest pieces. Why this is so and why there's two stats rather than just a single stat called Item level but portraying the Required Level, will make absolutely no sense to anyone unfamiliar with the game's history.
I.e. at launch worn gear had to abide by a 100% rule. You could stuff your character with gear each piece taking up a certain percentage. Chest pieces would typically cost 20% whereas shoulder kit cost 5-8% and jewelry 1-10%. You could put on an item a considerable amount of levels above you, the Item Level, but it would cost you about 90%, taking away from what you could put in other slots. The net result was that no-one wore jewelry and so it was abolished. The result was that everything got a Required Level stat. This is the stat at which you first can wear an item. The Item Level 15 is mainly there to prevent the feeling of letdown as you get a very cool RL10 quest reward for your exceptionally tough L14 Quest.

I'm not a raider, so I can't really tell anything about that, but based upon my findings in general, I'd have to say Vanguard wins this round.

Starting areas:
Age of Conan must surely win this one. The Tortuage starting 'campaign' is a heady Wagnerian Ride of the Protagonist where everything revolves around you, the promised one, the messiah!
It's a lovely part of the game, everything clicks into place, more quests than you could hope to do during your progression and it's a delight to replay it with a toon from another class-group and see how you can play different parts of the main story that way. The downside is of course that once you're off the boat and land in Tarantia, the roller coaster stops. The whole world doesn't revolve about You anymore. That proofs to be a rather big letdown for many.
Vanguard's development cycle consisted of 3.5 years mucking about and then hammering out a game in 1.5 years. As a result some starting areas were rushed. Didn't get the loving attention of others, but there are some pearls in there nonetheless. My personal favorite will always remain starting the game as a Goblin. Especially when you throw yourself at every Sphere the game offers, most starting area's provide you with a rich experience.

Lore and factions:
Age of Conan has a lot more lore to start with. The world of Telon has its share of lore, but a lot of it was tied up within the Spheres or just not brought out to the fore. I.e. if you were only adventuring, you'd end up not knowing why you were fighting those giants or where the undead come from because that information would largely be locked behind several Diplomacy discussions, most of the local background for instance is hidden behind Civic Diplomacy.
While Age of Conan has more of an overall story-arc with your character and Toth Ammon at the center, both worlds miss a sense of cohesion, how the lands fit in together. In fact, Vanguard probably does better since there's no real distinction between the three cultures in Hyboria except for the occasional colored dialogue option and skin tone.
In Vanguard nations, and factions matter. It doesn't matter whether you're in the crowds of Ahgram, all alone on some mountain peak (with your victim) or deep in some jungle, the auditors register your every kill and measure it versus a large number of factions who will like you more, or less as a result of that action. Sadly it doesn't grow beyond becoming Kill on Sight for killing too many people of one faction, or redeeming yourself by killing enough people of another faction that the former decides. But sometimes you need a certain amount of faction with a certain nation in order to be allowed to craft there, learn new recipes e.t.c. Faction also plays a role within the Diplomacy Sphere. The higher your standing, the stronger your Diplomacy efforts.

Quests and stories:
As already mentioned, a lot of the stories in Vanguard are tied up in the Diplomacy and even Crafting Spheres. In fact, most adventuring quests outside of the starting areas (which tend to be full of prepositioning) have a rather impersonal nature. They deal with factions, invasions incursions and sometimes serve just as a general pointer saying "there's a dungeon with critters there, go explore and bring me back some hides!" Which is in sharp contrast to many of the quests in Age of Conan. In Hyboria the quests are often rather personal. There's quite a bit of "go kill x amount of critters to heal my aging heart" but it's to deal with personal grief or some other emotional aspect. That's something a bit lacking in Vanguard sometimes. The dialogue mode of AoC and the voiceovers where available strengthen this effect. So Age of Conan wins here.

