Pals with the Kalu’ak February 6, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Kalu'ak
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It is a cold, cold winter out in reality, so the instance group has been on a bit of a hiatus.
The problem for me is, well, that WoW is fun. And while I know I should let my main idle while the group is off-line for a bit, Vikund is my main for many aspects of the game. I have my hunter, Tistann to play if I want to run quests, but Vik is the designated achievements character, the cook, the fisherman, and the engineer.
I have kept busy somewhat with exploration, fishing, and the Lunar Festival, which are low impact to experience. But being the fisherman on my team, I have been eyeing that fishing pole you can get when you go exalted with the Kalu’ak.
So every day I have gotten Vikund out to run two of the Kalu’ak daily quests. He was already revered, so he had 21,000 points of faction to go. Two quests a day, that won’t get me too far ahead, right?
After two and a half weeks or so, I finally hit that magic mark, exalted with my first faction in Azeroth. It was a double achievement.
Twofer!
So I was finally able to buy my fishing pole of doom. And a heck of a fishing pole it is:
Look at the DPS on this thing. I wish it was flagged as a weapon rather than a fishing pole, because I would wield it all the time. As it is though, none of my retribution paladin attacks that require a melee weapon work with it.
Still, when I am out running Old Man Barlo’s daily fishing quest, I don’t worry about swapping the pole out for a weapon if something attacks me. A few good whacks with this is enough.
And I also got the only other item that the Kalu’ak would sell me that I could actually use (most of their gear is level 76), the pet penguin.
Pole and Penguin
Now I need to be careful with this pet. As soon as my daughter sees it, she’ll want one too.
Warhammer – Anger and Denial February 6, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft.Tags: Denial
33 comments
I seem to have struck a nerve with yesterday’s post, because Syncaine is up today with another post rife with anger and denial.
And he didn’t even wish my wife a happy birthday.
He is back raging against the “WoW Tourists,” only they have now be demoted to “WoW Lemmings.” It seems that they have just destroyed the MMO space in general and his pet game, Warhammer Online, in particular.
Damn those WoW Lemmings for buying nearly one million copies of Warhammer Online!
Damn them for daring to try out a new game!
Damn them for deciding that WoW was more fun and leaving Warhammer!
It is all their fault, not Warhammer’s! Mythic is right, all you WoW lemmings are wrong!
And right about now I would REALLY HATE IT if a bunch of WoW lemmings went over to that post and gave their opinion on it. So don’t.
He also throws in a few direct attacks on me, heretic that I apparently am. For example, he still seems to be especially bitter about me daring to assume that the first group instance in Warhammer Online should be fun and inviting. What a novel concept, I know, completely out of left field, but I have this wacky idea that if you make a game fun at the start, that actually encourages people to keep playing.
Unfortunately, the first group instance on the Order side of Warhammer Online is the Altdorf Sewers. It was crap and I defy anybody to say otherwise.
I am also damned for thinking that spending a Saturday night searching for some actual oRvR action is, you know, not that much fun. He says I have unreasonable expectations in that regard.
Ah well, such is life.
Syncaine seems to be stuck in the first two stages of grieving, denial and anger.
Here is hoping he reaches acceptance some time soon so he can let go of the need to attack others to cover his own grief and get back to writing interesting things about games.
And if this sounds a bit condescending, well… it is. But I have seen so much of that from Syncaine in comments and posts on the topic that I think he can suck it up.
Players as Excuse February 5, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Misc MMOs, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft.15 comments
I keep reading posts and comments in this environment of “Warhammer Online only has 300K Subscribers” that try to blame the players for the failure of Warhammer Online to hit whatever subscriber threshold Mark Jacobs publicly (and idiotically, in my opinion) said Mythic needed for the game to be a success.
I keep seeing references to unrealistic expectations.
People who play MMOs should not expect a game to be stable on day one!
They should know that the game will be buggy and unbalanced!
They should know that an MMO is never done!
They should know that an MMO needs to be patched ad infinitum until it is stable!
And the crown jewel in the argument is that World of Warcraft itself had all these same issues at launch!
So there! See! Warhammer Online is just like every other MMO! It is the players, the “WoW Tourists” and their unreasonable expectations that are the problem!
