April 2013 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Awesome Trailers Revisted

April 30, 2013 by Belghast

Today my friend Liore posted a great run down of some of her favorite trailers of recent memory. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… so hopefully she will understand that I am completely latching onto the idea. Honestly watching the trailers she singled out, made me start thinking about some of my favorite trailers, and once the idea set root in my brain it was going to happen.

What makes an awesome trailer?

There are so many ways to make a trailer stand out, it could have an amazing soundtrack and visual or just be extremely well directed and emotionally engaging. There are trailers I love that pretty much fall into all categories. A lot of the ones Liore singled out in her post, are ones I love too for various reasons, but I noticed my favorite kind of trailer was mostly absent in the list.

I love a trailer that sets up the world of the game, the eternal conflict, and just pumps me up to play the game. I love when I watch a trailer and walk away feeling “hell yes, I want to play this now”. It could be the soundtrack of the visuals, but if it can somehow tap into my inborn sense of bloodlust… it is a win in my book. I especially love the trailers that set up the lore of the world, and give us a window into the game that we normally would not see otherwise.

DC Universe Online

This trailer will likely go down in history as one of my all time favorites. When someone mentions a kick ass trailer, this one is always the first one I think of. For starters, everything Blur Studios touches is amazing, but more importantly it sets up the storyline of the game in a brilliant way. I have always loved the DC setting where the traditional heroes are thugs, and Luthor is the hero… and to set that up as the basis of the MMO made me only want to play it more.

Sadly for whatever reason the game itself never met the epic quality of the trailer. It tried extremely hard, and in some aspects succeeded. The little references, like Booster Gold commercializing everything really made it feel deeply rooted in the DC universe. I will have to say that no matter what, this trailer got me to buy the game and play it. I still boot it up from time to time when the mood hits me.

Hellgate: London

FOR THE LIVING!!!! God there is so much that is amazing about this trailer. Also there is so much frustration that I have that this game did not succeed. It had some amazing story behind it, and this trailer sets up everything you need to know about it. This has it all, awesome heroes of both genders and all of them making extreme sacrifices to save the next generation. Considering my last name is Temple… I may or may not also have an extreme thing for the Templars. So much was right about this game, but it also had so many failings… namely its horrible network code. There have been many times I have considered playing the Asian free to play version, but it would just feel odd.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

I feel kinda bad about this next pick. I truly love the feel of this trailer, and the epic qualities especially when my personal favorite… Grimlock makes his appearance. Why I feel bad is that I have never actually played this game, regardless of how amazing the trailer is. Every time I watch this trailer, I keep thinking… why god can we not get a full length Transformers movie that looks like this… instead of the odd biomechanical Transfomers from the Michael Bay movies. Everything about this trailer screams Transformers to me, and takes me back to a chunk of my childhood.

Mass Effect 2

While I love Mass Effect 3, and the trailer Liore posted made me want to go back and play the series from 1-3 all over again… my favorite game in the series will always be 2. This trailer makes me relive all the badassery that is ME2, and its great swat team like side missions. This makes me want to load it up and slaughter legions of collectors. Doesn’t hurt that I am a huge fan of Thane, and he is completely badass in the trailer.

Bioshock 2

I will always love the Bioshock franchise no matter what. The first one still stands out as one of the most transformative gaming experiences I had up to that point. As trailers go however, the launch trailer for Bioshock 2 is great. I love the relationship between the Big Daddy and the Little Sisters, as someone who has always chosen to play a tank… and protect the squishy players of the world… I can totally relate to the dynamic of the eternal protector. Watching the video fires me up to play the game and wreak havoc on some splicers.

Fallout New Vegas

This trailer falls in the category of letting you in on something, that you normally would not be let in on just by playing the game. While this scene is alluded to in the gameplay, you only know it exists by watching the teaser trailer. Fallout has been and will likely always be one of my favorite series. It means two things to me, huge wastelands to explore, and badass guys in armor. This trailer teases the NCR Ranger in such a tantalizing way, that immediately I thought… man I have to get that armor in game. I went from lusting after the Brotherhood Armor in the previous games, to making my goal in game to acquire the Ranger armor with those cool goggles. War… War Never Changes.

