Last night was effectively a repeat of Monday, but seemingly with more activity going on. I lost track of the number of Tornado warnings we were under at various points during the evening. The above photo is not mine but it is of a tornado that formed in my town. I quite possibly did the most Oklahoman thing ever and stood out on the front porch watching it happen. Before you chide me for not being safe… the storm cell was headed the opposite direction and at this point it was several miles away. Now this is not the first Tornado I have watched, but there is something mesmerizing about the process of watching it. It isn’t like the movies… the clouds feel like they are moving impossibly slowly as a plume of clouds begins to snake down towards the ground. In truth they are moving insanely fast but you just happen to be watching something massive occurring and the scale throws off any gauge of speed.
While we spent the night watching out for storms… the more insidious concern is the fact that we are having significant flooding. Thankfully where I live specifically… there isn’t much of a chance of flooding as I live outside of even what is the 500 year estimate floodplain. That said it is making travel around the area pretty rough as several of the roads that are normally completely safe to take are under water. Essentially we are in a rough spot as a state because all of the dams in this area are beyond safe capacity… meaning they are having to release way more water than they normally would. Effectively I think we are going to be past the 100 year floodplain estimates and will be setting ourselves up for the levels we have not seen since the “great flood” of 1986.
One of the things that you don’t expect in Oklahoma is the fact that we have the largest inland shipping port, and with it a huge navigational system. To add another monkey wrench into the works, last night two barges loaded with stuff broke free of their moorings and were heading towards one of the lock gates. The tugs were not available to try and round them up, because they had already rounded up two other barges that broke free earlier. So the concern is that if they slammed into the dam that is part of the lock system, and if it were to break… an entire town would effectively be wiped off the map not to mention other less immediate ramifications. For the time being however they appear to be hung up on some rocks and are still tied to each other… so folks are scrambling to try and anchor them in some more permanent fashion. Regardless the town in question has been evacuated in case things go south.
Basically right now we are living in a really weird time, and as such my game time has suffered. What you are getting from me instead in the meantime is a lot of random commentary about my life. I want to emphasize that I personally am safe and that my home is safe. The world around me however is less so… and it is interesting to be a spectator to all of the calamity going on around me. The area will most certainly be dealing with the ramifications going forward for a long time. I did however get some time to briefly play a bit of Necromancer in Elder Scrolls Online… and I have to say that the new game experience is a little weird. I am used to having the entire skill tree available to me from the start, and it seems like you only get access to something once you have used it? I didn’t get Two Handed Weapons for example until I had killed some stuff with one, at which point the skills opened up.
I still more or less plan on trying to play a Necromancer tank, but I probably should have gone through the tutorial to at least get some starter weapons. All I have found thus far in Elsweyr is a Two Handed Sword so I am using that for the moment. It feels really weird to be starved for skill points… seeing as on my main I have a stack of them that are sitting unspent. I figured a Dark Elf was probably the most likely to be a necromancer, so I went with that and with the scarred appearance. I hope to spend more time playing this when I am not dodging twisters. We were going to go buy flowers this weekend… but the Nursery is now sitting completely underwater so that won’t be happening. Memorial Day is going to be an odd one this year.
Last night was one of those nights where I was driven by a purpose… one that was over relatively quickly. For the last month in Elder Scrolls Online there has been a Summerset expansion themed event where they have been challenging users to go out and get the Summerset Pathfinder achievement. For doing this the community could earn rewards… first a pet, then a mount and finally a nonsense house. It was the nonsense house that really drew me out of the woodwork and while I feel bad that I did not participate until we had hit 100%… I still wanted to get on and do the thing before the event expired which is I believe at some point today. I have no clue when I will actually get my baubles but regardless I did the thing and saw the really pretty land mass known as Summerset in the process.
Now I am going to go back to not questing there until I managed to make it there organically. I am really stubbon and weird about wanting to do content in the correct order… and even in systems that claim not to have a correct order… I try and determine the optimal order. For example in World of Warcraft Legion… the correct starting zone was Azsuna because that was the zone that had the first tier of profession quests (minus mining which was weirdly in Highmountain). So I always started characters there in order to get them access to tradeskills as quickly as possible. Similarly I could play the Star Wars the Old Republic content in any order I choose… yet I did the leg work to research the order in which it was released and have played through it in that fashion. This is effectively what I am doing in Elder Scrolls Online as well… because I am odd.
