October 2013 - Tales of the Aggronaut

NBI 2013 Over Already?

October 31, 2013 by Belghast

A Month Already?

I can’t believe the month of October is all but over now… and with it draws close the second running of the Newbie Blogger Initiative. This time around I have done a fairly horrible job of keeping up with the initiative as a sponsor. I believe I did only two posts this year, but more than anything I just really did not feel like I had much advice to offer. Even though I am blogging every single morning, I don’t necessarily feel like I have figured anything out. The key seems to be to just write something…. regardless of how good you think it may or may not be.

As the month went on we had more and more participation. At last count there were twenty six new blogs that signed up on the forums. Hopefully they figured out that illusive secret to sustainability. It took me several years to end up at the pattern that works for me, so hopefully it will take them significantly less time. I am cheating this morning and going to close the month with a rundown of the various blogs that make up the Class of 2013.

Class of 2013 Revisited

So check them out, add them to your RSS feed and watch them grow over the coming year. Here is hoping that they all found fertile enough soil to stick around and flourish. The only really solid advice I can give is to just keep blogging. It doesn’t matter what you are writing about, just keep writing about something.

Nostalgia Won

October 30, 2013 by Belghast

Crackception

That’s right… you are seeing the above image correctly. That is two in game npcs in World of Warcraft playing Hearthstone. The game that has caused such an upwelling of nostalgia… is being played in the game I am nostalgic about. I feel as though they are missing an amazing opportunity here however. If you could ACTUALLY play hearthstone inside of World of Warcraft, the same way you can play Legends of Norrath inside of Everquest 2… it would quickly become the ultimate piddling around waiting on someone experience. I can remember how amazingly popular the bejeweled and peggle became as pre-raid activities and those were just addons.

It would be amazing if they wove hearthstone into every aspect of the game. Peggle loot was a thing that existed, and while it took forever it was an extremely fun way to settle loot disputes. Would be equally cool if you could do something like that with hearthstone. However that would also be a sure fire way to derail the gameplay, but still an enjoyable one. I guess the hearthstone game board feels all the more enjoyable… when you see it in a three dimensional table top version in the above screenshot.

Nostalgia Won

The fact that you are now seeing fresh World of Warcraft shots on my blog means that I lost the battle with nostalgia. I caved last night and renewed my account for a month so I could get in and satiate the urge to play that has been brought on by hearthstone. I go into this knowing full well that this decision almost always ends up in tears of frustration, but I felt like it was something I needed to “get out of my system” nonetheless. I have to say… once I got past the extreme awkwardness of seeing people I had not seen in years, that the overall gameplay was rather enjoyable.

I spent some time piddling around Timeless Isle and managed to find a chest with some purple shoulders in it. Of course my friends immediately told me those were “not good”, but hell when I left the game I was still in blues. I did not manage to stick around for much raiding at all in Panda-land so anything I could get was a massive upgrade for me. I liked the concept of the timeless isle overall, the fact that you could get decent purple gear just by killing random stuff out in the world. Additionally apparently there are lots and lots of chest out there that have the random chance of dropping something that can turn into a piece of gear like I found.

Similarly I had quite a bit of fun leveling Belghast. For whatever reason post Wrath, Belghast has not really seen any action. Right before the release of Panda-land I managed to push him up to 85 only to stable him again. For whatever reason it feels somehow wrong to have Belghast NOT be at the level cap for an expansion. Even though I pretty much transitioned to playing my Deathknight in Wrath, I would like to see him at least hit the cap here. The game is always enjoyable when I still have quests to do, but once that slows down I am sure I will get bored with it yet again and wander off in another direction. I know for certain that I am not back fully, because even if I end up landing for awhile… I will be gone once again when Elder Scrolls Online comes out. Right now every game that is not ESO is just a placeholder.

Pre-Endgame Game

October 29, 2013 by Belghast

Limited Time Stuff

First off I guess let me open todays post with a complaint. I really had nothing much to talk about as I sat down at the keyboard, so I did what I normally do and sifted through my RSS feed. I spent most of yesterday super busy and really did not have time to read anything much. One of the first posts was over on Rift Junkies talking about how apparently there was a new mount available for only four hours on the Rift store. They are apparently calling this unstable artifacts, which is a clever excuse to make something super limited that costs a hell of a lot on the store.

I am not against the 2700 credit price tag, but I am against the concept of limited time items. I hate when something goes into game only to be pulled out swiftly keeping anyone else from getting the item. I honestly don’t care about the red Kirin at all, because I think the mounts are ugly, but for me it is more a principle of it. When a game starts doing one time only things, I really lose interest quickly. I get extremely frustrated anymore when I am asked to play a game on someone else’s schedule. With the recent rapidly expiring world event each phase lasting only two days… this seems to be the direction that Rift wants to move in.