Borderlands

As far as Borderlands goes, I will always prefer the original trailer. I love the way it introduces each character and gives them a comic book style introduction frame. The soundtrack to me has become so connected to this trailer, that when I hear the song on the radio all I can think of is playing Roland. As badass as this trailer is however… it fails miserably at one thing… getting me to by the game. When you watch the trailer, it just looks like another shooter, albeit an edgy and graphically interesting one. All someone had to do was tell me the phrase “Diablo With Guns”… and I shifted into “take my money now” mode. Problem is this was about 6 months after the initial release.

Warhammer Online

This is yet another jaw droppingly epic trailer from Blur Studio, and sadly also another trailer that is leaps and bounds better than the game itself deserves. As a longtime fan of Warhammer, there were so many little geek out moments. From the Squid Herder, to the Bright Wizard, to the Chaos Maurader… the video just oozes lore. The moment that just takes the cake however is when the Tzeentch Bringer of Change steps through the wall. Yes… I am definitely a Warhammer geek. Like I said, I just wish the game was as good as this trailer.

Rift

I have gone back and forth on this trailer over the years. At first I was not sure about it, but the longer it exists… and the longer I have played Rift.. the more I appreciate it. There are so many little things about this video that make the Rift player in me geek out. The number one subtle element is the way the crow flies into the scene, then becomes life touched at one point, and finally at the end a flame touched phoenix. On top of this, I recognize the abilities they are using and could in theory guess the specs of the supposed characters that are shown. My favorite moment however, is when the warrior visibly switches souls… something that really slickly explains what to expect about the game itself. It does what I think it set out to do, introduce players to the setting… and as icing on the cake it uses a setting that actually exists in Stonefield. So often in these videos, they are in completely made up settings… grounding the video in the actual game is just kick ass.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Once again Blur Studios makes it into my list, this time with a series of three trailers that were released leading up to the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Return, Hope and Decieved each set up a segment of the storyline leading up to the game timeline itself. In addition, each sets up the archetypal character for each class in the game, and fleshes out some back story. Combined they make an epic story arc that I can watch over and over.

I loved Star Wars: The Old Republic… until I ran out of content, but every time I watch this sequence I get nostalgic about what might have been. The game is still pretty solid, but sadly it is wrapped into one of the most egregious free to play models I have ever experienced. I realize that Bioware in essence had to sell its soul to stay afloat and keep the game running, but I will always be wistful about the game that could have been.

Rage

This trailer does an amazing job of setting up the universe that Rage takes place in, and explaining how the world got to the point where it is today. Everything about the trailer makes me want to play the game. I have a certain measure of regret over this title. It is one of the best single player experiences I have had in recent years, but also one of the absolute shortest. If the game had roughly twice the content, it would have been a truly phenomenal game. What is left is a great experience, and the trailer tells you everything you need to know to enjoy it.

Diablo 3

Like Liore said in her post, it would be inappropriate to have a list of trailers that did not include something from Blizzard. While I probably would have also picked the Wrath of the Lich King trailer, I didn’t want to copy her pick. Probably my favorite series from Blizzard as far as trailers go, is Diablo. Each trailer is always so rich in storytelling, and the Diablo 3 one is no exception. Sadly for me, this is another case of the trailer being better than the game.

Actually I have to take a step back from that, and say that the actual game itself was really enjoyable and I liked the story quite a bit. It just was over way too damned fast. I essentially played the game until I had completed the content, and then have not really touched it since. All of this does not change the fact that the game trailer is pretty amazing.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I am a HUGE fan of all things Elder Scrolls, but this trailer just set the game up perfectly. Patrick Stewart as Uriel Septim was such an amazing casting, and this trailer which also serves as the intro video to the game pumps me up every time I watch it. All I want to do when I see this is get into the game and explore, and become the epic and heroic warrior I know I can become in an Elder Scrolls game. It does what I am looking for in a trailer, introduces the setting and provides the urge to play.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Live Action)

I can remember the first time I saw this trailer, I was just amazed that they went to the amount of effort to create a big budget live action trailer. This feels exactly like Skyrim, where the peasants run away the Dragonborn runs into the action, and draws down on the drake. This trailer and later commercial is just such a perfect representation of how epic the game feels. It really makes me wish there was an Elder Scrolls television show.