Incomparable Diplomacy:
It's impossible to compare the two games on this aspect, since Vanguard is unique in providing this kind of gameplay. In short it's a card game you can play with various NPC opponents throughout the world. They're tied in with conversations. In the Quests it's mostly these blurbs that you unlock, although you get rewards too. In the case of Civic Diplomacy, it's talking over and over again to people until you 'won' x amounts of times and throw a lever that grants certain bonuses to anyone in the area (this is part of what causes the pulses around big cities). It's also a collector's game. Collecting cards, but also Status granting clothes which you need in order to be even given the light of day by members of certain walks of life.

Conclusion:
The grind in Vanguard isn't as well hidden, but I think that in a way, this makes it more durable. AoC gives you a few nasty shocks. Leaving Tortuage you learn it isn't all about you anymore. At around level 50 you learn that 90% of the content consists out of repeatable bounties of 20-30 bandits henceforth. Vanguard has fewer highs and lows but a steadier mid level enjoyment.

I think Vanguard forces people to play together more as well. Not in the "This is Solo Content and this is Full Group Content" but more in a "Hey you want to try this alone, it's your funeral. Maybe join up with that other player there" sense. Lots of mobs are too much for one player to deal with, but manageable for a small one. That's a good thing I think. It induces small groups, and if you don't want to, just grind yourself up on lower mobs and when the time comes you can deal with these ones on your own. Oh, did I mention that in Vanguard a level 30 Player can be ganked by a horde of level 15-20 critters if he isn't careful?
All in all I think both games are worth playing. Age of Conan is more fun in several ways, but it gets old sooner. Age of Conan has more Bling, Vanguard has more sustainability. And both have great Potential.

I'm ok, you're ok, VG-soh is ok too

As it turns out, in an act of similar thinking Phèdre and myself did the exact same thing. Namely, sneak back unto the world of Telon without telling the other.
Telon for the unitiated is the world of Vanguard, Saga of Heroes the ill-fated MMO project by Sigil Online né SOE. We both decided to keep quiet about it until such time as we'd determined it's once again fun and then invite the other in. Or something along those lines anyway. I'd planned to do a surprise Blog Post about it today, but Phèdre managed to beat me to it.

I must admit, I ventured out into the world of Telon with great trepidation and second thoughts about it.
But, since the beginning of the year, since I/we quit Age of Conan to be honest, I've been a bit adrift in the land of MMO's. I'm probably having pretty much the same issue as Phèdre. Since I quit AoC in August/September I've spent about 10 times as much cash on games as when I'm enbroiled in MMO(s). And that's not including the XBox360 purchase price. On the MMO side of things I tried Warhammer Online post launch and though it was and is fun, it wasn't that much fun to keep playing after over a year of of and on Closed Beta fo the EU side. Phèdre never came that way, which may have contributed to my lack of enthusiasm. I then lost myself for a while doing Fable II and Fallout 3 and maybe some other Generic-IP-with-serial-number. We then tried Anarchy Online for a bit but it's still a bit hardcorer-than-thou but without the great support and community it once had.

At the turning of the year I started to try out some old haunts. I even tried my old Lineage II account. Wasted money. EverQuest II is still a fun game, but the great community is all in the final end-zones of the latest expansion and again Phèdre in her wisdom wouldn't be persuaded, probably because she was already leaning towards Vanguard. In February we resubscribed to Age of Conan. While that was fun for about one Tortuage run and a Level 20-35 run through Wildlands, Old Tarantia's sewers and Noble District and finall the Fields of the Dead, that 'been there, done that' feeling was rapidly pervading everything. As great as the game is and as beautiful as the world is, it needs aproximately 3 times the content it now has, with all the latest additions counted. A real shame, EQ-2 does a great many things right.

