Well tomorrow the big 1.2 patch is coming out, and we have a mountain worth of PTS patch notes outlining all the goodies that will be in it. I should be posting something absolutely brilliant, considering how big some of the features are. Problem is… today was kind of the day from hell at work. I spent the entire afternoon stomping out fires, chasing rabbits down holes and attempting to calm unfounded fears.
As a result you are pretty lucky that I can string together more than a few sentences that make any sense at all. This weekend was equally crazy. We had to make sure 3 Mothers and a Grandmother felt equally loved. So I feel like I have been running nonstop since last Thursday. So as a result I am just going to post some reference info while we wait for the official 1.2 patch notes.
Originally I was pretty against the dungeon finder tool, and had talked at length about how bad it was for server communities. However since that information, it has come out that this implementation will be limited to server only. I am really hoping that the community can use this tool responsibly. At this point I am anxiously optimistic about what it might mean for the game.
On the average night we are usually just shy of a workable group in my guild. The other night we had 3 50s and 3 30 somethings, but not all the core classes needed to build a successful group out of either. Pugging a few 50s to build a group is pretty easy, but pugging 20-49 seems to be a challenge at least on our server. Here is hoping that the tool will help unite the forces that want to group, but haven’t been watching the various social channels.
I will post tomorrow, with the legit patch notes and some commentary. I think most of the servers are looking forward to this one. Still highly impressive that the game has been out just barely over 2 months now, and we have will have had 3 content patches, and 22 hotfixes. This kind of support is extremely refreshing from an mmo company, but I am sure at this point I sound like a broken record on that.
This has been stuck in my head for the past few days.
By Connor Anderson
I actually haven’t been playing very much in the way of video games for the past couple of weeks, other than the occasional Mortal Kombat match and a couple of iPhone/iPad games. Normally I’d get really introspective about this, but honestly the main reason is because the weather’s been nice the last few weeks and I’m enjoying it.
That being said, one thing I HAVE been doing a lot more lately is tabletop gaming of various kinds (RPGs, wargames, etc). I’m involved in… four different tabletop games currently, play another sporadically, and am thinking of running my own. It’s interesting, because the experiences are completely unlike what I can get in video games.
Storytelling and Theatre
It really amazes me that, for all of the advances we’ve made as a culture, and all of the amazing forms of entertainment we’ve been able to come up with, it’s still very, very hard to beat someone simply telling a story aloud. It’s a form of theatre, but the most intimate kind there is, where the storyteller and the audience are working together. The storyteller sets the stage, and the audience steers the story through what they want to hear about.
It makes me think of a parent or grandparent telling a story, while the excitable kids interrupt with questions and comments. There’s the fun of interacting with the story for all the players, and something eminently satisfying about making all the players happy as the GM.
Short post this time, just commenting on what I’ve been thinking about lately.
Well it is officially showing signs of summer here in oklahoma. When I came in from work today there were two partially constructed “mud-dauber” nests in the overhang of the front porch. I will have to get out my special knocking-down stick and remove them when the wasp isn’t looking. Otherwise we will spend an entire summer of trying to keep them from flying inside the house.
Gotta Drink Blue Milk
I had to share this one. For those who have been under a rock, this is an amazingly geeky parody of bane of the internet… Friday by Rebecca Black. The video has reached a level of infamy that I have not seen since the Star Wars Kid. I’ve seen ninja-linking it has replaced rickrolling on many forums I use. Folks have dubbed it “black-rolling”. Anyways, the above video is without a doubt the best of the many Friday parody videos.
Waiting Patiently In Line
Syp over at BioBreak posted today about a phenomena on their server. For the defiant, a number of the corrupted coin spawns in meridian are non-functioning. As a result, Syp’s server has taking to queuing in a line as players patiently wait to get their 5 from one of the few working ones. Later in the day MMO Gamer Chick, posted that the same phenomena was happening on her server as well (above image is MMO Gamer Chick’s, to illustrate the point).
While the fact that there is a bug at all, is highly frustrating, it highlights something I have noticed in the general Rift player base. The players who appear to be staying in game, and thriving, represent a slightly higher cut of the MMO gamer crowd. It seems like most of the players who are now populating the servers, are from the mmo-veteran camp.
