The Horizon

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A few days ago I saw this tweet from Grimsley, and meant to say something about it…  the other posts happened between.  I had not exactly put it into words but I have been noticing the same thing.  Initially I thought it was simply me that was no longer excited about these new games, but then I noticed that not that many folks in my otherwise MMO-Centric twitter feed seems to be getting excited either.  Sure there was an up-welling of folks playing Black Desert Online a few months back, but it felt like a splash in the pan compared to when folks shifted to Rift, Wildstar, or a plethora of other games to come up on the MMO front over the last decade.  Recently I ended up picking up Riders of Icarus because I had friends playing it…  but after a weekend of playing have not touched it since.  I had a very similar experience with Skyforge, where I played it for a week and some change, and then once again I was simply done with it and back to other titles.  There seemed to be this period of time where there was constantly the next big thing on the horizon… but that era appears to be dead and gone at least when it comes to AAA MMO titles.  Every now there are flareups, like with the launch of The Division.  However it feels like the era of the western published MMO is also good and dead, which might be part of the reason we stopped looking forward to these “next big things”.

South Korea is going through a bit of a renaissance still, as evidenced by the number of new MMOs coming out from there… that are often times localized for the North American market.  The big problem there is that I have found that I don’t really get into these games nearly as much as I did to their western fantasy counter parts.  Sure I played ArcheAge but the story of that game was largely nonsense, and I kept playing just because it gave me a huge world to explore full of lots of super intricate systems.  Blade and Soul I had a similar experience, where no matter how good the localization team did at making awesome relevant jokes…  I just didn’t find myself caring one little bit about the Hongmoon School.  In both cases a story is being told, that fundamentally feels like it was not intended for me to be playing it.  I am not saying that is a bad thing necessarily, because not every game has to be for every player.  The only problem is this is an added depth of “gunshy” that I have when I see an otherwise cool looking game that comes from the Korean market.  Another big part of the bounce factor for me is the inclusion of player versus player as the eventual end game.  That is not something I am likely to ever enjoy, especially not in an open world setting…  and as I entered that area of the world in ArcheAge it felt like the world around me got significantly less intricate because our time was supposed to be spent fighting other players.  Of note I am currently subscribed to ArcheAge so that game clearly left its mark on me, and caused me to dig in rather than bounce off, but I feel like it might be the outlier rather than the rule.

What I am finding however is that instead of looking forward to a new game coming to ride in on a white horse and save me from other MMOs…  I am looking to games that I have loved in the past and the content that they are creating.  I have always been one of those players to go back and revisit old games, and currently I have accounts active in Rift, ArcheAge, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV.  Additionally I poke my head in every now and then in Wildstar, and Everquest II to see how those games are going.  Essentially instead of following new games, I find myself following patch notes to see which game has something so interesting that I have to leap back into it for awhile.  Star Wars the Old Republic for example completely changed the way that game works, and at some point in the near future once other games die down a bit, I have a feeling I will be falling headfirst into the new content.  Similarly there is a lot of awesome stuff going on in Elder Scrolls Online, and at some point I want to return there and gobble up all the new fruit hanging on that tree.  I find that I am very much still a “content locust” except in this case I find myself returning to games I have already explored, rather than continually venturing forth into brand new worlds to stake my claim there.  There is this rich wealth of games that have survived, and sometimes even thrived… and I just seem to place my focus there instead of looking to the horizon.  A prime example is that as of tomorrow the next few months of my life will be dominated by the World of Warcraft Legion expansion… and then in October at Fanfest I fully expect the next Final Fantasy XIV expansion to be announced so we can begin looking forward to that as well.  There are still objects on the Horizon, they are just linked to other objects that are already familiar.

Belghula Rising

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This week marks the last week of the Legion Invasion event, and with it goes the insane leveling elevator that many of us have ridden over and over.  At this point I have every slot on Argent Dawn Alliance filled with level 100 characters, and over the last bit of this week I have been pushing Belghula my female Orc Warlock on The Scryers.  Scryers is a linked realm with Argent Dawn and when that occurred I made the choice to roll a complete set of Hordies over there, so that I could hang out and play with friends I had other the other side of the server.  The Argent Dawn community has always been an odd one, and for a period of time we had a thriving official… and later unofficial server forum.  I still somewhat wish I had not killed the domain behind that forum, but at that time I thought I didn’t really want to be playing World of Warcraft anymore.  In any case I have a large community of horde friends that I love dearly, but never got to play with.  When I purchased Legion I ended up using my boost to create a level 100 Tauren Paladin and I even got to raid over there for a period of time…  until Sundays didn’t really work that well for me.  Now I am pushing up a second 100 to have a more balanced set of characters to play.  Something happened and I decided that I don’t mind casters… and even really like the Warlock so that ultimately is the one I have decided to push.