But Vanguard. I'd been putting that off for a long time. Despite all the fun I had with the game and especially playing out the characters of Kettle (slightly overweight Halfling Cleric - brings her own muffins) who started the whole "It was looking at me funny" meme and Coilla "We was born to be Green! - Born to be mean!" Gud who married the Ogre on the docks of her island that tosses you to the harbor on the mainland. For reference, I've done 2 separate revisits to Norrath (EQ-2) since quitting Vanguard one and a half years ago.
In many ways Vanguard was the most intense MMO experience I had so far. But that wasn't all a good thing. I might be opening up old wounds, though that sounds a bit to melodramatic. I didn't quit in rage or pain or sorrow. I'd just gotten tired of waiting for the game to live up to it's potential.

There was the frustration with the technical issues of the to contend with. The community that was doing its very best to tear itself apart over hardcore/casual polarization and interpretations of the morphinated "Vision" (now a dirty word) of Brad McQuaid. The continuing soap series that was Sigil Online becoming SOE and then being understandably and not surprisingly cut up by SOE. The efforts and drama of two guilds. The second a lot more fun than the firstyet it ultimately failed after the gargantuan effort to attain not just a Guild Hall, but the Biggest baddest Guild Hall there was. The drama of coping with certain role- (I roleplay a condescending bastard mage and an arrogant jerk bard, please don't roleplay being offended or really be offended by it, I'm a nice guy really) players. Seriously, this is the first and (hopefully) last game ever to cause me stress and not in a good way.
In the end, the game itself just failed to live upto it's potential and I got tired of putting up with all the frustrations while waiting for that potential. So it was with some irony that one of the first comments on the global chat of the newbie island was some newbie commenting on the fact that the game had so much potential that it's a shame more people aren't giving it a try so that it might one day reach it.

The new newbie starting island, an SOE classic that, is very good. But then again, that was never the problem for most races. (Though some got rushed in) The Orc/Goblin starter town has a perfect blend of adventuring, diplomacy and crafting quests all rolled up into one central plotline. It's a real shame there's a content gap between levels 15 and 20, forcing you to go abroad to the mainland which is completely KoS, and if you return for the last bit of content at level 20 you need a group for it and the patience to wait for a boss mob that spawns every 2 hours, looks around for a bit and pops out again after 5-10 minutes. Leaving the technical issues aside for the moment, the real 'pain' started after level 20, when progression slows down, quests with stories are far and few between and you end up traveling the world to meet interesting people and kill them for no apparent reason. It's not all that bad of course. Mostly there's a few bits and pieces of lore that explain why some group of mole-like creatures wants to kill you on site, but the world did lack that a cohesive whole. it's "hardcore"-ish that way. Not nearly as hard as say Anarchy Online, but close. Maybe the perfect mix for me?
I dunno yet.

Why the title then?
Because last night while playing with Phèdre I realized that some of the things that I would've expected to be frustrating all over again, weren't. I could take a relaxed attitude towards several 'pain points' of the past. That's good. I'm ok, so's Vanguard and so are you.

Besides, that potential is still there. There's the improve-as-you-use-them Skills. There's the Skill points you can divide after levelling and forget about 2 out of 3 levels. There's the Stances allowing many classes to switch between stances more suitable to solo or group. Or to switch between DPS and Support, which can be the same thing. There's that sense of great freedom you get when riding a Horse / Camel / Unicorn / Wolfhound / Wyvern or Racial Mount across (or above) the open plains of Qalia which no other MMO manages, not even Age of Conan which admittedly has even more lush scenery. It's something to do with the sky I think. Even with volumetric clouds off, as those can make the difference between 6 and 33 FPS, they're somehow more majestic. There's the Crafting system that's more than dragging components together, there's the Diplomacy sub-game. there's grinding your stumps for a special or racial mount.

Phè's so much wiser than I am. She went straight for new alts, I on the other hand couldn't start up the game and not plow Qalian dirt with Kettle riding of Two-hump the camel. There were some pangs. Like Kettle's Cabin having been demolished with all its contents (including three expensive chests with savekeeping loot) and the Ahgram Foreign Legion is no more. Kettle still had three spare uniforms in the bank. Getting a tell from Suga, long lost muffin tossing contest partner within seconds of logging in was a hoot though. I'm not sure I will be able to leave her alone hereafter eventhough I do belief in Phè's wisdom. It's kinda like nostalgia on steroïds. I'm pretty sure no new character will be as vibrantly alive as those two were for me.