The more of this type of content goes into the game the less and less interested I am in it. There are so many things about Guild Wars 2 that I think I would enjoy, but the fact that content expires roughly every two weeks keeps me from wanting to dig in and try it. I don’t want to ONLY play this one game, and in order to farm up every new thing in the world… I would really have to do just that. The whole playing the same game every single night concept just seems foreign to me. There are so many different games I want to experience, so knowing I will go into a game missing out on things… makes me think my time is better spent elsewhere.

Pre-Endgame Game

I guess while I am complaining, I might as well not stop with Rift. Onwards to FInal Fantasy A Realm Reborn! We absolutely lucked out as a guild and had eight of us reaching 50 within a few days of each other. Well that is not true I guess, we had one super impatient gamer rush through to the end game and sit there without any additional support for about two weeks. However the majority of us arrived at the end game at roughly the same time. This made the sequence of three eight man instances seem not that horrible in part because it was fresh content for all of us. However now that we have another three characters up to 50, I am realizing what a slog it really is.

So much of the end of the main storyline in FFXIV reminds me of the trials and tribulations of having to key players for various raid instances in both EQ and WoW. Be warned there will be some spoilers, so if you care about that sort of thing, I would stop reading. I will try my best to do as few as possible, but it is going to happen. Essentially when you hit 49 you start down a sequence of events that leads to the finishing of the main storyline. The first of these is Cape Westwind, yet another trial. We have done this now three times… and quite honestly I cannot tell you exactly how the mechanics work. The biggest pain is getting eight players online at the same time.

Next you run through a few quests and end up unlocking Castrum Meridianum… which is surprise surprise another eight man dungeon. This takes a little over an hours time normally if you are not doing the speed run chicanery… and now that every mob in the instance drops decent money there really is no reason why you would. These places are decent money. Once you finish up in there, you do a few more quests and wind up stalled on The Praetorium… yet another 8 man dungeon. This one takes quite a bit longer than the previous one and is a wee bit trickier at times. Finally after finishing this sequence of events you can finish the main storyline and unlock Amdapor Keep.

We have been working our way through these for Cyl, Opo and Tivo… and the problem with an eight man dungeon is trying to accommodate eight different play schedules. We really only seem to have time to do one of the dungeons in the sequence per night. Last night we were trying to figure out when we could pull together a group next… and the problem is we are unlikely to be able to get ALL of the necessary players online until next week sometime. As we started going through the days, there was one player that could not attend on each of the nights. While the final storyline is extremely cool… it just seems like a lot of bullshit to have to slog through to even begin the end game grind.

Norrath Calling

Towards the end of the night I ended up logging out of FFXIV and popping into EQ2 for a bit. I have said it before, and I will say it again… sooner or later I always return to playing EQ2. I am not sure if I am ready to be back in it yet, but I did some questing out in Withered Lands and enjoyed the relaxed pace. My friend that recently returned was telling me excitedly about the guilds plans to start doing heroics, and while I think that is cool I don’t want anyone to factor me in their gaming decisions yet. I already have a game where I am a key resource for running instances… I really don’t want another one.

That is not to say that I don’t enjoy tanking dungeons, because I do… otherwise I wouldn’t keep returning to playing that role. I just find that tanking takes more out of me than it used to. I cannot chain run instances like I once could. So I find myself needing something else to play so I can have a bit of peace and quiet… and more importantly downtime. Everquest 2 has always been a good filler of this niche. I would like to get my Shadowknight up to 95 so I can be prepared for the new content when it releases as well. I still feel like in many ways I am running from WoW, because I know that will only end up in tears of frustration. I continue to ignore its sirens call by playing other things… just not sure how long that will work.

5 Settings Prime for MMOs

October 28, 2013 by Belghast

I know there are several folks out there that really hate it when an franchise gets turned into an MMO. This is not a post for you in the least, so I will probably only serve to frustrate you this morning. For me… I love MMOs, it is my favorite type of game, and comprises of the vast majority of games I play. If you check my Raptr profile you will see that the majority of all the high consumption titles are massively multiplayer online games. However every now and then there is a setting that feels like it screams to be an MMO. These are the five settings I want most in MMO form.

5 – Rifts

For those who have not been hanging around game shops most of their lives… this title could go completely unnoticed. It never really had the big money marketing that for example Dungeons and Dragons had, but it represents a good chunk of my childhood. I love the palladium system, not because it was some great feat of gaming. Quite frankly the rules are pretty lousy if you get down to it and and extremely cumbersome. What always drew me to the system was the promise of being able to create damned near anything you can think of. Rifts took this earlier concept of the palladium system and infused it with so much personality.