They come from an experience set that has seen multiple games come and go, and as a result seem to have a wider patience than what I was used to over in wow. In wow randoms, if anyone made a signifiant mistake the group would evaporate in a matter of moments. However in Rift I have seen players stick through wipe after wipe as tanks and healers learn the ropes, willing to keep pushing forward until we win.
As I roam through Telara, I am constantly finding a player hopping in to help out when I have blindly charged into a pack of way more mobs than I should have. I think that the open grouping system helps this a lot, but I also think that the average Rift player seems to be more of a community player than is true these days in wow. It is one of the many reasons why I enjoy this game, players are genuinely helpful.
Gaming Breaking Point
Over on Games and Geekery, today Stillwater posted an interesting topic entitled “My Secret Gaming Breaking Point”. I find it especially interesting considering the number of times I have reached the point of burnout in various games.
While there is no official number of hours I would place on my breaking point, I have noticed that I tend to come back to games that I’ve spent at least two weeks in. Games that fail to capture my interest for any reason for at least two weeks are often forgotten entirely.
Basically for me, if a game doesn’t really catch my attention within an hour of playtime, I am pretty much done with it. I have a post a brewing over the game Fallen Earth. Basically I played it in beta, and keep hearing so many good things about it. I really really want to like it. The thought of a Fallout-like MMO is so appealing, considering the hundreds of hours that I have spent roaming around the wasteland. But I just can’t get past several things with the game, so each time I try and play it I only last a little bit.
As far as burnout goes, I seem to go through these periods where I jump from game to game regularly. Basically the games I played for really long periods of time were Everquest and World of Warcraft. Other than that, I rarely lasted more than six months in any one game. There would always be greener pastures on the horizon. The period between EQ and WoW was dotted with a line of minor games.
Other games like Everquest II, I have returned to play 3 or 4 different times. I am extremely nostalgic about the world of Norrath. Combine that with my love of how intricate Everquest II is, keeps me returning over and over. The key problem is, I always end up at exactly the same point. I hate the EQ2 combat system with a passion. During my last time playing it, I leveled a Dirge from 1-65 and I cannot honestly tell you the name of a single class ability I had. I simply hit the heroic qualifier and mashed the next button that completed the chain, so in many ways it was pretty whack-a-mole.
Ultimately I am hoping that Rift will be my new wow, and instead of being a wow tourist going off to play other games, I will be a Rift tourist. I cannot say with any certainty that this will be the case. It definitely is for the time being, but in my “post-wow” era I am definitely more open minded about various games. I am really enjoying not feeling chained to down to raid nights and leadership duties. I am enjoying approaching gaming from a very chill perspective.
Anyways, the post is a good read, and there are several good comments afterwards. If you don’t have Games and Geekery in your RSS reader I would highly suggest adding it. Some great posts up there, and header image is among my favorite of all the blogs I read. Seriously… how can you not be in love with an 8-bit inspired image that incorporates Super Mario Bros, Contra, Zelda, Castlevania, and Mega Man. I modded my PSP entirely to be able to play these games on the go.
Have No Fear, Hartsman is Here
One of the big hot button topics for players on Role-playing servers like I am on, is the recent announcement that the name policy would be updated to omit a few key rules.
9. Comprised of partial or complete sentence (e.g., "Getpwned", "Luvtodance", etc);
10. Comprised of gibberish (e.g., "Qwerty", "Asdfasdf", "Xyzpdq");
11. Referring to pop culture icons or personas (e.g. "McLovin", "Kyle Broflovski", "Catwoman");
12. That utilizes "Leet" or "Dudespeak" (e.g., "Roflmao", "Roxxurboxx", "Lolzumad"); or
13. That incorporates titles. For purposes of this subsection, "titles" shall include without limitation ‘rank’ titles (e.g., "General Chow," or “Captain Kangaroo”), monarchist or fantasy titles (e.g., "KingLoko", "LordPauleyC"), and religious titles (e.g., "ThePope," or "Reverend Run").
As you can imagine this caused an uproar namely from the Roleplaying community as it basically cuts the legs out of anyone trying to report names that just should not be on the server at all. Basically I had faith that within a few days, we would get a clarification. Today Scott Hartsman posted a full statement to clear things up.