And the whole argument is a steaming pile of horse dung, damned by its own internal inconsistency.
After all, if World of Warcraft had all those same issues, how did it succeed?
When World of Warcraft launched, there were already other popular, stable MMORPG options on the market.
EverQuest, the former king of the MMORPG hill, was more than five years old and on its eighth expansion before WoW popped.
Asheron’s Call was five years old as well.
Dark Age of Camelot was three years along.
Even EVE Online had a year and a half jump on WoW, even if it wasn’t so popular at that point.
All successful games, all past their initial teething stage, all competitors against which WoW would no doubt be directly compared.
And yet WoW succeeded beyond all expectations in spite of having those all very same MMO launch problems.
The only reasonable conclusion is that launch problems… server queues, crashes, imbalances, bugs… are not a problem at all. At least they are not as long as the game is playable and compelling.
And there, I think, is the real hitch.
Roll stock footage of Day 1 EverQuest and all the issues the game had. It made WAR’s launch look as smooth as silk. But after five minutes in Norrath, I was hooked. I had to play that game, no matter the issues staying connected.
But that was 1999. WAR launched in 2008.
And by 2008, anybody in the WAR target audience had played WoW at some point. But even if they had only played EverQuest, there wasn’t a lot there that was truly new and different. WAR would have looked familiar enough as to have lost its ability to be compelling in and of itself.
“Ooooh, a 3 dimension, multi-player fantasy world!” That threshold has already been crossed by more than five million people in the US and Europe.
If WAR had brought something new and compelling to the table all the stability, patch, balance, and server population issues would have been details, minor gripes. It had the hype. It sold over a million boxes. All it needed was something to close the deal.
But WAR showed up with a bag of incremental changes. They were nice. Many will no doubt be copied by other games in the future. But nobody is playing WAR because the Tome of Knowledge is such a nifty idea.
You can cry “jaded gamer!” all you like, but for what other audience was WAR shooting? After all, you can’t put up all those first arguments about knowing what MMOs are like and be seen to be talking about anybody else.
And yes, WAR did prove to be a compelling environment for some gamers, about 300,000 of them, which is a decent base of subscribers.
But what used to be the threshold of huge success is now just the line that gets you beyond niche.
And so Warhammer Online joins Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, EVE Online, Age of Conan, and Star Wars Galaxies as the seventh dwarf of western MMOs. Successful, but fated ever to be overshadowed by World of Warcraft.
You cannot be the next big thing without bringing something new and compelling to the table.
Happy Birthday to My Wife February 5, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment.Tags: Happy Birthday
14 comments
Since my wonderful wife has taken to reading my blog daily over the last year, I can use this space to say Happy Birthday to her, and thank her for putting up with all my gaming nonsense over the last twelve years.
Help me out here.
Everybody together…
Happy Birthday Nancy!
(I figure I can get away with this once.)
LEGO Batman Arrives February 4, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, wii.Tags: lego, LEGO Batman, LEGO Batman: The Video Game
6 comments
Santa kindly brought me a copy of LEGO Batman for the Wii at Christmas, thus helping cement the LEGO theme we had going in December. I think we still have at least one unopened kit at this point.
Back in September, I was going on about my seeming lack of enthusiasm for the game. I could not bring myself to run out and get it on day one, at least not at the list price of $50.
But now it is here and it seems that the rest of my predictions about the game rang pretty much true.
The game is a lot of fun. It is at least as much fun as the previous LEGO titles from Traveller’s Tales.
It feels like the game has more content than LEGO Indiana Jones did, though it still falls short off all but the first LEGO Star Wars title, and that was before Travelers Tales discovered the secret sauce that makes their LEGO franchise so addictive.
As I guessed, you take on the role of Batman and Robin and run off to fight the super villains that plague Gotham City who are lead, in three separate acts, by The Riddler, The Penguin, and The Joker. Once you have defeated the final scene in a given act, you can then go back and play from the point of view of the other side, taking on the super villain role yourself.
Being a LEGO title, you spend a lot of time breaking things, blowing things up, and collecting the little studs that are the unlock currency in the game.