Elder Scrolls Online

This is the trailer that I am most pumped about right now, so I saved it for last. This trailer was released to announce the opening of beta signups for Elder Scrolls Online. There is just so much about this game that excites me, and I love the way little callouts are made to the various factions. I have always identified with the Nords, and when they crawl out of the bowels of the fortress after slaying a bunch of undead werewolves… just makes shivers of happy run up and down my spine. Don’t get me started on how awesome it is that the werewolves were undead in the first place…

I’ve heard plenty of snide comments saying that the trailer is all about the guy from Assassins Creed, but all I can see is a Breton Rogue. I am a notorious carebear, but for whatever reason I am really looking forward to the RVR in this game. The frontier in Dark Age of Camelot was just a cool place to be, there were so many things that were NOT keep raids that you could do. It was just cool to go out there and feel confident enough to be able to hunt the really hard mobs that were out there.

The fact that Cyrodil sounds like essentially the Dark Age of Camelot frontiers, just sounds so amazing. I mean this is Cyrodil, the setting that the ENTIRE 4th game was set in. That is so much space, and I am really hoping there are so many amazing non pvp targets out there as well. It will be so much fun going out there with a group of friends and seeing what all we can do. This video just pumps me up for doing some RVR and exploring Cyrodil.

I Blame Liore

This post went on so much longer than I had intended it to, but there are just so many amazing trailers that I love. Right now I want to play every single one of these games, but I think I will ultimately log into Rift and cause as much havoc as I can. If you’ve made it this far, I really hope you have a great night and can get something knocked off your gaming bucket list.

With More Spikey Bits

April 30, 2013 by Belghast

Having one of those mornings where I am just struggling to get going. Here is hoping that the blessing of caffeine will kick me out of my slumber. This is now day five of the experiment, and today is the first day I considered blowing off the post. It is not that I have nothing to say, but more than right now I am exhausted and my brain seems to be misbehaving. I had another one of my bouts of insomnia, coupled with the fact that it was a bit warm last night.

The Desert of Flames

Yesterday at lunch, Lethbridge and I had another one of our gamer lunches, where we take our laptops to an empty conference room and chill out playing games for a bit. Since I normally need to relax during the time, I tend to pick a game that calms me. Yesterday like most days, I chose to play Everquest 2. It did not hurt that this is also what Leth was playing as well. EQ2 is one of those games that I will likely always play, if not for the massive amount of content… but at least for the fact that Norrath is a world I am deeply connected to.

There are essentially three settings that I have massive amounts of nostalgia towards. Norrath is probably the first and foremost, because of my time spent playing and idolizing Everquest. Tamriel is probably in the number two slot, because I have rabidly consumed and spent thousands of hours at this point playing the various Elder Scrolls Titles. Lastly, as much as I may or not want it… I have a ton of nostalgia for Azeroth. You can’t essentially live in a game world for the better part of a decade without missing it pretty often.

Tiny Elvis

You have likely noticed that I tend to gravitate heavily towards “core” grouping classes, especially of the tank spectrum. This is the time of character I feel most natural playing, but it is also the type of character that has the most responsibilities to a given guild or group. With currently nomadic game existence, I wouldn’t want anyone to try and count on me as the cornerstone of any group. As a result I decided to try and roll a pure dps over in Everquest 2.

I spent yesterdays lunch working on Belgrifter, my little Ratonga Swashbuckler. While definitely in the pure dps camp, the Swashbuckler has some of the survival that I crave in any character. I’ve been progressing quickly through the content, and currently am working through the Sinking Sands area. I am extremely nostalgic about the Desert of Flames content, mostly because I spent so much time in both South Ro and Oasis of Marr on Exeteroth my EQ1 cleric. So many hours were spent killing crocs… and later spent killing sand giants as revenge for all the times they killed me.

