Micro Voxel Welding

Big Damned Beta Weekend

This weekend they seem to have completely opened the floodgates and then some as far as Elder Scrolls Online testing goes.  It seems like every person that signed up for beta before a certain point, got their invite this weekend.  In addition to that, pretty much everyone who has ever tested got a buddy key.  So essentially if you wanted to test the game, you should have gotten your chance this weekend.  Admittedly I was more than a bit disappointed to see we were testing on an old version of the client that did not include the changed introduction.  In fact it seems like everyone in the test was expecting to see the new and shiny progression.  However I love Stros and Betnihk so I am more than happy to play through them again.

I had all these plans of trying to play a caster, but when it came down to rolling one… I just could not bring myself to play one.  Instead I am playing “ole reliable” the build I have enjoyed the most up to this point.  Dragonknight + Sword and Board and honestly each time I roll one, I perfect my build order a little bit for the next time.  You would think I would get bored of playing the same basic character over and over, but instead it just makes me like it all the more.  Essentially I have arrived at a point where the very first ability I take is Puncture aka the taunt/armor debuff.  Essentially the first ability you place on your bar, means it is also going to be the first skill line you will have available for morphing later on.  Essentially my goal in doing this is to get to Ransack the morph of Puncture, which adds a new ability that increases my armor for 12 seconds every time I use it.  This makes the ability really good for survival and essentially my opening becomes a combo of Fiery Grip, Ransack…  then mostly basic attacks to burn it down the rest of the way.

I just like the feel of playing this specific build, it feels very much like I want a tank to feel.  I decided this weekend to cast aside my traditional human builds and go with a proud Orsimer.  Normally I rely on swords, but I decided to start crafting him maces… because smashing things seems more fitting an orc…. also I don’t like the orc racial “giant machete” sword graphic.  The guild is absolutely insane right now, when I logged in earlier to take a screenshot of my orc, we had 25 members and there are at least five more that have not accepted guild invites yet.  Doing pretty great for a beta guild.  If you are playing the game add @Belghast to your friends list, and pending we actually know each other… and you are okay with the Three Tenets…  I will get you into the guild.

Level 60 Monk Get

I have to say my monk looks pretty badass.  I know eventually I will upgrade out of that sword, but once we get the ability to transmog with the expansion, I can totally see dual wielding that graphic.  Before the ESO beta weekend madness started, I managed with the help of Warenwolf to push the monk to 60.  Really I am happy just knowing I have a character at max level before the expansion,  but I can see playing it quite a bit more trying to get paragon levels.  Running around in our impromptu groups has really increased my enjoyment of the game… especially now that we are getting some decent loot.  It is funny how loot factors into my enjoyment so much, and in many ways the complete and total lack of meaningful loot is what killed my enjoyment of FFXIV once the questing was done.

We tried an experiment that didn’t really work yesterday as well.  While I was pushing my way to 60, we had a friend join us in level 60 content with his level 10 character.  We thought surely the catch up experience would be amazing, allowing him to fly through the levels.  Problem is… he was not alive long enough to really catch the benefit of the xp windfall.  Every mob seemed to make a beeline for him, and one-shot poor Banzai.  So after getting him three for four levels this way, we opted to switch to our own characters in the teens and play for real.  I had not really played my Barbarian much, but playing him I could not think about playing Olaf from League of Legends.  At one point I picked up a legendary leaf blade… to which we dubbed him “Growlaf” the plant defender.

Complete and total rabbit trail here… but we started talking about how amazing it would be to have a game like Diablo 3, that instead used the champions we have grown to love from League of Legends.  For awhile my friend has talked about how bad he wanted a PVE game set in the League universe… and really this seems like the ideal fit.  They really would not have to change the champions that much to make them work in a Diablo setting.  Additionally I have already noticed, that post League we all kinda play Diablo like we are laning in League.  We move like League players move, especially when we are kiting a bad guy away to try and separate it from the pack.  While I enjoy league from time to time, it is really the character design that I like, and not the game itself.  If they gave me those awesome characters in a setting like Diablo that I do actually enjoy… I would probably waste innumerable hours playing it.

Micro Voxel Welding

Hopefully this embeds just fine.  I wanted to share this because I thought it was really cool.  In last Wednesday’s livestream Dave Georgeson showed off a really cool “glitch in the matrix” of sorts that players have figured out.  One of the interesting characteristics of the voxel engine that Everquest Next Landmark uses is that it tries to buffer between differences in two objects and naturally fill in the gaps.  This can be something really cool or something really frustrating depending on how you use it.  Out in the wild, players have been using this to stretch the boundaries of the engine and create something that has been dubbed the “micro voxel” or as Dave calls it in the livestream “pips”.

The idea is to take a single square voxel of the smallest available size and reduce it using the square smooth tool to get a smaller base size to build with.  Having a tiny square is not that cool, but what is cool is the behavior you get in the engine when you place two of these beside each other.  The engine draws the gap between creating a thin bar.  This can then be used to craft really interesting things.  In the video Dave Georgeson shows off a steampunky claim that he has created making metal ladders and metal grating in all sorts of shapes.  Where I find this extremely cool is what this means for player crafted furniture.  In the video he makes a few book cases and desk that looks far nicer than anything I have been able to craft so far.

It does seem like this takes a lot of trial and error… and copious amounts of patience.  However at some point I want to get in and start trying to make furniture for my keep.  The other really cool thing mentioned is that we will be getting the ability to add on to our claim in the next patch.  So at this point I am trying to figure out which direction I want to grow things.  I like building large structures, so I was already to a point where I was feeling extremely boxed in.  I could very easily grow my existing property out to four total claims.  This might be the kick I need to get back in and do more crafting.  I am currently hung on a point where I need to farm just truly silly amounts of burled wood to complete all the things I want to complete.