Tales of the Aggronaut

Specimen Captured

May 3, 2013May 3, 2013 by Belghast

This is day eight of my experiment, and this is the first day I really don’t know what to write about. I knew this day would come sooner or later, as writers block is almost always the headsman’s axe for my blog. I think it could be a bunch of separate things happening all at once. Firstly it has gone from sunny and 80* here in Oklahoma, to dark, dreary and 35*. On top of this, I have a big server move scheduled for 10pm Saturday evening that I am fairly nervous about.

Hellbug Rally

Pretty much my overarching mission for the day was to try and get one of the Hellbugs before the crossover event disappeared. For those who are not familiar with them, the Hellbug is one of the archetypal creatures in the new Trion Worlds and SyFy game/show combo… Defiance. They remind me of a cacodemon from Doom… with legs. Right now in rift, there seems to be a one in five shot of any spawning fire rift being a “Invasive Species” Hellbug rift. Granted this is completely through incidental observance and is “not a real number”.

The big problem I have had is that I have no clue where the best place is to FIND Hellbug rifts . Wednesday night I devoted a bit of time to farming Fire rifts, and never even saw a single one. Thursday at lunch and early evening, I ping ponged between the level 50 top end zones, namely Shimmersand and managed to see three… and in most cases those were just as they were closing.

ARAM Strikes Back

After a few hours of this, mumble was filling up and I needed a break from the skull drudgery of killing closing “not hellbug rifts”. When we had four people online, I got coaxed into doing an ARAM map over in League of Legends. I had initially thought that Tam was going to queue us up for another 2v2 battle… but much to my surprise we were going out into the main queue. We picked up a 5th random, with whom I traded Jayce for Volibear that apparently we were both more comfortable with… and we proceeded into the map.

The takeaway is that I still suck at League of Legends. I had a good time and it was a close map but honestly there is still so much of the time I am running around not really knowing quite what to do. Playing a full on melee support character against a bunch of ranged characters is one of those situations. I like everything about Voli, but he is definitely a “set someone else up for the kill” character. I never could seem to get in sync with the other players on the map.

After that we played a couple of Summoners Rift maps, mostly to get various friends their kill of the day bonus. On the first I played Darius, who is still brutal and awesome to play. On the second I played my current favorite, Wukong and did sizably worse. I played a bit too aggressive a bit too early and wound up underfed for most of the map. After that I was just playing catch up trying to eat all the minions I could. I still have not gotten terribly good at “last hitting” and ended up with way too many minions wasted.

Specimen Captured

After those last few maps, I decided I would head back downstairs and work towards my goal of capturing the illusive Hellbug. Shortly after logging into my account on my laptop, I noticed a player asking for more for a Hellbug Raid group. I figured… sure what the hell, it is not like I had been having much luck on my own. I made my way to City Core, and after a few minutes received a player summon directly into the heart of an Invasive Species rift.

The cool thing about the Raid, is that they seemed to have found a pattern where one had not existed before. We systematically crossed the zone hitting various Fire rifts, with about every third one seeming to be a Hellbug rift. It all felt very reminiscent of trying to spawn the “Ancient Cyclops” in South Ro… but the raid leader seemed to know what he was doing. At the very least it did not involve killing every other mummy or some nonsense like that.

It was round about my fifth Hellbug rift that two things happened. Firstly upon closing my Fifth Rift I got an achievement: When Worlds Collide which apparently happens after reaching the final stage of five of these new rifts. Additionally the achievement nets you the very cool <Ark Hunter> title. Upon receiving my loot, I also noticed that I had acquired a Skittering Hellbug (rifthead does to appear to have parsed yet). Based on discussions with some of my G+ Rift friends, I got extremely lucky to get the mount this soon.

Based on the write-up over on Rift Scene that I linked the other day, it appears that Skittering Hellbug and Skritt pet are the green quality items and red in appearance, Gulanite Hellbug and Burple are the blue quality items and purple in appearance, and finally Toxic Hellbug is the purple quality item and green in appearance. I have no clue if there is also a Toxic Hellbug pet as well, especially since Rifthead lacks any of these items right now. The Toxic Hellbug is rare enough, that in the rift raid, and tempest bay I have yet to see one.