For a trip down memory lane, above is a shot of my dwarf cleric, in Oasis of Marr… the area now contained within Sinking Sands taking down I believe my first sand giant. My Rygorr armor was pretty spiffy, my guild jokingly called me “Tiny Elvis” because of the bedazzled nature of the gear. I sadly do not remember the shield or mace at this point… but I had not started raiding hate yet, because I was not a giant purple blob swinging a Dark Ember. Anyways… needless to say I have a lot of memories of that region… and still cannot help taking down the giants in zone.

The Great Escape

It took me a bit to get settled down last night and capable of gaming. We have this amazingly smart ferret, that has turned into a ninja like escape artist. She keeps finding ways of scaling the walls of the two linked playpens and hopping out. We have tried every solution we have seen online, and a few we came up with ourselves. We had tried splitting black drainage pipe and putting it over the top so she could not get to the top of the cage and pull herself over. Turns out after a little bit, she figured out to crawl up into the pipe itself and then get over to the top.

Last night involved creating a shelf of sorts to cover the corner she normally gets out on. After an our of bending metal flashing, carefully crimping and coating all edges in duct tape, and finally plugging all the wholes from which I was bleeding things to “Metal cuts” (papercuts you are nothing to me now)… I finally had this spiffy little shelf that fit down nicely onto the corner of the cage. I secured in in place to the wire with binder clips, and proceeded into the kitchen to make myself some dinner.

By the time I had assembled a plate, and walked back into the room… maybe 5 minutes tops… she had already figured out how to get on top of the shelf. Smartest ferret ever… also potentially the most frustrating. I hate that we essentially have to leave her in the cage all the time right now, until we figure out a way to keep her from escaping. Tonight we will be attempting to deploy a new ruse… coating the corner of the cage she uses to get out in plexiglass… so she cannot climb there.

Spikey Bits on his Spikey Bits

After this little back and forth with the ferret mastermind… I needed to kill lots of things to vent my frustrations. Roaming around in an MMO laying waste to entire segments of a continent… is a thing I do. I had also logged out at roughly 60% through my level, and really wanted to push further towards 59. While roaming around doing my thing I stumbled across the guy above. This little beauty goes by lXxalgol the Lurking Horror, and while the lurking part is a little ambiguous… they definitely got the horror bit down pat. I thought for a second I was playing Warhammer again, and had just stumbled onto a Chaos War Machine.

I posted on G+ last night about this guy, saying I lacked the crazy to attack me. I was wrong. Seriously… I cannot find a mob like this and NOT try him at least. I figured it would end in tears, but before giving it any further thought I hit my charge key and gave it a shot. Surprising enough, he was not nearly as bad as I expected… granted I had remembered to put my buffs on at this point. Overall however he was quite manageable, and I killed him before I had dropped below half health… which for a 59 elite at 58 player level… seemed good.

The funny thing is, he dropped nothing but coin. This combined with the fact that his respawn is insanely fast, as over the course of the evening I killed him five times… leads me to believe that he is somehow tied to a quest or other objective. I was able to turn up no details on either Rifthead, or the various wikis, apart from a stubbed out entry for the guy. If anyone out there knows what he is for, and how I can start this magical mission… please let me know! I feel like I need to kill him with a purpose!

Rift World Problems

I have come to the realization that I have a problem with Carnage Quests. No, this is going to go in the opposite direction you are probably thinking. It has been well established that I like killing things in video games… and am extremely prone of fits of mindless bloodlust as I ping pong across the map. Carnage Quests are like crack for me… they give my bloodlust a purpose. I take forever to move out of a zone, because I keep finding new mobs that have new carnage quests… and then find myself not being able to leave an area until I have killed 16 Rabid Wombats.

This has lead to an additional problem. I have entirely too much leather… far more than I could ever use, and far more than I could likely ever need. I literally have hundreds and hundreds of Storm Legion era leather… and the problem is… I cannot stop myself from skinning the corpses. Too many years of playing a leatherworker in wow, have ingrained me that leaving an un-skinned corpse is a cardinal sin. I even find myself going around and cleaning up the handiwork of others. I hate using the auction house, but if you are over on Deepwood and find yourself in need of leather… look me up.