The other thing that I played a significant amount of last night was Magic Arena which as of yesterday went into Open Beta. Now several of us have been playing the Alpha and Closed Beta for awhile now, and are sorta sad to see our stockpile of cards go away. They did a big wipe of everything between the Alpha/Closed Beta phases and in theory will not do another wipe period (unless there is some catastrophic issue that comes up between now and release). I had enough gems that I managed to purchase my way back into my favorite deck so far… which is Mono Black Creature Burn. This is by no means my creation, but I do plan on spending some time tweaking it eventually, and maybe even trying to build in for paper magic as well. It only has a value of about $15 in physical cards so it is a pretty great entry level option that can be pretty brutal. I’ve never run up against anyone playing something similar, and I think the way it works catches a lot of players off guard because it does a lot of things that deal damage to the player but mean me in the process… allowing me to break out a Chainer’s Torment pretty early for a massive creature in the process at a stage of the game that they can’t really handle a 12/12.
That said it is completely weak to any sort of creature removal and you can chump block it for days… but the deck also has a bunch of flyers to get in and plink away at anyone with an army of ground creatures. If you end up with a board stall… there are cards like Fell Specter, Vampire Neonate and Vampire Sovereign that can hit the opponent directly without actually attacking. It has a good deal of hard creature removal, so you can sort of selectively remove their big bruiser. It doesn’t have any ramp to speak of with a bunch of one drops that deal significant damage quickly like Viscious Conquistador... that deals a point of damage to the opponent just by tapping them regardless of how combat resolves… it can add up fast. However in the above game the opponent lost because they got mana screwed… not because of some skill I had.
If you have ever played Magic the Gathering in the past, I highly suggest you check out Arena. Hearthstone is cool… but it isn’t Magic. This is finally Magic the Gathering for the Hearthstone world and does an amazing job of delivering fast and fun gameplay. You start off with a selection of Mono Color themed decks, and then each day there are quests allowing you to earn additional multi color decks… like today I picked up Chaos and Mayhem which is a themed Black/Red deck from the looks of it revolving around Rekindling Phoenix. I am hoping this means I will also get back my beloved Explore matters deck… either that or I will get the tokens needed to build it. One of the key differences between Magic Arena and Hearthstone is you get tokens that are good for one card of a specific rarity, instead of having a crafting system. In some ways this is awesome, because you can swap a mythic placeholder for any mythic of your choice… but there is no way to break down the cards you have no interest in to fuel the ones you do. Basically it is a trade off but the placeholder tokens seem to still be pretty prevalent. This makes getting a Mythic Placeholder feel awesome, because you know you can trade it for the card you actually wanted to pull from that pack.
Lastly it was requested that I get pictures of outdoor cat… this is from this morning when I went out to feed and he was so much more interested in nomming the food than getting his picture taken.
This is from awhile back when you can actually see a little bit of face to go with the gratuitous munching. It is a sweet baby, but unfortunately we are full up on cats… and another family has pseudo claimed him as theirs. If they do not however let him come inside as it starts to get colder we may have to change that stance and at a bare minimum let him become garage cat… since our girls likely would not take kindly to his presence.
Tomorrow is the official launch of Blaugust and I am pretty freaking excited about it. I think last I checked we had something in the vicinity of 52 blogs signed up and I am hoping once the first topics start rolling in that number will keep incrementing upwards. July 25th through July 31st I have dubbed the Blaugust Prep Week, and what you can see from me and hopefully the other mentors is a series of posts talking about how to get started. These may range from technical discussions of WordPress vs Blogger vs Tumblr to more general discussions of picking a format for your blog or coming up with a name you won’t immediately outgrow. For the participants however, they should view this as a time to stretch their legs a bit and prepare for the month ahead. Get some of those early posts in so that you can sort out your own personal blogging rhythms.
Since we had a few more folks sign up I figure I should link their stuff here as well.
Once again if you have not taken the time to sign up, please do so. Considering we have all been there before deciding if we should be blogging at all… I promise you can do this thing. When you have signed up make sure you pop by the discord and come hang out as we chat about bloggery things.
