May 2015 - Page 3 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Fear of the Unknown

May 23, 2015 by Belghast

MMO Nostalgia

One of the interesting subtexts this week that we will likely talk about on tonight’s AggroChat is Kodra and Pathfinder Online. He has begun the descent into this game and been trying to drum up a certain measure of interest from the rest of us to join him. The problem is that as I listen to him talk about the game I realize that I have already played this. In fact I gave three years of my life to Everquest, and everything about Pathfinder Online feels like a nostalgic throwback to that era. I am sure it is a perfectly awesome game, but while I miss the sense of community we had back then there are many things I don’t miss about it. This is all the more relevant since right now the Ragefire server is open in Everquest and folks are flocking there for their own hit from the nostalgia pipe.

The thing that I don’t miss about that era is the way I felt chained to the computer. Every time I set foot in the world I had a tangible fear of losing everything that I had worked so hard to attain to that point. There was always the fear that you might take a death in a place where you could not recover your body. Over time the items on your body started to decay and disappear, and eventually there was a point where things were simply no longer recoverable. The problem is when you took a death your entire mission in life became about getting that body back. I’ve known people that skipped major events in their life all because they were in the middle of trying to get back their virtual items. I’ve personally gotten calls on the middle of a Sunday afternoon begging me to go home and log in and go find them so that I could resurrect their body and give them back some of the lost experience.

Fear of the Unknown

So while I don’t miss any of that bullshit, I do the constant and tangible sense of fear. The problem being that the modern games seem to have missed the boat in what exactly caused this fear. Right now so many of these sandbox games take the cheap route and make every player afraid of every other player. The problem with this is that it is counter productive to building a community. You want your players to band together, rather than avoid each other like the plague. What caused the fear was that the world was this scary and unknown place. There were no in game maps, there were no mob statistics… and it was the lack of information that made the world frightening. We didn’t know what we didn’t know… and often times our imaginations invented a far scarier scenario than the game servers were possible of creating at the time. We imagined complex plans within plans… and that the server was quite literally out to get us.

There were situations like Kithicor Forest in Everquest, where during the day it was a friendly low level hunting zone, but at night all manner of maximum level undead spawned and started roaming. The truth of Kithicor is that there were far fewer undead spawning than we realized and that we were never in as much danger as we actually thought we were. In all the times I ran through the zone at night, I never once died to the undead… but I was constantly in fear of it. I “knew” death waited around every corner and because of it I tiptoed my way out into the world constantly aware of my surroundings and constantly afraid that at any moment the server would reach out and smite me for my impudence. The fact that it never actually happened, didn’t really matter… because I lacked the data mined information to tell me exactly what the spawn rates were and where the roaming paths were located at.

Players Together, Not Against

We are quite literally overloaded with information about the games we play. Knowing the amount of hit points a given mob has is just expected now, along with knowing every other intimate piece of information about the game. We know the attacks a creature is capable of making, and how exactly to counter them… before we even see said creature take a swing. Where this modern incarnation of Everquest nostalgia falls short is understanding that it was our lack of knowledge that made us afraid to venture into the world. It was not necessarily the harsh death penalties, and it most definitely was not that we were afraid of other players… it was that the world was cruel and unknown. The focus on PVP as a way of providing cheap content always seems to miss the point of why the original games worked. Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot worked more than anything because it caused players to be willing to look for help from anyone who would offer it.

When you expect the world to strike you down at any moment, you are willing to accept assistance from anyone willing to lend it. Especially in Everquest it felt like every player in the game was on the same team, that it was us versus the world. Sure there were territorial squabbles over spawn camps and the like, but more often than not each server had its own hard and fast rules for dealing with this sort of thing. We the players made order out of the chaos, and there was protection in numbers. There were many zones that you didn’t go to because you knew there were not likely to be other players to help you out if something went wrong. By the same token these untouched zones became the perfect place for a group of friends to go off exploring on their own. This is what we need in the current crop of nostalgic games, a sense of why exactly the first games worked and a certain measure of ignorance to make us all fear the darkness.

Don’t Believe Your Own Hype

May 22, 2015 by Belghast

Strange Dreams

Last night I failed miserably to attend the World of Warcraft raid. For whatever reason I have not slept amazingly well this week, so by the time I got home yesterday I found myself incapable of sitting up straight in my office chair. From there I attempted to game on the couch from my laptop, but before long was finding myself dozing off. So around the 7:30 start time of our World of Warcraft raid I was ultimately taking a nap. It looks like they put in ten solid tries on Blackhand without me, which is pretty awesome. Hopefully this coming week we can manage to down him and take his candy. I am not sure why I am apparently sleep deprived but after all the napping on the couch I still managed to sleep a fairly full nights sleep. Admittedly I woke up several times during the night, but each time I was able to get right back to sleep without much issue.