The first two characters we bought were Batgirl, which my daughter wanted to play and whom can take over all of the Batman roles, and Nightwing, an alternative Robin who has a better outfit, some hair mousse, and a pair of batons with which to fight.
All in all, a solid game.
The fact that it was not based on story lines I knew well (like Star Wars and Indiana Jones) turned out to be less of a problem than I had anticipated. But then, what is there to understand when it comes to Batman? Bad guys get out of hand, Batman, foils their plans, beats them about the head and shoulders, and hands them over to the authorities.
The main drawback is that the game does not really bring anything new to Traveler’s Tales LEGO oeuvre.
Sure, there are neat little things, Batman and Robin both have suits that do special things and there is the who boomerang/batarang thing, but those don’t really change the feel of the game.
And so, in something of a exaggerated reflection of my own views on the game, I practically have to drag my daughter kicking and screaming to get her to play LEGO Batman with me. She asks if we can play something else, please! She can even get a bit sulky, sitting there holding the controller while the game starts up.
And then we actually start playing the game and she doesn’t want to stop.
Because it really is a fun game.
But, as things go in the MMO world, it is difficult to judge the game on its own merits, in a vacuum. LEGO Batman has to live in the shadow of what went before.
A Mounted Captain in Rivendell February 3, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Lord of the Rings Online.Tags: Beavis and Butt-head, Podcasters of Bree, Rivendell
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Over in Middle-earth, I managed to push Tistann, my captain on Nimrodel, to level 26 towards the end of last week which means that, as a founder, I get a horse!
Tistann before the Last Homely House
Then on Sunday evening I had the opportunity to travel, as the picture above might indicate.
I logged into Middle-earth and found several of the Podcasters of Bree online and ready to run out to Rivendell. They invited me along for the run, so I got on Skype with Adam of Witty Ranter, Darren of Shut Up We’re Talking, and Jonathan of The Online Gamer’s Anthology and Through the Aftermath podcasts for my first trip past The Last Bridge.
New Territory Ahead
The trip went well and was greatly enhanced by Jonathan’s Beavis and Butt-head quotations and improvisations. We managed not to get stomped by trolls, eaten by bears, or drained by giant… heh heh… blow flies.
At the end of the run, which was not that long, because time passes quickly when you’re laughing out loud, we crossed the Ford of Bruinen, crested the ridgeline, and looked down into the Valley of Rivendell.
Looking into the Valley
Of course, landing in Rivendell turned into a big photo op for notable locations and people.
The Hall of Fires
The hall of fires is where tales are told and songs are sung. Bilbo Baggins hangs out here. You can see him in the picture above highlighted by grey ring icon floating above his head, which meant he has a quest for which I am not yet eligible.
Map of Eriador
It was nice to see a map hanging on the wall, something that was noted in the books. The NPCs seem to have to use the same maps that they players get.
Gandalf, Tistann, and Frodo
And, off in a side room from the main hall, were Gandalf and Frodo, set up for a photo opportunity very much like you might get with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. The other three hobbits were off in another room, with Sam muttering about what a pickle they have found themselves.
I picked up the travel point and wandered the grounds of Rivendell for a while. Eventually I had to recall back to Bree. While it was nice to visit a new place, Tistann was too low level to stick around. It was back to the North Downs for him.
Darren has posted some screen shots of the Rivendell trip as well. He managed to get all of the big names.
Now I have to get out my Beavis and Butt-head DVDs so I can keep up with Jonathan next time.
My Mom Plays WoW February 2, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Swift Zhevra, Zhevra
12 comments
It is true.
Back in October when all the Hallow’s End fun was starting up in Azeroth, my daughter got very interested in watching me play World of Warcraft.
WoW is, as you may know, a very colorful game. It is bright and shiny and cartoon-like. My daughter likes to watch me play now and again, and I even let her run around town with one of my characters on occasion. But with a Halloween-like atmosphere in the game including costumes, candy, and trick-or-treat, she wanted to run around and play with me.
So I created a trial account for her (via a referral, of course) and got her set up on our iMac. She already had Skype installed on the Mac. I had put it there so we could talk while we played Toon Town. So we set up a voice connection and met up in game, me with a fresh character, her with her first character, and went out to play.