Hellbug of a Different Color

I had quite a lot of fun once I managed to get into a viable rolling raid. I hope to join up again tonight and try my luck at getting one of the other colors and at least one of the companions. While I doubt if a hellbug would ever replace my Snogs, I am a total sucker for pets and mounts. Additionally, I really need to make my way back out to Ember Isle, especially now that it is no longer as heavily farmed and see if I can find any of the other rares.

While I didn’t much feel like writing, I guess I was able to force myself through the process and write anyway. I guess I can throw writing in the same bin with “parties”, in that they greatly stress me out and I try and avoid them… but if I actually attend I usually have a good time. I’ve been enjoying writing to you, my mythical audience. It is always interesting writing something, knowing it is going to go out into public… but also knowing that it is highly unlikely to actually garner any comments.

If you’ve made it this far… I hope you all have a great day, and I hope it is followed by an even better start of the weekend. I have no clue what we are going to be doing, but based on the pile of laundry and the state of our house it will involve some cleaning. I know at some point soon I have to get cable run to a couple of rooms, which will involve making sure nothing is in the way. It has been interesting getting past the initial seven days… I have no clue how long I will actually be able to keep this going.

Breaching the Core

May 2, 2013May 2, 2013 by Belghast

One of the pains of living in Oklahoma is the shifting weather patterns. Last night when I went to bed it was roughly 80* and this morning as I am waking up it is 45*. At this point I wish it would just pick a season and go with it, because flipping back and forth between heat and air conditioning is a pain in the butt. Despite the weather annoyances, yesterday went pretty awesome for me. I had two fairly huge meetings, both of which went extremely well, and the roadmap I had slaved over was well accepted.

Hellbugs on my yard

Yesterday it was announced in the patch notes that a new kind of Fire Rift was opening up in Telara. These “Invasive Species” rifts have a chance of dropping either the hellbug mount pictured above, or a hellbug companion pet. Rift Scene has a good writeup by Cupcakes about the event, and last night I started to see players on these new mounts showing up in Tempest Bay. It was late in the night and I honestly forgot to take a screenshot, so I am doing something I dislike doing and linking to the Rift Scene image for reference… hopefully I have given sufficient credit.

I spent the better part of the evening roaming around trying to find one of these Hellbug rifts. After roaming around Morban, Kingsward, and eventually several old world areas I came up completely empty handed. Going to need to do some research to see where they are more likely to spawn. I really want either the purple one, or the super rare green one. While I played enough defiance to know it was not really a game for me, I am all about cross overs and new mounts.

A.R.A.M.

I popped onto mumble, and after a bit of chatting with my friends and listening to their banter about League of Legends, I allowed myself to get drawn in for a quick map. I was reintroduced to the concept of A.R.A.M. aka All Random All Murderbridge. We had done this the night before, but I didn’t realize it was an actual “thing”. Apparently the Howling Abyss really wants me to play Nunu, because once again I got him assigned to me as my random champion.

I promise Nunu is not like the only champion I have unlocked. The game should have been able to pick from Alistair, Annie, Ashe, Darius, Garen, Graves, Jayce, Kennen, Olaf, Shen, Tristana, Udyr or Wukong… but instead in both cases it picked Nunu which is part of the weeks free rotation. Apparently it thinks I need more Yeti in my life. Moaning aside, I have to say I am finally feeling like I am getting used to him.

Once again ARAM assigned us one champion that we were familiar with and one that we were not per team. So it essentially ended up with Tam playing Morgana vs Rae playing Nidalee… and then Drathis trying to play Alistair vs me trying to play Nunu. It was a really good match and we had a “no towers down” stalemate at midbridge for most of the map.

Tam and I actually managed to make a break, get a 15 minute into the game double kill, and drop two towers. Then all hell broke loose as my shitty DSL internet connection fell apart. My ping climbed up to 500, then 1500, then 3500 and disconnected me from the game. At which point we never really recovered. In true sportsmanlike tradition, Drathis and Rae asked if they should hang back until my connection stabilized but we urged them onwards… since a map against friends is a map against friends.