Coffee and Rambling

Well it looks like I have squandered yet another morning drinking my coffee and rambling about the games I play. This is now day five of my little experiment, and so far has been the day I least wanted to blog. I managed to find focus and keep pushing forward, in spite of the fact my head is pounding and I just want to go back to sleep. Since comments are kinda a thing of the past, and all my readers are picking up my posts via RSS… I feel like I am rambling into the void most of the time. That is perfectly fine, since right now I am mostly doing this for myself. If you’ve managed to make it this far in the post, I wish you the best of days… hopefully mine will suck slightly less than yesterday.

Oh… as a footnote… I managed to ding 59 in Rift. So one more level to go, and then I can stop feeling like a such a failure!

That Rift Moment

April 29, 2013 by Belghast

Yesterday was a fairly stark contrast to Saturday, but a pretty welcome one. After milling around the house and blogging, and my wife doing the same we decided to embark upon a journey to Joplin. We didn’t really make it out of the house until around noon, but by then the 50* temperature had warmed into the high 60s making my choice to wear shorts more justified.

Cameras at the ready

We brought with us our cameras, but they did not leave the car for the most part. We roamed around for a few hours but didn’t really find much of anything up there that “inspired” us. It had been a few months since our last trip to Joplin, so we had plenty of things to do as we ran around town. But for whatever reason, each time we talked about stopping and roaming around, we were both decidedly meh on the topic.

I feel like at some point we need to take a trip to a nature preserve or something of the sort. That seems to be what both of us are leaning heavily towards wanting to shoot now. The recent round of thunderstorms has finally caused Oklahoma to green up, and I think both of us want to take pictures of that before summer starts to brown it again. We have a list of places that we have talked about, but honestly we need to just do it. Our problem yesterday was that our default weekend shoes are sandals, which are not exactly conducive to stomping through the weeds.

Return to Moriban

When we finally made it home for the evening I contemplated jumping back into the Neverwinter, but all day I had thought about how much fun I was having with the new build in Rift. I am super glad that I did, because a short while after logging in one of my favorite people showed up. Plasmodia is like this friendly mad scientist, and one of my highlights of playing Rift with Machiavelli’s Cats. Her and her husband Marklaar were both super awesome people to hang out with, and apparently had missed me.

So over the course of last night I hung out and chatted, and generally did not pay much attention to what I was doing. This is a good thing when a game supports this. I happily ground my way through packs of mobs, loosely following whatever objective was highlighted on my minimap. I generally tend to play really poorly when I am chatting with someone, as a result I used to run laps in Dalaran while I had to talk to someone for any length of time.

That “Rift” Moment

I am no stranger to doing stupid things, but at one point last night it was getting a bit excessive. I was absolutely getting my ass handed to me, enough that I was starting to question this new miracle spec I had stumbled into. It was round about this point that I remembered… I have experienced this before. Sure enough I looked up at my buff bar and noticed that not single one of my 9 buffs was currently active. Upon cycling through the buffs it was like I was a whole new person once more.

I would love to say, that this was the first time I had encountered this problem. However anytime I go back to Rift for awhile, I ultimately end up running around like a buffless noob. I’ve heard that there are mods that will remind you that you are “naked”, so I guess it might be time for me to investigate one of those. Overall though I had a blast just hanging out and chatting, and while I was on guild chat seemed to liven up.

Small Group of Friends

I had noticed that Alea Iacta Est Rift was certainly more quiet than I remember, and last night talking to Plas I found out the reasons. Turns out that a good chunk of the AIE/Cats folks wandered off into Defiance and are happily shooting mutants there. Luckily I was able to play enough of it during Alpha and Beta to realize that it really was not the game for me. As much as I love the concept of a Science Fiction MMO, the result never ends up being something I really enjoy… at least for any length of time.

Another issue that is going on right now is that it seems the officery types are AWOL as well. I have a feeling that some of the Defiance folks will be burning out on the game, as a good number of individuals on my twitter and google plus feed already have. My hope is that some activity in Rift will draw them back. Plas and I plotted to start doing Wednesday night dungeon groups, and I believe we will be having the first of these this week. Right now that is likely going to be me, Plas and her hubby Mark and then anyone else we can tempt from the guild. If you play on Deepwood and are super good natured, and friendly to absolute nubitude… look me up.