Last night during the podcast I managed to get her to level 95, so it should be relatively trivial to finish off and ding 100 today.  Similarly I have an Orc Deathknight waiting in the wings as well in the 60s… but I am not completely sure if I am going to push it hard or not.  I would like to at a minimum get it to 80 because the Cataclysm/Panda/Warlords grind seems much faster than getting a single character through Wrath of the Lich King.  I’ve talked about this in the past, but content design has changed a lot since Wrath and quest stacking was a much harder proposal back then than it is now.  By quest stacking I mean gathering up a bunch of quests related to a specific area and then burning through them all at once.  As far as the Cataclysm/Panda/Warlords grind… I feel like I have that one down to an artform jumping zones each time my adventure guide lights up telling me there is a new zone to jump to.  The most interesting thing about the whole experience however has been seeing how folks have broken the event over their knee and abused the hell out of the system.  The other day I talked a bit about the idea of resetting the event, but ultimately decided that it just made it a boring grind.  Some folks however have apparently taken this process to the extreme.

Last night I was sitting in the Crossroads minding my own business and working on the event, when someone broadcast a message across general talking about an Exp Grinding party.  They had auto invite scripts set up so that if someone typed 1 in chat it would throw out a raid invite.  The level of organization was impressive, even to the level of asking those of us who happened to have two seated mounts to use those and give rides to the players who were on foot or on slow land mounts.  From there we took a very specific route, killing what I feel was probably the optimal path through the mobs.  There were several times were we paused for a second to wait for the next mob in the sequence to spawn in… or when she went off to pull one that was within range to burn them down at the same time.  I cannot state how impressive this level of organization and cooperation from players actually ended up being.  She shouted the next target to general so that anyone else NOT in our raid could also reap the benefit.  The real coordination however was that when we finished phase three she told everyone to log out, and disbanded the party.  The idea being that when everyone logged back in they would potentially be in the same Stage 1 event.  I went ahead and finished out this event and moved to the next zone instead, but I have to marvel at how well that worked.  In truth I don’t want to really abuse this event, because doing it legitimately provides more than enough experience and loot for my tastes.  That said I guess this method probably works much faster and provides and endless supply of experience in one of the easier zones that the event is taking place.

Introducing Luna

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This is the Luna, and you all have not been properly introduced to her.  There has been a reason in part because we have been trying to see if she would ever get accustomed to living in our world.  Roughly a month ago after losing Chloe we went to a pet store… because sometimes playing with the “babbys” makes us happy.  They however were having some “clear the shelter” event, and the store was full of animals hoping to get adopted.  We of course went back to look at the cats, and the shelter showing there was one that we had gotten several animals from in the past.  They had some really lovely animals, but nobody really tugged at our heartstrings, so I was fully expecting to exit the store and get on with our lives.  It was at this moment that my wife deviated from the course.  Instead of exiting the building the decided for some reason to turn down this row of dogs.  We are not dog people, and while other folks dogs are cute and friendly…  we are not exactly the type to look at dogs regularly in pet stores.  Now up until this point it seemed like the store was very clearly segregated into the “dog” area and the “cat” area, but as she got to the end of the row of dogs she found a cage with Luna in it.  She was there all alone and looked frightened to be mixed in with all of these dogs.  The shelter showing was from roughly an hour and a half away from the Tulsa area, and literally had the one cat.  We spent some time with her, taking her into a walled off area…  during which time she was affectionate but also spent most of the time just exploring the confines of the area.

As we went about our day my wife started to warm to the idea of bringing home Luna, but we also had a bunch of errands to run.  So we did the whole thing of…  “if she is still there when we get back, we will consider it”.  Turns out that sure enough she was still there and that the folks from the sheltered hoped we would be back by.  Traditionally when we bring a new animal into our house we set up a little sequestered environment up in my wife’s office with a separate litter box, and food… and kinda keep the cat walled of for a few days to get adjusted to the new environment.  Then when we start letting them out into the house as a whole, the office serves as a bit of a safe place for them to keep going back to.  So far this process has not gone as planned.  Traditionally when we get a new animal the moment we decide to let them out into the house… they are happy to go exploring.  Luna on the other hand seems to be afraid of the outside world.  Now when we talked to the shelter folks we specifically asked about how she did with other animals.  They specifically said that she doesn’t really like dogs, but is completely fine around other cats.  So far however that has not been the case, because she is not blending well.

Kenzie our youngest admittedly can be a little butt, and even though Allie and her tolerate each other than can still get into spats.  Luna and Kenzie specifically do not get along at all, so what has ended with these moments of taking her around the house with us and closing off a room so she would be comfortable.  We tried to just start opening the door to let her out of the office, but then found that she simply was not eating and drinking.  I guess she was afraid to leave the area of her bed to cross the office to get to the food dish.  After moving that closer to her bed and into her safe area she started eating like we would have epected.  Now she expects me to bring her wet food every morning, and meows at me until I have done so.  Over the last week I have been opening up the office when I get home from work hoping that she might take the initiative to go out and explore the house.  She seems to be less skittish about the other cats, or at the very least has begun to fight back against Kenzie.  They really had not gotten into a real fight up until now…  but it was a lot of meowing and making sounds that are extremely similar to “oreo”.  The last few days however she has run Kenzie out of “her” room a few times, so she seems to be getting a little bolder.