Breaching the Core

I wrote about this the other day, but over the weekend Plasmodia and I had talked about trying to pull together some groups on Wednesday nights. We had set a startup time of 9pm Central, and after my one ARAM map it was getting close to the meet up time. We managed to pull together a really solid core of a team, and they were totally willing to run non-elite dungeons so my nub arse could join in. We ended up with Plasmodia tanking, Marklaar running support, me dpsing, and Aleriase healing. This left us only needing a single dps, so the queue times were near instantaneous.

We got assigned Empyrean Core, which a few of us had never seen before. The zone itself was amazingly beautiful, full of super intricate widgets and bobbles. The thing that really surprised me however was just how challenging the dungeon still was. Previously the Elites were super hard, but the normal dungeons were a bit faceroll-y once you actually managed to hit cap. Last night I was the only under level player, and it each of the boss rights were still rather challenging.

We ended up doing two runs last night, and getting assigned Empyrean Core both times (apparently this is a problem in Rift). I had a complete and total blast, and hanging out with the Alea Iacta Est rift contingency was awesome. Aleriase mentioned that they had been trying to start doing group nights both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I am completely down with doing more of this in the future. I am not sure if we will regenerate the numbers needed to raid, but any kind of grouping with friends is always a positive.

Dungeoneering Challenge

I had almost forgotten just how much I have missed running challenging content with friends. I have been in a real lull of good group content of late. The last time I feel like I was truly challenged in a dungeon was back in The Secret World, running the Nightmare mode content with the friends I have been playing League with. The content was brutal, we had to constantly think on our feet, but the adjustment process was a blast.

I had hoped that with Pandaria we would at least have a period of time when heroic content was an actual challenge. But from the first night, we essentially steamrolled the dungeons we ran in greens and a smattering of quested blues. I think in part that is a good reason why I got bored of WoW so quickly this time around. WoW for whatever reason has forgotten how to be challenging, without resorting to random or downright “Cheap Shot” tactics. Random chance that a mob kills you outright, or does something so horrible you just can’t recover is not challenging, it is just annoying.

If I can actually muster a regular group in Rift, I can see myself sticking around for awhile. In these games I am happiest when the groups come easily, and we can go off and smash baddies together each night. I get bored and slog down when the grouping stops, and my only option becomes pugging. So much of the grouping experience… are the people you experience it with. In most cases, I would rather not play a game at all than to deal with pugs.

Tiny Two-hander

Last night gathered up some much needed gear for 60 through the various dungeon runs. One of the few pieces that I could actually equip now, is a Protector’s Sword of Slaying pictured above. This was a pretty massive upgrade over the two level 58 green one-handers I was using, but as you can see above, the scale feels a wee bit small for a Bahmi. Maybe I am just used to the final fantasy-esc big dude with an even bigger sword trope that wow ran with, but it is just too “normal” for me to feel epic about it.

I will say though it has been fun trying to two-hander. I’ve always gravitated towards dual wield, and in the original rift game what kind of weapons you wielded really mattered for your soul. As such I always gravitated towards paragon heavy souls, which were the dual wield tree. I had not however played around with a two-hander since they made it no longer matter what weapon you were wielding with which soul. That alone has been fun and well worth any wipes that happened in the core.

I am really hoping that over the next few days, I can use this sword as a dowsing rod to help me find some of those hellbug rifts. I would really love to have one of those mounts, and I have missed out on so many other cool mounts thanks to my bad luck and my wanderlust. I am super grateful to my guildies for pulling together the groups last night. I had a blast and look forward to doing it again.

I see my time is running short, and my coffee has run out. If you’ve made it down this far in the post… I wish you the best of days. I will have to pull my coat back out of the closet as I go off to work, but I am hoping that by the weekend it will be warm again. Hopefully it is pleasant wherever you are.

Wukong is super annoying

May 1, 2013 by Belghast

Yesterday more than mildly sucked. While I was blogging in the morning, just after posting it… I managed to stub my toe hard enough on something sharp under my desk… that it caused a chunk of my toenail to chip off and a little bout of excessive bleeding. After that my stomach pretty much bothered me all day long, and I tagged out of work around noon. I worked remotely the rest of the day trying to catch up and prepare for big releases on Thursday and Saturday.