Beauty of Dawn

Beauty of Dawn – Malukah – Elder Scrolls Online

So in a completely different direction, I had to post this. I seriously cannot go a single day without listening to it. This is Beauty of Dawn, a song by the already famous Malukah that apparently she teamed up with Zenimax Online Studios to create. From my understanding, she wrote this song after an extended play test of Elder Scrolls Online. Whatever the inspiration, it is completely amazing and so rich and evocative. The song just feels laced with lore, and hopefully when the game releases we will understand all the things she is talking about.

If you could not tell, I am kinda a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls Setting. I first got into them with Daggerfall, and have been a rabid consumer of all things Tamriel ever since. There have been so many times while playing Oblivion and Skyrim, that I thought to myself… man this would be really amazing if I could just play this with my friends. My hope is that Elder Scrolls Online ends up being just that… Skyrim with friends. I realize there are certain MMO trappings that you have to have to make the genre survive, but so long as the core gameplay translates I will be happy.

This is day four of my experiment, and if you have made it this far I want to thank you for reading. The daily posting thing is still not extremely comfortable, but I look forward to doing it each morning. I find sitting down and rattling out my thoughts relaxing. Hopefully over time, it will even be useful to the community… though I sincerely doubt that. This is going to be an insanely busy week at work, so I think I will need this little morning sanctuary to keep me sane. Hope you guys have an awesome day, and awesome week if you don’t check back in before then.

Loot Box Strikes Back

April 28, 2013 by Belghast

Here we go with day three of the experiment. I just got out of the house, picked up breakfast and now I am settling in to a blog post. Yesterday was pretty pitiful as days go, in that it either rained or was dreary all day. Was the type of day that just makes you want to lay down on the couch and take a nap… which my wife did in fact do at one point. I on the other hand rotated between my laptop downstairs and my gaming rig upstairs playing pretty much non-stop games.

The Waiting Game

If you read my posts yesterday, you will at least know that I played a good deal of Neverwinter. However the game did not open up to us folks unwilling to pay the “Drizzt Tax” until later in the day. So for a good couple hours in the morning I was back in Rift smashing through baddies. I am still completely taken aback by how big of a difference the spec change made. Previously I was a Paladin/Warlord/Paragon spec weighted in that order, and the PkuDude99 spec is mostly Warlord with some Champion and Paragon as a zero point tree.

I have always leaned on Paladin like a crutch, because it offered so many cool things… like some measure of healing and stuns. However it seems like Paladin has either been nerfed into oblivion since I last played… or is not working as intended. I had a lot of the same talents already in Warlord, so in essence all the spec does is drop paladin and swap in the Champion DPS tree. That change basically took the game from borderline unplayable, to extremely fun.

I’ve always loved Trion, and to some extent I have kept my account open as a way of supporting the company. Since release two years ago, there has maybe been a 3 month stretch where I did not have an active account. I really believe in them as a company, because they have done some truly amazing things. However showing up and playing every now and then, without following every single patch note leads to the ability to create some potentially broken characters.

I almost feel like the spec system is too complicated, but in the end right now for this very moment, and for as long as PkuDude99 keeps the forum thread updated… I am happy. I’m roughly halfway through 58 now, so at some point on the horizon I will have to begin shopping for a dps spec as well. As much as I love to tank, I really don’t like doing so for pugs. So I am resigned to play DPS roles at least until Alea Iacta Est picks up again, and we can get some guild groups going.

Neverwinter is coming

So yesterday I broke the pattern and posted a big massive review post about Neverwinter Online. I had a few friends asking me my take on the game, so I spent a few hours compiling the post and threw it up there. As a result I have robbed myself of a lot of what I had to say about the game for todays post. I am still apparently enjoying myself since I pretty much played the game from noon yesterday till around midnight. I can’t remember if I managed to ding 16 before I logged last night, but if not I am pretty close.