Yesterday however was a bit of a turning point, of a sort at least.  I opened the office door when I got home, like I have for the last while, and I went upstairs to check on her a few times where she wanted copious amounts of attention.  However late in the evening I heard her out in the loft, and next thing I know it she was walking along the banister and staring down meowing at me.  So I went upstairs and gave her more attention, and apparently she settled into the top of the couch and took a nap.  When it came time for bed, I went upstairs to shut the office thinking she had retreated, but she was still sitting in the loft happily perched on the couch.  At this point I made a decision and just left her alone, hoping that maybe she was finally starting to get comfortable with the house.  Now over the last few weeks there have been several times where my wife took Luna to bed with her, since she goes to bed way earlier than I do most nights.  She would shut off the bedroom and before long Luna would be snugged up on her.  When I came to bed I got the job of being the bad guy and taking her back up to the safety of the office.  I could tell she was hungry and thirsty because as soon as the office door was shut she would bolt from my arms and run to the food dish like she was starving and then make her way to the litter box before coming back to me for attention.

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Apparently last night she got lonely up in the loft, and found her way downstairs to the bedroom at 1:30 in the morning.  This caused a massive cat fight, or at least a massive amount of noise and motion.  To which Luna went under the bed, and the other cats were scared out of the room.  After trying to calm down the babies it was around 2 am… and I simply could not get back to sleep.  I did not finally get back to sleep until 3:30 or so… so at this point I am groggy as hell.  However it feels like progress.  Throughout the night she kept braving getting up on the bed with us, only to run off when another cat entered the room.  The whole experience has to be equally traumatic for them, and I have been trying throughout this to be wherever Luna was not so that they had some sort of stable anchor to go hang out with.  So as the night went on we alternated having Luna in bed with us, an having Kenzie and Allie with Luna under the bed.  Once we finally got up and around I carried her back upstairs where once again she went to get food… but this time I didn’t close the office door.  She didn’t seem to mind at all and went about her normal business…  and was quickly begging for wet food.  A few minutes ago while typing this, she was back out in the loft meowing down at me…  so even though it was a rough night for me personally with the whole not getting much sleep thing…  I am hoping that we made actual progress.

She is a very sweet cat, and I think she will do well with the others…. if we can ever get past the phase where they are scared of each other.  I thought it was high time however to introduce you all to her.

Empty Island

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This is one of those days where Bel is struggling to exist in the world.  As a result I am not exactly sure how cogent of a post you are going to get out of me.  In theory I went to bed early last night, but in practice that does not seem to have actually helped.  In fact this morning I feel more sluggish than I have in a long time.  So I wobbled through the house, fixed a cup of coffee… and then immediately fell into an internet hole as my brain tried to do literally anything it could do to keep from writing a post this morning.  As a result it is like 30 minutes past the normal time I sit down and begin writing, and I am still finding I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to talk about.  Last night I did two things… Invasion and Witness.  I feel like I have talked about the Invasion to an extremely length, and there isn’t really much there to discuss… especially since it goes away in a very few days.  There are issues right now with players leaving after phase 2, in order to reset the event back to phase 1.  This is making phase 3 a little hellish, but all in all it still provides a silly amount of experience, and I am still attempting to get the Horde Warlock up as far as I can make it before the event runs out.  I also have the AggroChat show devoted to The Witness this week, so I am playing it in spurts as well.  I am not really sure what exactly I can say about it other than that.

The game is extremely beautiful, and I like the world it is set in.  Much like Overwatch however I just wish it was a different game.  Ultimately I went into this game expecting Myst, and it is definitely not that.  I am realizing that the reason why I enjoyed those games is that the puzzles felt like I was uncovering a story.  In Myst you were essentially chasing Atrus and unraveling what happened to the different ages and what exactly was happening with Sirrus and Achenar.  In 7th Guest and 11th Hour you were solving mysteries and the puzzles lead to giving you clues about what was going on in both of those games.  Witness on the other hand seems to just be puzzles for the sake of being puzzles, and the truth is after solving thirty five or so last night… I am already bored with it.  The biggest problem is…  what I thought would be some story payoff for the puzzle solving just turned out to reward me with a super pretentious video of James Burke from 1978.  I guess that is the problem I am having with this game… it exists to be itself.  There just doesn’t seem to be a point, or at least any glimmer of a point has yet to reveal itself.  Which is I guess a bit sad given how generally good the game is at teaching you how it wants you to solve the puzzles.  There is just enough friction there to make the moment it all clicks to be enjoyable…  but it also doesn’t feel like it is leading to anything.

The other problem I am having is that the game seems to want me to visit locations in a certain order, but does nothing to actually restrict my movement.  As a result I wound up at a puzzle long before I was supposed to be there.  There were a series of screens designed to teach me the lessons I needed to know to unlock said puzzle, but I didn’t find them until I had already completed the puzzle that used those elements.  So I feel like this is a game where my general desire to get off of the main path… is going to cause me a significant amount of trouble.  Right now I am not a huge fan, but I am going to continue playing to see if that changes.