Escapist Thwarted

All of this, combined with trying to come up with a new way to circumvent my ninja ferret caused me to get a later than normal start on evening relaxation time. On the ferret note, our current solution seems to be working… and I am breathing at least a minor sigh of relief. We have a drop ceiling in our kitchen, circa 1980, with those massive semi-opaque sheets of plastic covering fluorescent lighting. Over the years the 1980s plastic has fallen apart, and we have had to replace them on a piecemeal basis.

We had just finished doing this, and still had the leftover bits in the kitchen when a stroke of brilliance hit. Basically Miss Bellatrix is getting out by climbing the corner with the litter box. We surmised that if she did not have a foothold, she couldn’t get out. So essentially we have taken two sheets of this plastic covering and clipped it onto the wire with binder clips from the backside, so that it presents a sheer face for her to try and climb.

Based on last night, and the fact we left her out over night as an experiment… and she is still pouncing around the playpen this morning… I would say the experiment worked. The funny thing is, I think she just tries to escape out of boredom. She sleeps far less than the other two ferrets, and when she has gotten out she tried to crawl up into bed with us.

My theory was that she was bored and looking for someone to play with… she often tries to wake the other two ferrets up to play. So the whole escape thing is kind of adorable… but something we had to nip in the bud, because our house is just too dangerous for her. We have an open living room, that spans 2 stories, and a second floor balcony that overlooks it. It is just too likely that she will wander up there and try and take a swan dive off.

Freljord Rising

Yesterday was a big day for new content releases. In Everquest 2 you had the Game Update 66 launch, and with it the launch of the Cobalt Scar area. Neverwinter Online of course launched to the public, and has been riddled with issues at least with the patcher. Early in the evening I decided to fire up the client and log in, and was greeted by a roughly 8000 player queue. So it appears that the launch is at least popular, but then again most MMO launches are.

The content launch I ended up playing last night however is League of Legends and its patch 3.6. The big event with the patch is a massive re-ordering of the champion lore in Freljord and the release of a brand new champion… Lissandra The Ice Witch. I would highly suggest watching the above video if you are interested, but the basics are that the Freljord is now divided into three warring clans: The Avarosans lead by Ashe, The Winter’s Claw lead by Sejuani and the Frostguard lead by Lissandra.

With the focus on Freljord and its lore, this week all of the free rotation champions are somehow connected to this effort. With it, there is a much more sweeping sale going on in the store, with ALL Freljord champions costing both reduced RP and IP. Additionally there are some nifty new skins available, my personal favorite is Runeguard Volibear. I already really liked playing Voli, but this skin just makes him look even more badass.

Sucking Less

It was pretty late by the time I had gotten around to actually doing much of anything, and since I had not played League for roughly a week… I decided to join in the festivities there. While waiting on our group to filter into mumble, we decided to do a little 2 v 2 “Murder Bridge” aka Howling Abyss. To be extra griefy… Tam decided to set us up for a random champions match. By the artwork above you can see that I got stuck with NuNu. What essentially happened is two players got champions they were familiar and decent with, and two completely random picks they had never played.

Making it even more hilarious was the fact that we ended up with four melee champions. The teams broke down like this: Myself playing Nunu and Drathis playing Tryndamere against Tam playing Warwick and Ashgar playing Udyr. My big takeaway from playing Nunu is that his frostbolt is without a doubt one of the most griefy pokes I have seen in the game, especially on a map that includes nothing but melee that have no solid ways of closing the gap.

We lost rather spectacularly in part because Drathis ended up spending most of the map pretty underfed, which as a carry caused him never quite to reach his potential. Also… Ashgar is really really good at Udyr, a champion he was super familiar with and rather skilled. It was hilarious for Tam and I however, because really Nunu and Warwick are much much not our kind of champions… much laughing ensued.