Hey, everyone. Just got caught up and read through all of the excitement on the above subjects from the last couple days, and wanted to share some thoughts as well as let you know what we’ll be doing from here forward. 1) It’s a great idea to give people a direct line to share feedback on CS performance. That’s something we should definitely keep doing. The only way we can constantly be improving is when people let us know about their experiences, both good and bad. I’d like to repost the original request that started all of this, to make sure people still have it available:
In response to some recent postings, we have created a new e-mail address which can be used to submit GM feedback. The e-mail address is GM_Feedback@trionworlds.com. If you feel as though your issue was mis-handled or that you have received exceptional service then please let us know. Our goal is to set the standard by which other MMOs are judged. If we are falling short of that then we would like to know.
That is the company that we have a whole lot of people working incredibly hard to try to be. 2) On naming policies and Roleplay servers. The conversation really went south here. On behalf of all of us, I apologize for that. That definitely shouldn’t have happened. I don’t want to take up your time recapping what’s in plenty of other threads, instead let’s talk goals and what we’ll do from here. Naming policy is a tricky subject for any MMO company — Our end goal is to apply sanity and reason, as best as we can, to this inherently subjective topic that’s as much about opinions as it is about facts. Companies create policies to make sure that our end goals are expressed as objectively and consistently as they possibly can be. Names are one of the trickiest topics around. With many different expectations even inside of individual communities, and many billions of potential names, there’s always going to be room for interpretation. More potential for interpretation increases the time it takes to resolve issues, as well as increases the potential for inconsistent applications of the rules. That’s much of why people try to avoid it. Along with consistency, so comes expediency. The trick is, as you all know, issues need to be responded to in a satisfactory way, otherwise the better speed isn’t a win for anyone. We understand that 100% consistency and the corresponding ultra-speed efficiency isn’t ever going to be possible with some types of reports (those that involve subjective calls – like names), but at the same time we understand that we need to have something in place that serves the needs of the communities they’re supposed to. All that said – Where to from here? We will be implementing a modified version of the original rules to the naming policy for Roleplay Servers only. The goal is to keep the rules in line with the intent of what a roleplay server is supposed to feel like, while trying to improve the amount of clarity they provide. For example: A person reporting a bad name every now and again – Thank you. We love it, and we truly do want to help. People who report batches of actual violations — Again, great, and we’re truly thankful when dedicated players do this. On the other hand – Reporting dozens or hundreds of perfectly fine names a person just doesn’t care for, when there are only a handful of actual violations — that ends up hurting everyone. The people receiving those reports are GMs who are having to spend time on non-violations, when they should be helping customers. Here’s the intent: Names should fit in this world in some explainable way, while individual creativity is still being fostered. We want to make sure people are able to be clever and express themselves. If they’ve taken reasonable steps to create a name that does fit the world, they shouldn’t need to worry about having it taken from them. Here are the rules that will be returning for RP servers, with some extra clarification: 9. Comprised of partial or complete sentences that are obviously out of place (e.g., "Getpwned", "Luvtodance", etc), though compound names that are fitting of RIFT, its people, the actions taken therein, and its setting are acceptable. Compound names are an important and valid part of every fiction, and ours is no different. 11. Names that refer to pop culture icons or personas (e.g. "McLovin", "Kylebroflovski", "Catwoman") may be found in violation if they do not also have a corresponding basis in RIFT, its people, its history, its characters, or its setting. While we would strongly like the RP experience in RIFT to be more fictionally pure than not, the fictional purity of Rift is not entirely humorless, and we do not expect every customer to have perfect knowledge of every fiction that exists outside of the game. 12. That utilizes "Leet" or "Dudespeak" (e.g., "Roflmao", "Roxxurboxx", "Lolzumad"); or 13. That incorporates titles in a way that is obviously out of place in Telara. For purposes of this subsection, "titles" shall include without limitation ‘rank’ titles (e.g., "Generalchow," or “Captkangaroo”), monarchist or fantasy titles (e.g., "Kingloko", "Lordpauleyc"), and religious titles (e.g., "Thepope," or "Reverendrun"). We definitely are interested in hearing your continued feedback on this, as we try to find the right balance between speed/quality of report handling, and the desire to provide a quality RP server experience. Please do feel free to let us know your thoughts here – Thanks very much, – Scott Hartsman Exec Producer, RIFT
So basically… all is safe for role-players. A revised version of the rules will be out there for RP environments only. This is a step in the right direction, and in the grand scheme of things should be business as usual. Here is hoping that no longer restricting names on non-rp servers will free up resources to do other things.