But what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't as bad as I feared. Even though the came isn't anywhere near the smooth, seamless world once advertised, I can see myself having fun with the world of Telon again, at least for a while. I'm not saying it'll last another 8 months but I'm allowing myself to be mildly optimistic.

Back in Telon

About three weeks ago I sneaked back into Telon, the world of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I did it a bit secretly because I was not sure why I did it in the first place. I had returned a few weeks before that to Hyboria (Age of Conan). Although Funcom has still made the most beautiful world I have seen, I couldn't get past my seen-it-all, done-it-all feeling. So I cancelled my subscription and returned to my fallback game, City of Heroes. But that is just an timesink.

As you might have read in my postings here I am at the moment kind of confused about what I want and don't want. To satisfy my own conflicting opinions I just had to step on Telon's soil again. An added motivation was an email from an old VG friend. He wanted to hear how I was doing, and to give me some lovely stories about continuing drama in-game.

So I installed the game, did the patching, and created a new character to visit the new starting zone called 'Isle of Dawn'. I played a bit with the settings and after a while everything looked smooth and quick, even on the highest settings. I was quite pleased! Then I went to talk to the welcoming NPC and found out that all was not so well at all. I had several second delays on everything I clicked. And so ended my first day.

It turned out they had just added a new patch that had added fishing to the game, and that broke everything. But a new patch was on its way. Since I was not even that excited to play anyway I let it rest for a few days and went back to working hard and playing a bit of COH. Then to my big surprise and joy Lani popped up in COH. Woohoo, COH would no longer be just a timesink, but actually great fun. Lateral Shift would be able to flash her blades again.



(woot! I got to use one of Lani's screenshots)

But thanks to Lani's wonderful work schedule there are still quite a lot of days we are not causing mayhem and destruction together on the Rogue Isles. So when the patch came out, and I did some reading on the official forums on performance issues, I returned to Telon and tweaked the game to perform properly. I got it all to look good pretty sweet and still have the game respond as it should. Woohoo, I killed my first ten rats. And so ended my second day.

I had made the mistake to make my new character the same class as my original character. I guess I really wanted a seen-it-all, done-it-all feeling that day. So next time I logged in I created a new alt already. I believe it is a Kojani human Dreadknight. And this time I wanted to taste the true Vanguard spirit and give my character its true roots by starting in its traditional home in stead of the noob island (pretty neat you actually choose that as start up). And that actually worked really well. I got sucked into the lore of the Evil Empire vs the wise monks, and had a fun time remembering some of the old, and trying some of the new (for me). And so ended my third day.

Probably another week went by before I had a change to return to Telon again. And I realized I should really try out the new starting area I heard so much good about. I managed to think up a decent enough character background that didn't need her to start in her hometown. And so Peapod was born, a tiny unappreciated girl that just tries to survive in a harsh harsh world. After killing those first ten rats again the adventuring story got actually quite fun. The landscapes, the characters, even the global chat, got me quite positive. I still had that 'why-am-I-here?' feeling, but I had secretly quite some fun. I didn't even like logging off at the end of the day. And so ended my fourth day.

A few days later I got back online again and I was eager to see where Peapod's story was going next. The adventuring story took me to fight Hobgoblins in burned villages, and even into a cave called the Earth's Den. They had done a good job making enthralling quests. I was getting really enthousiatic now. So enthousiastic even that I emailed the picture of a peapod to my old VG friend to confuse him, and to say I might be around (although I didn't say that). And so ended my fifth day.