One of the weird disconnects thematically that I have in Elder Scrolls games has always been the Dark Brotherhood. For the uninitiated, the Dark Brotherhood is a group of assassins that answer the call of the Night Mother. Around the game world individuals perform a ritual known as the Black Sacrament that calls on the Night Mother with a very specific prayer “Sweet Mother, sweet Mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear.” This prayer is heard by the Night Mother and relayed to the Listener of a specific sanctuary which then goes and seals the contract. We as players traditionally carry out these contracts that involve taking the life of someone who has generally speaking wronged someone else.
So you would expect that from within the Dark Brotherhood everyone would effectively be blood thirsty assassins ready to kill at a moments notice. While the last bit is true… the Sanctuary has a very different feel on the inside. The Dark Brotherhood represents some of the most weirdly sweet content in an Elder Scrolls game. The members all take care of each other like a family, and when you return home the various other assassins are generally happy to see you. There is something almost weirdly wholesome about the whole situation, and ultimately I think that is what makes the experience all the more unsettling.
Ultimately every tale of the Dark Brotherhood tends to end in the same manner, and I am wondering if the tale told in Elder Scrolls Online will be the same. There are several characters that I genuinely like… like the Nord who sheltered a scared werewolf girl and adopted her as his sister. Every game seems to have some characters that you just feel protective over… in spite of the fact that they are legitimately cold blooded killers. It is a bizarre juxtaposition that makes me completely uncertain how to feel about any of it… but it is also one of those guilds that I always look forward to seeing the storyline. It is progressing much slower than the Thieves Guild did, and I can’t say I am any better at getting a kill in without being noticed. That said it doesn’t really seem to matter much in the grand scheme of things as I can simply hide out until the heat and my bounty clears. The thieves guild and dark brotherhood skill lines are amazingly complimentary… and my only complaint so far is that I cannot assassinate folks during the thieves guild dailies without triggering “being seen” and reducing my timer.
This weekend the Discord was super active with folks talking about their blog and various related topics. I am traditionally super bad at following any sort of social media or chats over the weekend. I barely respond to instant message or text either because I am generally engaged in something that takes all of my attention, either that or running around. This weekend we went out junking for a bit which was extremely fun, and got this amazing ice cream at a “from scratch” sort of place a town over. I had English toffee and my wife had cotton candy and both were phenomenal to eat while we roamed around looking through the various junk shops. I mean they are all labelled as “antiques” but really… if it isn’t a junk shop I am not terribly interested in looking at it.
We had a few more people sign up for Blaugust which is awesome. If you have not done this and are at all considering it… please fill out the form link and join us in this madness. Onwards to the new blogs… one of which has yet to get complete set up but we are going to mention her anyways.
Alli – To Be Determined… but think the name “The Parent Trope” was chosen via the discord this weekend.
One of my favorite things this year is seeing us spread out. We’ve got several sign ups that listened to either the Massively OP Podcast or Geek to Geek and then I am seeing other interesting references showing some word of mouth from folks I am not sure if I even know who they are completely yet. The other thing I find interesting is several of the comments are written in a way as though they think maybe I don’t know who they are. If you are a long time reader of my blog and a regular favoriter or commenter regardless of the venue… blog, twitter, wordpress reader… I promise I know who you are and am super happy anytime I see you pop up in my notifications.
It isn’t often that I link my podcast from the weekend in my Monday morning post but maybe that is a thing I should do more often. This weekend it is directly related to the sort of weekend I had, namely it is a show where we largely talk about Elder Scrolls Online and our recent renaissance with that game. At this moment myself, Ash, Tam, Kodra, Void, Neph, Thalen and Lyle are playing it more or less in various states of “active”. I believe ToadChild and Eliyon are also playing as well but I have not really seen them online… either that or not as a name I would recognize them as. We have a pair Miko and Uldane14 that seem to be leveling together in Morrowind because their levels stay synchronized but never respond to guild chat so not sure who they are.
One of the things you have to realize about House Stalwart in Elder Scrolls Online… is this represents the last great guild that I tried to build. That is not to say that I have not done my fair share of recruiting for various guilds and continue to do so to this day. Stalwart on ESO however was my last guild building experiment where I attempted to get all of the people who know me and all of the people they know together in one room… and over night blossom into a guild of like 150 people at the launch of the game. We had folks that I knew from various games I had played, folks who worked on said various games… lots of members of the blogging and content creation community including Dulfy for a bit because we had bumped into each other during the alpha. It was a massive thing and so long as folks were willing to abide by the three tenets they were welcome.