Wukong is super annoying

After our quick murder bridge, we somehow jumped from four players online to eight and decided to do a 4v4 Summoners Rift. After the ickyness of playing Nunu, a champion that I absolutely hate when playing against him… I decided to climb back into the warmth of what has become my favorite champion… Wukong. When playing against each other, it is always interesting. Some of us, Rae especially, seem to have a problem killing friends, and you can almost hear her audibly cringe each time she does it. Others like Ashgar and I seem to set up and develop a friendly rivalry, which unfortunately causes us to deathmatch more than we should.

Another thing I am learning, is that apparently I am super annoying playing Wukong. Ashgar and I both ended up as solo tops, which pitted Wukong against Fizz… both of which are super bursty and super pouncy champions. For the most part we traded blows back and forth, but once I had gotten fed I seemed to start winning these little battles. Apparently my Ultimate ability is super overpowered, and after a few interludes where I went through the jungle to help out in another lane… it seemed my dear friends started hunting for me.

At one point they boxed me in, as two came down from base and the other two came from the river and completely wrecked me. It is funny to listen to your friends reacting to the decoy ability, and finding out that it is not the real you they just killed. I have to say if I were up against Wukong I would probably focus fire him as well. The game felt like a tale of two games, the first when I was super fed and able to pick off players with impunity, and the second when said players realized what was going on and started gunning for me.

Champion Testing

After the mega 4v4 battle, we had a few more players filter off and we fired up a Summoner’s Rift vs bots to test out various champions folks had wanted to play. I got to play Olaf, which I played extremely differently than I expected… but was really enjoyable nonetheless. In addition, I finally got to play Mordekaiser, which is NOT as fun as he looks… and most definitely not a “Belghast” champion. I think I could get used to him, but I feel like I need to do a lot of reading first.

Was a fun evening all around, and I got to play several characters that I had never played before. I am of mixed opinions on my Nunu experience, I was told by my friends that I played him pretty effectively, but overall it just felt so odd to me. He also feels like one of the most griefy champions I have seen, with the frost ball and his ultimate… so many ways to slow the player and do large amounts of damage to them in the process. I could see maybe picking him up and trying him again.

If you aren’t regularly playing, I highly suggest you hop in during the Freljord launch event. There is a much better assortment of killer champions in the free rotation this week than normal. Or at least, there are more champions I was wanting to play, and most of them on a significant sale. If you’ve made it this far in the post, I hope you guys continue having an awesome week. Today is a super stressful day for me, delivering my mobile web roadmap, so hopefully that will go well. More than anything, I think the document is designed to be big, and sit on a table during the meeting saying “look we thought about this shit”.

Awesome Trailers Revisted

April 30, 2013 by Belghast

Today my friend Liore posted a great run down of some of her favorite trailers of recent memory. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… so hopefully she will understand that I am completely latching onto the idea. Honestly watching the trailers she singled out, made me start thinking about some of my favorite trailers, and once the idea set root in my brain it was going to happen.

What makes an awesome trailer?

There are so many ways to make a trailer stand out, it could have an amazing soundtrack and visual or just be extremely well directed and emotionally engaging. There are trailers I love that pretty much fall into all categories. A lot of the ones Liore singled out in her post, are ones I love too for various reasons, but I noticed my favorite kind of trailer was mostly absent in the list.

I love a trailer that sets up the world of the game, the eternal conflict, and just pumps me up to play the game. I love when I watch a trailer and walk away feeling “hell yes, I want to play this now”. It could be the soundtrack of the visuals, but if it can somehow tap into my inborn sense of bloodlust… it is a win in my book. I especially love the trailers that set up the lore of the world, and give us a window into the game that we normally would not see otherwise.

DC Universe Online

This trailer will likely go down in history as one of my all time favorites. When someone mentions a kick ass trailer, this one is always the first one I think of. For starters, everything Blur Studios touches is amazing, but more importantly it sets up the storyline of the game in a brilliant way. I have always loved the DC setting where the traditional heroes are thugs, and Luthor is the hero… and to set that up as the basis of the MMO made me only want to play it more.

Sadly for whatever reason the game itself never met the epic quality of the trailer. It tried extremely hard, and in some aspects succeeded. The little references, like Booster Gold commercializing everything really made it feel deeply rooted in the DC universe. I will have to say that no matter what, this trailer got me to buy the game and play it. I still boot it up from time to time when the mood hits me.