I managed to find my happy slaughtery spot last night in the tower district. I wandered around there aimlessly not paying attention to my quests, charging into packs of orcs and ogres with glee. When I can ignore the objectives of a game, and just play it… this tells me it is succeeding at bringing me into its mechanics. From my level I would say it has succeeded… since my friends who were doing the same content are only 12. That accounts for a large number of ogre kills along the way.

Loot Box Strikes Back

Yesterday in my review I talked about the cash shop system, and the loot boxes. By level 9 I had seen my very first one, and when they drop they are rather hard to miss… as a huge glitzy gold treasure chest appears on the ground. By the time I had hit 15, I had gotten 13 of these loot boxes. So like I always do, I bent under the curiosity of what magical stuff might be in them. The above image is of an epic quality companion that I was able to pull from the boxes. So far it is pretty awesome, and does this fire AOE dive bomb attack on the mobs.

The other ones I have opened have mostly just had runestone/enchantment bundles, so that appears to be the common loot. Like I said yesterday, the system is pretty nice in that you are always going to be getting 10 trade bars regardless that can eventually be saved up for the more desirable items. I want to say the cheapest of these items was around 150 bars, so in opening 15 boxes you would at least be guaranteed the ability to purchase that.

Farmville with Swords

So while the lockbox system does not seem terribly egregious yet, the crafting system more than makes up for it. They apparently expect us to be crafting while at the grocery store, shopping mall and work, since they have given us a web interface, and no actual way to craft while in game. This would be great other than the fact that it completely relies on materials you acquire as drops, or purchase from an in game reagent vendor. The first thing I had to do, upon connecting to the web interface was to log in and immediately stock up on the various vendor bought reagents.

Basically the system revolves around training hirelings to do your work for you. You have miners and various sundry artisans that will toil away on items for your needs. The biggest problem I saw, was that nothing they could actually make was of any use to me. This is a huge pet peeve of mine with crafting systems in general, I should be able to craft gear for myself as I level through them. This one appears to be exclusively relegated to something you will use to make gear for your alts later on, because even if I had started doing this immediately… the “white” gear that you can make would be useless next to the “green” drops I was getting.

Time Sinks

The other component that is fairly egregious to me, is the fact that it is ungodly time consuming. Not as in you sitting at the keyboard mashing buttons, but you setting something up to go and it literally taking several hours to complete. This is going to be how they get us to buy lots and lots of Astral Diamonds. You will be seeing the window above a lot if you intend to craft much. Last night before going to bed, I had set the system to hire an additional miner. The game UI said it would take 17 hours to finish, yes that is in fact seventeen real hours. This morning when taking these screenshots, I still had over 7 hours left, but could rush the order for only 39,691 Astral Diamonds.

This logic permeates the game as a whole, with so many functions like leveling up your companions, tied to real world timers. I believe there is also a timer associated with instance queues, that can be bypassed by just spending some astral diamonds. I am not 100% certain about this, but I do know on my map there are several timers constantly in motion. Every time I have seen a timer in the game so far there has been some way to speed it up by spending Astral Diamonds. Usually the timers start out minimal, like the first time I leveled one of my companions it was only a couple of minutes. Now it is 15-20 minutes each time I need to send my companion off to train.

I realize that the game needs to make money in order to support itself. I have ranted at length before about “digital freeloaders” expecting to be able to play these games without ever dropping a dime on them. However I just wish they would disguise it a bit more. Playing Neverwinter at times, feels like a trip to Disney World, where everything is happy and shiny… but has a hidden price associated with it. I guess this is the ultimate evolution of the term “Amusement Park” gaming. I just wish the entire process didn’t have to feel quite so dirty.

The Sun is Coming Out

I’m hoping as the day goes on it will warm up outside. Right now as I have just spent an hour and a half writing this up, it feels like it is starting to. When I went out to get breakfast it was nice and sunny out already, but still 50 degrees. It is my hope that we can get out and around today, maybe take some photos but at the very least go do something. I never thought I would said that I want to do something other than gaming, but since becoming more active… I start to get twitchy when I sit in one spot too long.

If you’ve managed to make it this far in the post… I wish you the best of days, and hopefully you can get whatever you intended to get done this weekend. My hope is that we go wandering and find something interesting to look at in the process. Have a great day.