Saturday morning I was back again, and Peapod took up her crafting and diplomacy skills. I am still not sure I really like the diplomacy game. It is very original, and it has great story telling behind it, but I don't know... On the other hand crafting is still a lot of fun. I had kind of forgotten how much fun I had with it. The adventuring quests already had a good story behind it, but the crafting quests are even better. It really sucked you into the struggles of the people of the island, and I really had great fun running around doing the chores. Since I am now already a 10 hour veteran of the game I actually managed to help out other new players and join in on some fun conversations on the island channel. And I chatted a bit with some old (and new) friends that were also online. I even got offered to join their guild, but I am not sure yet. And so ended my sixth day.

Apparently Summertime has started in the States this weekend. I had no idea. But it meant I messed up my weekly Sunday gathering in COV, and we only played for a little bit. Since the evening was still young I jumped at the oppurtunity to go back to the Isle of Dawn. Peapod is becoming a real character to me. Stalking the hobgoblins, convincing envoys, crafting traps and armor, and even harvesting turtles and chasing chickens. I think, for a while at least, I have found a new second home. Now just hoping my 'seen-it-all, what-am-I-doing-here' feeling stays away for a while. And so ended my seventh day. I can rest now.



And I got a lovely screenshot folder thingy! Here is my first new screenie.

My Screenshot Album

When Phè commented the other day that she didn't really miss seeing her old Screenshots posted at Gameamp, it reminded me of something.
I really should clean out my Fraps folders. They'd grown to encompass 30 GB...
As I'm lousy at throwing stuff out I decided to go through the folders and upload a selection to my Picasa account, the album that feeds the little slideshow on the right.

This isn't all, there's currently 117 images in the album and I'll be adding more when and if I come across others. I'm pretty sure I have some more on my external HD that isn't attached at the moment. I'm trying to add a cross-section of all the MMO's I've played. Need some more from the days when of Guild Wars, EverQuest II and Dungeons & Dragons Online.

For the full Gallery, click here.

World of Goo

World of Goo is on sale this weekend at Steam for € 4,99 only!

If you have a Steam account, either go buy now this weekend or let me know your account name so I can make you a gift of it, for that is what this little pearl of joy is.

World of Goo Trailer 3
by 2dboy

Seriously, I've been intrigued by this little gem for a while now as it's been lauded as the must play indie game of the year 2008. Now I know why.

The Path

On March 18 we can become 'roodkapje' in six flavours. A couple of Belgian story tellers have turned the story of Little Red Ridinghood into a short horror game called The Path. For the sake of promoting small independant game developers alone it is worth trying it out. But it actually looks beautiful and fun as well.

My perfect MMO part 4: A different take on harvesting

Keep in mind; this is something that takes place in the Shadowrun background. A futuristic dystopian of the Cyberpunk genre with Fantasy elements thrown in.
The action takes place in large city sprawls and the overland map(s) will largely be of this type. As a result this will not be that dissimilar from what you'd see in City of Heroes or Matrix Online. Meaning dreary buildings, pedestrians and traffic. Cryptic has done one hell of a job bringing their cityscape alive using just cars and pedestrians. A little known fact, selecting an NPC and then hitting any of several keys will prompt them to tell stuff, about you, the time, the zone e.t.c. But essentially, they are there to provide a bit of movement to an otherwise static environment, and to obscure your view of randomly positioned mobs to pummel.
In my hypothetical game, as a Shadowrunner, the players are criminals, not heroes. Guns for hire. Most often without a day-job. But in between shadowruns (missions) there should be other activities for them to engage in. No good MMO is without some kind of harvesting and crafting element. I can't even call them it mini-game anymore. More often than not, it's about a third of the whole game.

There's a few gameplay mechanics I'd like to see implemented.