Hellgate: London

FOR THE LIVING!!!! God there is so much that is amazing about this trailer. Also there is so much frustration that I have that this game did not succeed. It had some amazing story behind it, and this trailer sets up everything you need to know about it. This has it all, awesome heroes of both genders and all of them making extreme sacrifices to save the next generation. Considering my last name is Temple… I may or may not also have an extreme thing for the Templars. So much was right about this game, but it also had so many failings… namely its horrible network code. There have been many times I have considered playing the Asian free to play version, but it would just feel odd.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

I feel kinda bad about this next pick. I truly love the feel of this trailer, and the epic qualities especially when my personal favorite… Grimlock makes his appearance. Why I feel bad is that I have never actually played this game, regardless of how amazing the trailer is. Every time I watch this trailer, I keep thinking… why god can we not get a full length Transformers movie that looks like this… instead of the odd biomechanical Transfomers from the Michael Bay movies. Everything about this trailer screams Transformers to me, and takes me back to a chunk of my childhood.

Mass Effect 2

While I love Mass Effect 3, and the trailer Liore posted made me want to go back and play the series from 1-3 all over again… my favorite game in the series will always be 2. This trailer makes me relive all the badassery that is ME2, and its great swat team like side missions. This makes me want to load it up and slaughter legions of collectors. Doesn’t hurt that I am a huge fan of Thane, and he is completely badass in the trailer.

Bioshock 2

I will always love the Bioshock franchise no matter what. The first one still stands out as one of the most transformative gaming experiences I had up to that point. As trailers go however, the launch trailer for Bioshock 2 is great. I love the relationship between the Big Daddy and the Little Sisters, as someone who has always chosen to play a tank… and protect the squishy players of the world… I can totally relate to the dynamic of the eternal protector. Watching the video fires me up to play the game and wreak havoc on some splicers.

Fallout New Vegas

This trailer falls in the category of letting you in on something, that you normally would not be let in on just by playing the game. While this scene is alluded to in the gameplay, you only know it exists by watching the teaser trailer. Fallout has been and will likely always be one of my favorite series. It means two things to me, huge wastelands to explore, and badass guys in armor. This trailer teases the NCR Ranger in such a tantalizing way, that immediately I thought… man I have to get that armor in game. I went from lusting after the Brotherhood Armor in the previous games, to making my goal in game to acquire the Ranger armor with those cool goggles. War… War Never Changes.

Borderlands

As far as Borderlands goes, I will always prefer the original trailer. I love the way it introduces each character and gives them a comic book style introduction frame. The soundtrack to me has become so connected to this trailer, that when I hear the song on the radio all I can think of is playing Roland. As badass as this trailer is however… it fails miserably at one thing… getting me to by the game. When you watch the trailer, it just looks like another shooter, albeit an edgy and graphically interesting one. All someone had to do was tell me the phrase “Diablo With Guns”… and I shifted into “take my money now” mode. Problem is this was about 6 months after the initial release.

Warhammer Online

This is yet another jaw droppingly epic trailer from Blur Studio, and sadly also another trailer that is leaps and bounds better than the game itself deserves. As a longtime fan of Warhammer, there were so many little geek out moments. From the Squid Herder, to the Bright Wizard, to the Chaos Maurader… the video just oozes lore. The moment that just takes the cake however is when the Tzeentch Bringer of Change steps through the wall. Yes… I am definitely a Warhammer geek. Like I said, I just wish the game was as good as this trailer.

Rift

I have gone back and forth on this trailer over the years. At first I was not sure about it, but the longer it exists… and the longer I have played Rift.. the more I appreciate it. There are so many little things about this video that make the Rift player in me geek out. The number one subtle element is the way the crow flies into the scene, then becomes life touched at one point, and finally at the end a flame touched phoenix. On top of this, I recognize the abilities they are using and could in theory guess the specs of the supposed characters that are shown. My favorite moment however, is when the warrior visibly switches souls… something that really slickly explains what to expect about the game itself. It does what I think it set out to do, introduce players to the setting… and as icing on the cake it uses a setting that actually exists in Stonefield. So often in these videos, they are in completely made up settings… grounding the video in the actual game is just kick ass.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Once again Blur Studios makes it into my list, this time with a series of three trailers that were released leading up to the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Return, Hope and Decieved each set up a segment of the storyline leading up to the game timeline itself. In addition, each sets up the archetypal character for each class in the game, and fleshes out some back story. Combined they make an epic story arc that I can watch over and over.