We had a good time running around and when my mom called later that evening, my daughter gushed at how much fun we had and how we talked on Skype while we played and so on.
My mother said she had a Skype account, so we went back to the game and conferenced her in and my daughter described what was going on in the game.
The running commentary sounded like enough fun that I got an email from my mother the next day saying that she was going to download the WoW trial on her MacBook Pro so she could come play with us.
And so her journey began.
My mother is not new to computers. She was working with them long before I bought that first Apple II.
My mother is not new to fantasy. The first time I read The Lord of the Rings, I borrowed her copy.
My mother is not new to role playing games. I got her to play D&D at one point.
But a computer fantasy role playing game, that would be new territory.
Of course, Blizzard had to throw in its own complications.
Once my mom signed up for an account, she started the download that would go on and on and on.
Imagine all of the problems you have ever had with the Blizzard downloader, then imagine they all happened to you before you had ever played the game.
Actually, that isn’t too big of a stretch. That describes my first install and patch experience back in 2005.
But imagine you aren’t used to big downloads of that sort.
The duration of the download, once it was finally complete, after many a false start, retry, and failure, was equal to her 14 day trial period. Basically, by the time she could play, she was no longer allowed to play.
Okay, it did not take 14 full days to download the software. But remember, my mother is not a hard core gamer. Even the idea of “start the download, go to bed, wake up and find it done” wasn’t a consideration until I mentioned it.
She did manage to miss the zombie apocalypse, and event that drove off one of my friends and upset my daughter.
She signed up for another trial account. This time she used a referral key that I sent her, so our accounts would be linked, we could summon each other, and we would get bonus experience when grouped.
So, on a Sunday afternoon in November, we managed, at last, to all meet up in game and begin to play.
And there the troubles really began.
On the one hand, I had my mother on Skype facing a game like she had never seen before. All those basic 3D world concepts that so many of us have grown used to over the years… stuff that predates EverQuest, stuff that goes back to early shooters… all that was brand spanking new to her.
How to move, turn, look, fight, see people, talk to people, use the map, buy stuff, sell stuff, wear stuff, compare stuff… all new.
And then how to do more than one of those things at once. Each task required a full stop and a few moments to figure out what was going on.
Years of gaming has made me assume certain concepts were common knowledge. My vocabulary is set to exchange information with people for whom WASD is ingrained.
I even had problems there. My mother is left handed, so she uses the arrow keys. That is fine, but that meant occasional confusion over what I meant.
Still, over time, the concepts built up.
We would play for an hour on a Saturday or a Sunday, myself, my daughter, and her, grouped up and running around the night elf starting area. That would wear my mother out.
Of course, having my daughter along, with all the attention span that being 6 years old brings to the table, helped with the wearing out. staying focused on something like a quest is tough at that age when there is something shiny in the distance or some body of water into which she wanted to jump.
Over time, the her skills developed.
She began playing at other times, when we were not on with her. She began to roll other characters, to experiment.
She began to get hooked.
Well, she was hooked when she first logged in. She loved the world.
She eventually downloaded the game to her Acer Aspire One notebook, which is a little more up to date than her MacBook. Even with the Intel Express video support and the little (to me) 9 inch screen, the game looks good and plays well.
And so, rather than watching the SuperBowl, we spent yesterday afternoon running quests together in Westfall with one of her latest characters. It was fun and enlightening. She has been through some of those quests already, so as we worked our way through, she knew where we needed to head and what we were looking for.
Which, if nothing else, meant somebody else to corral my daughter in the right direction.
I got my own little reward for getting her into WoW… aside from having family gaming on the occasional weekend afternoon. I got the Swift Zhevra mount for the referral.
Thanks Mom!
You get your mount in the mail with the attached letter:
As much as I dislike the whole Nesingwary clan and their quests, I do like the mount!
We did squander the triple experience aspect of the referral though. Such is life.
But then, it isn’t like the experience curve for the first 60 levels or so in WoW are all that tough to begin with.
My mother is closing in on 20 with her dwarf hunter, he current favorite character, and is eager to get to 30 so she can work on getting a mount of her own.