At semi-random places, there's these dumpsters you can go through.....
Nope, that'd be the classic harvesting system I'd like to avoid if at all possible
I wasn't randomly for once mentioning the cityscapes of CoX and the traffic.
Rather than have 'nodes' (the dumpsters) of mineral resources semi-randomly pop up all over the place and have players run endless loops clicking on these, waiting for a few seconds until the animation stops and a message tells you whether you've struck led or gold, I'd like harvesting to have a more realistic element. In this case, car-jacking supply trucks.

Ok, not actually stealing the truck, though maybe it should be possible as well. What I'm thinking of is CoX like traffic, only with select vehicles that can be attacked amongst the regular traffic.
Attacking a vehicle will disrupt traffic, which in turn alerts police and or other security forces. But more about that anon. Attacking a vehicle will not be done in the age old manner of harvesting described above. For one, you have to locate them and they're moving targets. Second, you will be attacking the vehicle in the game's normal fashion (yes, yes, I've not actually talked about the combat system yet, assume generic WOW/EQ-2-like combat for now). They don't fight back, but they take longer to be destroyed. Toughness is always in respect to your toon's level and you can't share a harvest/kill. It should take between 5-30 seconds to take the vehicle down. Upon defeating the vehicle it becomes a wreck and you can search it for goods. The loot tables for these vehicles will be based on manufacturer corporation (so you will have to look at the name on the side) and come in trader-trash, common and rare variety. Actual levels depending on finalizing of itemization / gear concepts.
The manufacturer corporation has another purpose. You see, attacking a vehicle is strictly speaking a crime. As such the city officials feel that someone ought to make some effort to deter that. The corporations want the city officials to give them carte blanche to deal with anyone hindering their business.

In Shadowrun, corporations are effectively "ranked" by the amount of assets under their control, including material, personnel, and property, as well as profit. These ranks are A, AA, and AAA; AAA corporations are top tier. Most corporations in the AA and AAA level are immune to domestic law, responsible only to themselves, and regulated only by the Corporate Court, an assembly of the ten AAA-rated corporations.

So every time you attack such a slow moving target, you run the risk of catching police attention. With some of the more lucrative harvesting targets, a corp's own strike-team may respond. Your chances of catching attention will be based upon several factors, randomness being just one of them. nr of recent attacks by the player & recent attacks at the location & nr of recent attacks on that type of vehicle and proximity to vehicle's mother corporation are others. It's probably best to spread out your field of operation as wide as possible to escape attention. However, harvesting 2 streets away from where someone else just jacked a car isn't smart either.

When you catch the attention of the police/strike-teams you have that most ancient of choices to make. Fight or flight. Both are an option. The police generally has a set amount of time they will spend chasing you, with being out of sight for x amount of time making them loose interest. Or a greater crime draws their attention (more on that anon) some of the strike teams will be more tenacious and aggressive. Running into a store should not be a smart move. Escaping the authorities will imbue upon the player a small amount of XP. A mixture of fighting and running is probably the best approach for solo-play.
Fighting will be interesting more interesting for group-play. You can try to fight of the initial strike-team and have a chance to succeed, a chance that becomes greater if other players assist. Strike-teams are hostile to you by default (if you are the perp that caught their attention) but anyone can engage them, which naturally makes them angry. Normal agro rules apply, so it's potentially interesting to harvest as a group as you can stave off the cops more easily that way. Cop units will drop overland mob loot which is different from what you get from the vehicles and they provide 60% of the normal XP a player would get from a similar unit in different situations.
Splatter damage from AoE attacks will ahrm non-involved players as well, so it might be a good idea to get the hell out of the way if you're a level 10 petty thief and there's a World War VI being waged by 24 Level 80's and Saeder-Krupp security forces.