As I previewed last night, the a prelude event for the upcoming Spoils of War 1.2 patch went in last night. Like a shot in the arm, it has whipped my server into a fury once more. I know personally I have been sick a good deal lately, so as a result I have been playing minecraft or other games that did not involve me having to interact much with other players. This event is exactly what I needed to relight my fire.
Prince of Earth
As soon as I got home last night I patched up my client, and found the daily quests. This time they are out in the outer courtyard area, near the mount vendors (sorry was lead to believe they were where the shade guys were set up). Once again Gaarawarr over at Gaarawarrgabs has a far better guide the to the quests that I would write, so I am linking to him. The name of the game… collect Ancient Golden Dragon Egg Shells from Earth or Fire rifts.
So putting on my thinking hat, I thought about which zones natively have earth and fire rifts. In my level range, the big one was Shimmersand, so off I went to one of my favorite places in Telara… Fortune Shore. A few minutes into the zone the new world event started up. Tons of Earth Footholds spawned INSIDE of Fortune Shore… so from the moment the event starts the players are trying to push back the forces of earth from what normally should be safe territory.
When the players have destroyed 50 footholds, and 12 mini-bosses a Colossus spawns, which the above video shows. The giant hits really hard, as is the norm for Epic Colossi, however we had a truly ridiculous amount of players gathered at Fortune Shore. Normally in an event like this, when you down the big boss it is over. This event breaks that mold.
But Wait… There’s Much More
After the big giant drops, a number of slightly smaller Colossi spawn all around the map. To end the event the players need to kill 5 of them. Thing is… there are WAY more than 5 in the zone. So for 30 minutes after the event, players are still cleaning up the remnants of leftover footholds, colossi, and invasion forces. Doing this one event I managed to get over 30 shells.
When you finish the event, you get the holy of spoils of war holies. In this event, there are very cool epic drops called a Chest of Riches. Inside these are many wondrous prizes.. but what you get are completely random. In theory you can pull gear, artifacts, and even plaques of achievement as well as between 1-2 platinum. I have a sneaking suspicion that the dev mentioned “Gritty Kitty” pet will come from these coffers.
Why I Am Loving This Event
This event is devoted to the Golden Maw, the dragon cult devoted to the element of earth, and aspect of greed. This event is completely about random mass consumption. Three of the daily quests reward you random good stuff, as well as a decent amount of money. So the rewards, to me feel like the match up to the lore of the Golden Maw itself.
If you are like me, and want to do all the possible daily quests each day it will involve doing the easy quest in your capitol city for 10 shells, and then collecting 70 more shells from Earth or Fire rifts. What do you get for this carnal ballet of rift grinding? For 15 Golden Shells, you can get a Crafter’s Glowing Pouch. This gives the player a random selection of crafting items for their tradeskill. Last night I got an assortment of 3 kinds of planar dust, but I have seen players get artisan marks and plaques. For only 15 shells this is well worth doing for crafters as it basically doubles your chance of getting plaques for the day.
Moving up to the next tier, for 25 shells you have the Mysterious Artifact. Contained within it is a random artifact. Based on the incidental data I have seen from players in game, it appears that this artifact will always be green or rarer. This is a spiffy way of getting those rare artifacts to complete your sets. You also get a few gold for your trouble.
Last and most definitely not least for 40 shells you get the fabled Chest of Riches. These are the same things that drop from the epic zone invasions, and pretty much give you the best chance of getting something cool. Guaranteed are between 1 and 2 platinum, but after that you get a random assortment of cool stuff. I have seen players get artifacts, plaques of achievement, armor and weapons, and essences. Like I said above, I believe this is probably the place that gives you your best chance of finding the Gritty Kitty pet.
If This Is Just a Prelude…
Honestly if this is just the prelude it has me intrigued as to what the event proper will look like. All I know is that so far I am having a blast. It combines my two favorite things to do in an MMO. Mindlessly killing everything that crosses my path, and getting random loot. Seriously I am a fool for Diablo style random loot, and I find myself grinding endlessly just to see what is going to come out of the candy machine next. So giving me an event, where that is the entire purpose… I am supremely pleased. This might not be the thing for everyone, but for me, combine the lore of the Golden Maw with the mindless fun, it is pure addiction.