I did have a really strange dream during the course of all these wake ups. It was at some banquet for Blizzard Entertainment, and somehow had gotten chosen to say a few words. When it came to me and I introduced who I was and what blog and podcast I am from… there was a sheer look of horror from the stage. It was like this overwhelming wave of “What is he doing here?” sweeping over the fine folks from Blizzard. I proceeded to say a few words about my love of Blizzard and I am not really sure what happened next because I woke up. However I do remember having this general feeling that I did not belong there. The funny thing is… that in order for the dream to function I would have to be well known, and this is something that I am not willing to accept. I don’t think anyone at Blizzard has a clue who I am, let alone enough of a clue to be horrified that I would be speaking at their banquet. I am just a guy that does a thing, and not terribly important for doing it.

Don’t Believe Your Own Hype

One of the interesting things about being a blogger or a podcaster is that you are forced into the often uncomfortable role of self promotion. This aspect of blogging names my skin crawl because ultimately whether your like it or not, you are building a brand. The brand is made up of you, the image you project of yourself and the content you create. Most of us adopt a persona of sorts that we break out when it comes to interacting with the world and our readers. For some of us that persona is really damned close to the real thing. For me it is like a super hyped up and self confident version of myself, and the odd thing is that over time the REAL me has become more and more like the “Rockstar” me. For the most part this is harmless, because “super” me probably is far more enjoyable to be around than the sulky and moody “actual” me that exists sometimes. The problem is it is really damned easy to lose your sense of self on the internet.

In the decade or so I have been serious about socializing online, I have seen more than a few people lose themselves in their own hype. They start to believe that they are legitimately famous and as such somehow separated from the “common” folk because of it. If you ever find yourself with the strong desire to utter the phrase “Don’t you know who this is?” then chances are you have already gone off the deep end. As strange as it sounds this is a constant fear of mine, that I will end up becoming one of those empty self promoting husks. I spend most of my time trying to actively deny the fact that I have any sway over other human beings, and that I am ultimately just talking to myself. The reality is somewhere between because apparently as much as I try and deny it the whole #BelEffect thing that I am cursed with is apparently a legitimate thing.

Find A Grounding Force

The reality is that on a daily basis I have somewhere between 500 and 1000 readers of this blog when you combine direct hits and folks that read it through an RSS reader. I am by no means a large presence on the internet, but I do have a niche following. I do everything in my power to forget that I actually have readers, largely because I am scared to death of turning into one of the people that I have been frustrated with in the past. I just want to be me, doing the thing that I do… and sharing that thing with other people. Essentially what has worked thus far is to surround myself with people that are not buying into my own hype in the least. While my friends like to grief me with things like that hashtag or trying to claim I am some media personality… they are also the first people that would call me on my shit if I ever started to believe any of it. More than anything the biggest grounding force in my life is my wife, who is not part of the gaming universe at all.

I realize this is a strange post as far as Newbie Blogger Initiative tips goes, because if you are just starting out you are in that phase where you are struggling to gain the courage every single day to post anything at all. There comes a time however when those fears go away and you are able to interact freely. I’ve tried my best to stay grounded and humble as this blog has grown from something a couple dozen people followed to the readership it has today. The problem is that not everyone does, and I have watched this whole process go to folks heads. I am no one special, and thanks to the support of my wife and friends… it is my intent to keep it that way. Self promotion is a necessary evil, and the “rockstar” version of my personality will more than likely always need to be there as a coping mechanism for the stress of dealing with other human beings. It is my sincere hope that I can keep from falling into the trap of believing in my own hype. It is also my hope that as you go through your own rollercoaster of success with your own blogging endeavors that you too can keep from believing your own hype.

Witcher 3 Impressions

May 21, 2015 by Belghast

Losing Time

Last night I had these plans of coming home, and hopping into Final Fantasy XIV and working on crafting once again while chatting away with my Free Company folk. However when I got home absolutely none of that actually happened. I had left the GOG Galaxy client up on my screen during the day, and when I sat down at my machine it was the first thing I saw. I had fixed myself a sandwich and chips and I thought to myself… I will just play Witcher for a bit while I eat dinner, and before my wife gets home. It seems like moments later she had gotten home and was hollering up at me. When I say it seems like moments, it quite literally feels like I had just sat down at the screen. In reality about an hour passed between starting Witcher and taking a quick pause to see my wife off to church before returning to playing again. Then next thing I know it… my wife is back home and heading to bed and I have managed to lose another several hours.