That is actually a likely scenario as destroying/killing a police unit will draw more official attention. Staying to fight those will result in greater waves of more veracious units. I.e. initially an equal level patrol car will spawn and come after you, downing that will get you three of them on your tail. Downing those will get you 5 Level +1 foes. This will keep scaling up until order is restored, the server crashes or a to-be-determined cap is reached. I.e. you have the opportunity to create whole gang/cops street-wars if you so wish. Think of a mix between the base assaults of Tabula Rasa, only at random locations, and the Giant Monsters of CoX. I'll go one step further, and institute a special Street-crew concept which will be a blatant rip-off on the Public Quest group concept from Warhammer Online. A street-crew is a public invite-your-self group aiming to misbehave on the streets and fight off the pigs when they show. Two teams can join to street-gang size which can grow to encompass four groups in total. Sounds like fun yes? And all the while you're gathering materials for crafting as well. I just realized that the initial player-lock of the target-vehicle will probably have to go for decent group-play. So be it, Vehicle-Level is still determined by the first shooter though making playing with different levels in the team interesting. We'll make it so that joining the team will invoke a mentoring system bringing you up to within 3 levels of the team's leader or down to two levels above, to keep things within a single tier.

Ok, this harvesting turned urban warfare is one way to gather materials. We need another, more solo-player oriented now. Luckily there's still the dumpsters. Or we can go the way of organ harvesting. Besides streets, cities have alleys, and people foolish enough to venture in them. The more stealth/solo oriented player can go lurking in these to molest innocent pedestrians. Most of the time, this will result in a few nickels and dimes only, maybe a BTL chip to be resold on the street market. Occasionally though, you can harvest organs. Provided of course that you have the tools for extracting and storing them. Don't be squeamish. This is the age where life is the cheapest commodity and people are willing to pay good money to be able keep up their organ destroying bad habbits without too many questions asked.
This is considered a serious crime though and doing so will always trigger authorities. The rare version of a molest will be to find harvestable cybernetics which are actually quite rare for the majority of the population. The majority of cybernetics is concentrated amongst tha tpart of the populace that are the players.

I was thinking about another money-making sub-game called deal-brokering, which would basically be a re-invention of the diplomacy system of Vanguard. But as usual my rambling method of writing, which I use in lieu of having an actual style, made this another way too long post. Hope there were some fun or interesting bits in there for you.
P.s. I haven't played a Grand Theft Auto game since the first version. Not true, I tried Vice City for a bit on the original XBox but soon only used it for an 80's music box. If any of my idea's are similar to GTA IV that's purely coincidental.

Something or other Online, a sure win title.

Before I forget to mention it, again, I made an alteration to the template so the link "New Post" allows you to start a new Blog entry without visiting your Dashboard first, provided you're logged in of course.

When I look back at my MMO gameplay history, specifically how many months I played each of them, I will have to say that City of Heroes/Villains is secretly my favorite MMO. I mean, I've played it for over a year now. 6 months on my EU account and another 6 on the US one which the sole, substantial benefit of having Phè to play with. And I'm now on month 13 I think. Second longest MMO run, and actually longest run in a continuous time period, would probably be Guild Wars. I played that a lot for 9 months straight, but when I quit my Gameamp staff position and went through that infamous 36 second final battle of the second campaign, I rather quickly lost interest.
Third place is Vanguard saga of Heroes at 8 months. An experience I still have mixed feelings about, with lots of downs in the form of a gaming community hell bend on tearing itself apart over hardcore/casual PK/carebear issues and two Guild destroying drama's. However, slowly yet steadily the bad memories start to fade and the good memories take on the glossy feel of nostalgia so that I suspect that SOE will soon be getting hold of more of my money.
Fourth place is shared between EverQuest II and Anarchy Online, both at 6 months. I'm not counting two short return visits to EQ-2 and I am counting two visits of 4 and 2 months for Anarchy Online. After that it's several 1-3 months try-outs like Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Lineage II and games I tried but once without completing the first free month: Tabula Rasa, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Eve Online, Rising Force Online, Archlord, Last Chaos and some other Korean F2P games of which the name didn't even stick.
My shortest time in an MMO, counting from the moment the client was installed and patched until the moment I hit the uninstall is 26 minutes and that was that commercial failure known as World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy XI despite actually lasting 30 minutes because I couldn't discover how to log out for a bit for now holds pride of place as my Worst MMO Experience Evah, thanks to Square Enix's torture session that they refer to as "account creation".