Rifts sets up an earth where the magic has returned and caused leylines to blaze open across the planet. When two intersect there is a chance of a dimensional rift opening and spilling forth all manner of crazy into our world. This alone would be enough for me… but additionally they have set up all sorts of great opposing forces… the Splynn, the Coalition, the Federation of Magic, the Triax, the NGR, the list literally continues on and on as there are over 30 separate sourcebooks each filled with its own list of opposing forces. Additionally there are some pretty amazing character classes like Glitterboys, Juicers, Cyberknights, Techno Wizard, Ley Line Walker, Psi-Stalker, and again these go on and on. There is just so much world to wrap a game around, and almost unlimited content to explore for expansions.

4 – Shadowrun

This is another long time dream of mine to see Shadowrun in a massively multiplayer setting. This was a huge system as I was growing up, and while I never actually played a lot of it, I owned most of the books. Similar to Rifts it is a setting of an alternate earth, where magic and technology clash. Drawing upon the William Gibson novel Neuromancer it adds the element of the Matrix and cyber warfare. I thought this could lead to some really interesting gameplay. Where part of your party is physically running a dungeon while your decker is going along with you in cyberspace trying to remove obstacles from your path.

Recently the Shadowrun console games have been revitalized in the form of Shadowrun Returns… which is cool but I would much rather have a huge living and breathing world to explore than to do so in a top down tactical setting. Once again there are tons of source books over the run of this system that could be drawn upon to keep the world going for years. There is also a similarly long list of really interesting classes to play, with lots of different gameplay styles to explore.

3 – Mass Effect

This one will likely never happen after the tale of Star Wars the Old Republic and how it struggled to find an audience. But I think we all can admit that Mass Effect as a whole is a much better universe to explore than that of SWTOR. The ME saga, or at least up until the very end is one of the better science fiction storylines I have experienced. I would love to see a serialized television show chronicling the exploits of Shepard. As far as an online universe would go, we would have to set the game significantly earlier than the events of ME1. Essentially from that game forward there is an apocalyptic destiny set in motion, and that really does not give much room for growth.

In order to make this work we would need to set the game either before or after the main trilogy, and really don’t think ANY of the endings to ME3 gives us enough room to move within game wise. As a result I would set the game a few years before the events of Mass Effect. This should allow the game to evolve along the normal course of events that happen in the main trilogy. Similar to the LOTRO game, you would be different characters in the same universe watching the events play out around you. There are so many different cultures and opposing viewpoints that it just begs for a MMO to be wrapped around it.

2 – Fallout

War, War Never Changes. Every time I hear Ron Perlman utter those words I get this massive nostalgic wave of feels was over me. I love everything there is about the Fallout setting, and have been a series diehard since I saved up the cash in college to buy the first one. I missed the boat on the whole Wasteland thing, so I am hoping the Kickstarter will give me a taste of what that world would have been line. I want a Fallout MMO so badly, but more than anything… I want one that CONTROLS like Fallout. I want so much to like Fallen Earth, but I just cannot get past the control scheme, and it destroys the game for me.

The whole post apocalyptic wasteland is such fertile ground for an MMO. Especially a huge sandbox setting like Fallout. As far as classes go, I think you would have to do the same sort of open ended treatment that you already have in Fallout. Mainly I would be happy with just allowing a persistent and co-operative version of the existing Fallout games. There are already so many different competing interests in the wasteland, and I feel like you could pretty much plunk another game down at any point during the current storyline. Mainly I just want to join the brotherhood of steel and wander around the wasteland in power armor like I always do.

1 – Elder Scrolls

Okay I admit it… this is absolutely cheating since we all know there is already an Elder Scrolls MMO on the way. However until it releases sometime next year, this one stays at number one with a bullet. There has never been another series that has captured so much of my imagination as has the Elder Scrolls Series. I love literally everything about the world. The absolute vastness of it all, the lore, the Aedra and Daedra. Nothing inspires me more than having a game with a fully fleshed out world and its pantheon of gods. I think that more than anything is what glued my attention to Everquest and Norrath, and the complex relationship between the various gods in Tamriel makes that setting seem simplistic.

More than anything, I love the freedom of the Elder Scrolls settings to completely abandon my quest chain and wander off into the world exploring freely. I love that there is always something to find hidden in this nook or cranny. I love almost more than anything that there are tons of books in the games, each with their own story that only serves to make the world more rich and three dimensional. You have some amazing races, each with their own deep background and other races that no longer exist like the Dwemer have have littered the landscape with their former greatness. I just hope that the MMO version can gather up all this great lineage and give me vast tracts of interesting to go off and explore. This is the game I am most looking forward to, and you can bet that when it releases I will pretty much forsake everything else at least for awhile.