To say the game is immersive is a bit of an understatement. The last game that I can remember losing entire nights to was probably Skyim, and that is a fairly apt comparison at least on a few levels. The funny thing is I have just now moved to the “second” area of the game. I say area because while the game has open world aspects it is not exactly completely open world. The first “zone” is called White Orchard and it is made up of this huge sprawling seamless area with lots of villages and locations to explore. This gives it a traditional open world Elder Scrolls feel, the problem being that the entire location has a bounding border drawn around it. While I have not pushed my luck when the game starts telling me to turn around… I am imagining that there is some sort of “slaughterfish” like mechanic that you encounter.

Gorgeous Environment

The real triumph of the game is the environment, and just how real it feels to be roaming through. What makes the game world so compelling is the fact that everywhere you look there is action going on. Nothing is static, and the weather patterns effect every last blade of grass it feels. The only problem with this is at times you feel like you are suffering from a bit of sensory overload. Like I said yesterday once I started playing I pretty much hopped off the path immediately and this is very easy to do, and at the same time rewarding. When they were pitching this game I remember them saying that it would take either 20 hours or 200 hours depending on your gameplay style and after finishing White Orchard I can see why this is. The main storyline in the zone was relatively straight forward and only actually required me to complete a few quests to get through it. However I spent the next four hours working on various treasure hunts and exploring the world.

The map system works very similar to Skyrim except that you have missions of interest that you have yet to explore marked as question marks. Now these are not ALL the locations in the world, and there are a number of other “hidden” things that you can find wandering the countryside, however if you explore each question mark it seems like you will get most of the content you would care about. That is ultimately what I spent my night doing was wandering around completing these question marks. The game has a waypoint travel system that allows you to pop from road sign to road sign, and I used the hell out of this functionality allowing me to get close to the destination that I was looking for and either taking my horse the rest of the way or just wandering of foot. Pretty much anytime I saw monsters on my minimap hud I dismounted and took them on. After some gear and some levels things like the Drowners and packs of Wolves became trivial, but the big monsters were still insane especially anything that spawned near a “guarded treasure”.

The Story Is Good

The thing that I find most interesting is that the game manages to make the narrative just as interesting as the free form exploration. There is some crazy shit going on in the world of the Witcher, and as this game is my first experience of that world I am trying to soak it all in. The game does an awesome job of giving you just enough of a primer in the setting for things to make sense, but also is unapologetic at times for talking about things that you have NO clue what is going on. There was a point in the game where I had to answer a series of questions, each of which I think represent choices that were made in earlier games. Knowing nothing about the setting I made my choices and it was interesting to see just how they played out in that discussion. I have a feeling that those choices will ultimately color what the final results of the game end up being.

There was talk at one point of them rebooting the earlier Witcher games using the Witcher 3 engine… and I really hope this happens. The engine itself is extremely robust and I can see the modder community is going to have a ball with this game. This might dethrone Skyrim in that department, pending the game itself is that extensible. The best review that I can give the game is the fact that I had to pry myself away from it last night to go to sleep. I alt tabbed and noticed it was 10:30 and realized that if I did not stop then… I would likely end up playing until after one in the morning. The funny thing about this game is that it literally came out of left field for me. I had no intent to purchase it, and am only now playing it because I got a free copy with my video card. Now I am looking forward to playing through everything the game has to offer and will more than likely purchase the season pass so that I can play the DLC as it releases. I keep harkening back to this, but I think if the game keeps up at this pace and level of quality that it might very well be that go to game like Skyrim for losing myself in the world. The only fear I have is that since this is so narrative focused, I am not sure if it will have the same sort of universal replay-ability that the Elder Scrolls games have had for me.

Mistakes Were Made

May 20, 2015 by Belghast

Thing that Happened

The last few days have been extremely strange for me, in that I have been processing a sequence of events. I wrote over the weekend that we had a bit of car trouble and found out there was a recall on our Pontiac Torrent related to it. In a sequence of events we also found out that an earlier repair was in fact the source of a recall as well, so in theory we should be getting reimbursed for that work also. Monday we scheduled an appointment with our local GMC dealer to get the new recall taken care of, but in the meantime my wife started looking at vehicles. Both her Torrent and my Jeep Grand Cherokee had been paid off for well over a year and we were just reaping the benefits of no car payment. Other than the recent recall however hers was in extremely good condition. Mine on the other hand had some issues. All of which were largely minor: cracked windshield, broken drivers seat, and in desperate need of new tires.