But this post wasn't intended as a rant about Square Enix's bizarre account creation torture system, nor was it intended as a show case of all the MMO's I tried. I actually want to talk about two upcoming MMO's and about which, if any, I want to play. It's odd really that City of Heroes/Villains is my favorite MMO. It isn't really. It's my fallback MMO if nothing else is available. It doesn't have the comfortable feel of a well worn boot or garment that it undoubtedly has for someone like Phè, who has been playing it for nearly 4 years now I believe. It's also a rather unlikely MMO for me, as Superheroes by and large aren't my thing. Sure I know a bit about X-Men with Wolverine naturally being my favorite character, and collected the early Gen-13 series for a bit. But by and large, Superheroes represent what I don't like about American culture and Hollywood. The same holds true for Phè, though she's way more of an expert on American culture than I am, having actually lived and thrived in that culture.

Ok, this is also not supposed to be about the con's and maybe a pro or two of American culture.
The thing is, there's two new Superhero MMO's in the making. Champion Online by Cryptic and DC Universe Online by .... Someone. Now, not being an actual Comic/Superhero buff I'm not sure which superheroes fall under the DC license. I do belief the worlds of Superman and Batman were split between DC and Marvel respectively, and the X-men are definately Marvel. Fantastic Four is probably DC and I'm sure I've made enough mistakes now to properly destroy my reputation with any Comics fan. Anyhoo, the appeal of DC Universe, without going into gameplay yet, is probably running around and meeting famous iconic figures like The Punisher, or Spiderman, or are these Marvel figures again? I seem to remember them being in the trailer for Marvel Online, the game that Cryptic was going to make for Marvel then didn't and went on to do the Champion Online thing. So, I suspect that the iconic figures that I'm actually familiar with are part of the Marvel IP, not the DC appeal. If given the choice between Superman and Batman I'd pick Batman any day, despite the Christian please-clear-your-throat-sometime Bayle twit.

The appeal of CHampion Online is obviously that it's being made by (some of) the same people that made a reasonably succesful Superhero MMO before. What I've read and seen from that game so far is heartening and discouraging at the same time. Complete Character Customization is taken to extremes in Champions. Besides having complete control of how you look, the diversity of builds is extended way beyond the already very flexible Archetype system used in CoX. You even get to define your own Arch Nemesis, though it's so far been absent from any gameplay footage/coverage which makes me wonder how versatile it will really be. You see I still remember some of the hollow promises of Vanguard, and that makes me realize this Nemesis thing can still end up being nothing more than pre-fab missions where the end-boss is the nemesis of the current team's leader.

Going by this review by Rock, Paper, Shotgun I fear that of the two, I'll like DC Universe more.
It's more aimed at the Console market, which is a moving target for me as to whether it'd be a pro or con, but as a result I also get the feeling it's more aimed at small groups than large ones. Judging by the presentations it's also more story driven than Champions, which had a demo that sounded an waful lot like some of the XP farm missions in CoX that I manage to avoid quite well.
While the mission generators are a strength in CoX, I fear that Champions really will be a cell-shaded CoX-II with like generated content maps, and probably more grind and raid-like content without really taking the next step. They may be wanting to take the next couple of steps, but I've heard many developers talk the talk before and stumble on the actual walk. In fact, that's what every game launched post WOW has done to a greater or lesser extend.

In short, I suspect that of the two I'd like DC Universe Online more.
I'll just have to get over my dislike for the guy that flies around wrapped in his red diaper.
So, I completely forgot to talk about why I'm looking for a Superhero MMO despite it not being my thing, rather than a Fantasy MMO which, based upon the 200+ books of that genre in my library, is my thing. Yet somehow I did manage to create another wall of text, so I'll leave it to you to speculate on that.