The only problem with that is there are a large number of people in the guild that I do not remember at all. In fact there was at least one person I kicked recently that was the ex-husband of a good friend of mine who left her under some seemingly shady conditions. When there is a situation like that I tend to punt the spouse as a precautionary measure just so at some point in the future there isn’t a moment when they are both online and forgot that they were both in that same guild. Anyways this is not at all what I intended to be talking about this morning, but suffice to say there are a lot of people in the guild and since you can technically be in five guilds at once… not many have left. I have two guild slots left, and in truth one of those could be easily pruned in a pinch because I think we only used it as a private extension of the guild bank.
The thing I actually wanted to talk about this morning is how my opinion has shifted in relation to a topic from this game. When it first rolled out I remember myself being extremely frustrated by their version of the Auction House system. I had gotten used to games like World of Warcraft that had overarching global Auction House systems that allowed you to within moments search everything that was available for sale. It felt extremely efficient, but in hindsight it also has lead to practices that I am not quite so down with like the various gold making schemes that involve playing the Auction House and looking for bargains. This isn’t my jam… because I don’t really have that day trader instinct and as a result it always just seemed to unnaturally inflate the price of things making it harder for me to get what i wanted. I remember receiving threatening messages in game from a bag making cartel when I dared to break their agreed upon price point and sold some bags for less to move them quickly. I told them if they didn’t like it… buy my bags and relist them but otherwise I will do whatever the hell I want.
So for the uninitiated instead of an Auction House system, Elder Scrolls Online has a series of Guild Traders that are located throughout the world and in clusters that can be found in most towns. I tend to personally refer to these areas as Traders Row and in most cases they are fairly close to the Wayshrine making it easy to pop over and check them. Now each Trader is bid upon by various guilds in a blind bidding scheme for a fixed bid cycle, and then that guild is charged a weekly rate to maintain the guild store. I have no real first hand experience of this other than one of my guilds regularly has an active trader somewhere in the world. When your guild has a trader you have the ability to sell items on the guild store to anyone who happens across your trader and decides to open the inventory and purchase something.
This has a lot of interesting side effects… namely that all traders are not created equal. The traders that are in higher rent districts for lack of a better term… areas of that have higher churn from the player base tend to have much higher prices. So I am sure over in Summerset, the brand new expansion the prices of items on those traders would be artificially inflated to account for the fact that in order to win that trader… the blind bid that guild had to put up was likely extremely significant. Now the inverse is true as well… if you find some trader in a backwater area that isn’t even a main city… the items you find on that vendor are likely going to be extremely cheap. This creates a cycle of being able to find bargains… if you are willing to go do the leg work. There is technically a search engine for items… but it isn’t very complete and requires that people be running an addon that updates the pricing.
Instead what I did on Friday night was spent roughly two hours popping around from town to town looking for deals. I was ultimately trying to complete the Dwemer crafting set, but in the process I also completed the outlaw weapons and the rest of my mercenary armor pieces. This process involved taking a way shrine to what I thought I remembered as one of the main towns in a region, making my way to the traders row and searching each of the vendors looking for any of the items I currently was hunting for. What should have been tedium… honestly felt pretty enjoyable. Each region has its own feel and its own group of people that prefer to frequent it. For example like I have talked about how Shornhelm is my home in this world… there seems to be people that feel that way about almost every city.
Over the course of several trips to various guild traders, I found myself noticing a lot of the same names hanging out around them. It feels like a trader may anchor a guild to a location and with it gives the world a tangible destination feel that has been lacking from other games. The world is massive, but it also feels lived in… populated with players who happen to prefer one area to another and go there to deal with their “upkeep”. Just like I preferred Iron Forge for years… and later the Dwarven Quarter… you can prefer Elden Root to Daggerfall and it is perfectly okay because there is nothing that you can get in one location or other other that makes one superior. I guess that isn’t entirely fair… given that you need to go to a faction Capitol to get your Undaunted dailies but that really isn’t that big of a deal.
In a game with instant travel… it has been interesting to see how many things are there to keep you connected to one location over another.