As a result I had been looking for some time and kicked around all sorts of ideas for vehicles. That said I have always been extremely happy with the Pontiac Torrent and fully intended at some point to get around to looking at the Chevy Equinox the modern cousin. In my wife’s searches she stumbled across a phenomenal deal, the kind that you can’t really say no to. So part of me felt like the time table of events was extremely quick, but by the same token I also felt like we had to jump on the deal while it was available. As a result I am now the proud owner of a shiny new 2013 Chevy Equinox with a truly silly list of amenities that I never actually expected any vehicle I owned would have. I mean this has silly things like heated seats and a backup camera that makes driving a car kind feel like an arcade game. I have yet to even figure out half of the things that are in it because I really have not driven it enough for it to feel “really” mine yet. Last night I turned over the keys to my Jeep and I admit I was a little sad to do so, mostly because I guess I was more attached to that vehicle than I realized. I think more than anything I am just trying to wrap my head around the notion that I have a new car.

Crafting to Eleven

Before the World of Warcraft raid I managed to pop into Final Fantasy XIV long enough to push Culinarian to eleven. This means I now have every craft to that tier, and can start getting rid of my early gear. In fact it just dawned on me that other than fishing I have started literally every class in the game. Right now my sights are set on pushing everything past fifteen, which is apparently where the interesting and unique abilities come into play from each crafting profession. Up until this point they have all seemed to have exactly the same things: a success buff, a durability heal, and an ability to increase quality. The positive about this setup is that right now all of my hotbars look essentially the same, so through muscle memory I can hit the ability that I need when I need it. One of the things that I do like about crafting is that your control points seem to regenerate each time you craft an item. I was half expecting them to work like gathering points and regenerate over time or per harvest. This makes crafting a much shorter game, which I like significantly better.

While I have joked for some time that crafting in Final Fantasy XIV is a black hole… I am here to report that this is actually a literal thing that happens apparently. I cannot tell you the last time I ran an expert dungeon for poetics, nor can I really tell you the last time I was in non-crafting gear. Because of the whole automobile thing, I ended up at a car dealership Monday night instead of attending our raid. So quite literally for the last several times I have played the game I have done nothing but crafting. The thing that shocks me is just how surprisingly “okay” I am about this thing that is happening. I am finding that I really do enjoy the crafting system, and there is something oddly gratifying about it. I expect by the time I hit 50 in every profession I will have a serious hatred for some aspects of it, but other than the fact that it is a constant gil sink… I am completely fine with turning money into crafting ability. I keep thinking about the final destination being an amazing place where I can craft anything I need on a whim.

Mistakes Were Made

I did a thing last night that I knew better than to do… but ultimately did it anyways. First off I feel like I need to get some baggage out of the way. The Witcher franchise and I have a very checkered past, namely I have been told by friends that I trust that it is this amazing experience… then I attempt to play it and it feels like shit. The first Witcher game without a doubt has the most cludgy controls I have ever experienced, and I quite literally have not made it out of the tutorial fight even though I have tried to play it multiple times. So I thought I would just skip the first one and start with the second… the problem being for whatever reason I cannot get Witcher 2 to load on my machine at all. It will boot up, but never actually starts and apparently this is a known issue with Windows 8 and that game. So I had planned to completely write the series off and skip the third one, given my lack of success with the previous two. Then several weeks back I ordered a new video card, and low and behold it came with a free copy of Witcher 3 delivered through the GOG Galaxy client. Of note I have to say I am a big fan of the Galaxy client so far, it is extremely clean.

Last night after the raid I decided to fire up the game, expecting to play for only a few minutes. The end result is that I played for an hour and a half without pause, and also without realizing it. The game is really good, like Skyrim good and runs beautifully on my system. There is a certain amount of narrative faffing that happens in the first few minutes of the game, but quickly you are dumped into a living world setting with only some vague suggestions on what you should be doing. From there you can choose to follow the directions on the map, or just wander off on your own finding interesting things in the countryside. Given my history with Elder Scrolls Games, I immediately hopped off the beaten path and started wandering around. I found a Wraith guarding a place of power, defeated it… claimed the power of the location and apparently earned my very first ability point. The entire sequence of events felt extremely natural and engaging. Additionally I completed a handful of quests that involved using my “Witcher powers” to find clues. Again it felt extremely nice, and I am finding myself getting enamored with the game without actually meaning to. I’ve been switch hitting between 360 controller and mouse and keyboard, and honestly I think I like the 360 controller the best so far. Looking forward to playing a good deal more of this over the coming nights.