I loved Star Wars: The Old Republic… until I ran out of content, but every time I watch this sequence I get nostalgic about what might have been. The game is still pretty solid, but sadly it is wrapped into one of the most egregious free to play models I have ever experienced. I realize that Bioware in essence had to sell its soul to stay afloat and keep the game running, but I will always be wistful about the game that could have been.

Rage

This trailer does an amazing job of setting up the universe that Rage takes place in, and explaining how the world got to the point where it is today. Everything about the trailer makes me want to play the game. I have a certain measure of regret over this title. It is one of the best single player experiences I have had in recent years, but also one of the absolute shortest. If the game had roughly twice the content, it would have been a truly phenomenal game. What is left is a great experience, and the trailer tells you everything you need to know to enjoy it.

Diablo 3

Like Liore said in her post, it would be inappropriate to have a list of trailers that did not include something from Blizzard. While I probably would have also picked the Wrath of the Lich King trailer, I didn’t want to copy her pick. Probably my favorite series from Blizzard as far as trailers go, is Diablo. Each trailer is always so rich in storytelling, and the Diablo 3 one is no exception. Sadly for me, this is another case of the trailer being better than the game.

Actually I have to take a step back from that, and say that the actual game itself was really enjoyable and I liked the story quite a bit. It just was over way too damned fast. I essentially played the game until I had completed the content, and then have not really touched it since. All of this does not change the fact that the game trailer is pretty amazing.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I am a HUGE fan of all things Elder Scrolls, but this trailer just set the game up perfectly. Patrick Stewart as Uriel Septim was such an amazing casting, and this trailer which also serves as the intro video to the game pumps me up every time I watch it. All I want to do when I see this is get into the game and explore, and become the epic and heroic warrior I know I can become in an Elder Scrolls game. It does what I am looking for in a trailer, introduces the setting and provides the urge to play.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Live Action)

I can remember the first time I saw this trailer, I was just amazed that they went to the amount of effort to create a big budget live action trailer. This feels exactly like Skyrim, where the peasants run away the Dragonborn runs into the action, and draws down on the drake. This trailer and later commercial is just such a perfect representation of how epic the game feels. It really makes me wish there was an Elder Scrolls television show.

Elder Scrolls Online

This is the trailer that I am most pumped about right now, so I saved it for last. This trailer was released to announce the opening of beta signups for Elder Scrolls Online. There is just so much about this game that excites me, and I love the way little callouts are made to the various factions. I have always identified with the Nords, and when they crawl out of the bowels of the fortress after slaying a bunch of undead werewolves… just makes shivers of happy run up and down my spine. Don’t get me started on how awesome it is that the werewolves were undead in the first place…

I’ve heard plenty of snide comments saying that the trailer is all about the guy from Assassins Creed, but all I can see is a Breton Rogue. I am a notorious carebear, but for whatever reason I am really looking forward to the RVR in this game. The frontier in Dark Age of Camelot was just a cool place to be, there were so many things that were NOT keep raids that you could do. It was just cool to go out there and feel confident enough to be able to hunt the really hard mobs that were out there.

The fact that Cyrodil sounds like essentially the Dark Age of Camelot frontiers, just sounds so amazing. I mean this is Cyrodil, the setting that the ENTIRE 4th game was set in. That is so much space, and I am really hoping there are so many amazing non pvp targets out there as well. It will be so much fun going out there with a group of friends and seeing what all we can do. This video just pumps me up for doing some RVR and exploring Cyrodil.

I Blame Liore

This post went on so much longer than I had intended it to, but there are just so many amazing trailers that I love. Right now I want to play every single one of these games, but I think I will ultimately log into Rift and cause as much havoc as I can. If you’ve made it this far, I really hope you have a great night and can get something knocked off your gaming bucket list.