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The Slow Rise & Sudden Demise of LEGO Universe June 17, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, lego, Misc MMOs.
Tags: ,
6 comments

At least at our house.

I have been interested in LEGO Universe since it was announced.  LEGO is kind of a big thing at our house.  And we love all most of the Traveller’s Tales LEGO games.  So a LEGO MMO seemed like a natural.

But we never quite got around to buying it.

You can only really play so many subscription MMOs at a time, and when LEGO Universe came out, World of Warcraft was still popular at our house.  So I did not see the need to rush out and drop $40 on the box.  I could wait and let things settle.

Time went by.  The price of the game was cut in half.  $20 for LEGO Universe.

And while Cataclysm was fading for us somewhat by this point (the instance group was face rolling content while my daughter had played all Summer in the beta with a fully equipped level 85 character and was getting bored and not willing to level up through the content) $20 still seemed like a bit much when my daughter had Animal Jam, with the benefits of being free and browser based, to occupy her gaming time.

And more time went by, LEGO took over LEGO Universe from NetDevil, and began offering the game for $10 via the LEGO Online Store.

$10… that was tempting.  I’ve bought games I know I’ll never play for $10.  I bought City of Heroes: Going Rogue on Steam for $10 in a fit of bargain basement insanity over the holidays, along with Hearts of Iron III. (And at least I’ve played Hearts of Iron some, or I did until the new Combat Mission title came out.)

But even at $10 I passed.

The game was still available for $10, with free shipping last I checked.

Then I got a reminder from the LEGO Store that I had some VIP points to redeem.  With those applied to the price of LEGO Universe, I finally hit a price point I could not resist.

$5.46 turned out to be the right price

Yes, for five dollars and forty six cents, I could commit to LEGO Universe.

It arrived in the mail and we installed it on my daughter’s iMac.  I created an account and we launched the game and waited for it to patch.  And waited.  And waited.  And went to bed  and got up the next morning.  And waited a bit more.

And then we could play!

And play my daughter did.

Meanwhile I tinkered with the parental controls.  Said controls suck.

Well, maybe “suck” isn’t the right word.

They are on par with most free to play browser based games I have encountered, which is to say they appear to be a rudimentary after thought of very limited value, though it is hampered by the LEGO Universe web site, which I did not very friendly in helping me get to things I was seeking.

And there is the fact that I have been spoiled by Blizzard’s parental controls.  I have griped about how they took a workable UI and made it worse, but it still allows me the option I want when it comes to parental controls, the ability set time slots when my daughter is allowed to play.  I do not want to have to constantly police her computer for online games when she is supposed to be making a birthday card in Kid-Pix or writing up her science fair project. (Which involved LEGO as well.)

Still, for a boxed monthly subscription game that pushes the parental controls and kid safety aspects of the game, I was disappointed.

But my daughter was very excited about the game and played that first weekend, totally forgetting about Animal Jam, the kid focused browser MMO associated with National Geographic.

It was her game of choice the following weekend, though we did have to do some more patching as they had just dropped a new update that week.  But still, she seemed to be enjoying the game quite a bit, and called me over to show me the house she was building and a few other neat things.

But the weekend after that, LEGO Universe was forgotten.

My daughter’s favorite game was Animal Jam again.

I did not get a chance to play it with her.  I only ordered one copy remembering, perhaps falsely, that there was some sort of “family account” associated with the game.  However I was unable to find any reference to this on the rather jumbled LEGO Universe web site, so perhaps it was something they mentioned as a possibility before launching.

I asked my daughter to list out what she liked and did not like about LEGO Universe, to see why it did not stick with her.  This is what she gave me:

Likes

  • Cool gear
  • Cool dance moves
  • Cool pets
  • Dungeons which other people can go in
  • Groups
  • Build your OWN home

Dislikes

  • You cant say LEET, UBER, HAX. IRL, HALLO stuff like that
  • You have a limited speech
  • You have to PAY for JUST a month
  • you cant make new characters on different servers
  • YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR LIKE 89 HOURS FOR THE PATCHES TO DOWNLOAD! (no wonder they don’t have many players)
  • It is frustrating!

Now, some of her dislikes reflect the kid safety aspects of the game. (And her exposure to Barrens chat.)  The one option I had in parental controls was the ability to limit communications.

And, of course, the whole patching thing happened to hit her two weeks running.  Patience is an almost unknown virtue in a 9 year old.

But I also think part of the reason that LEGO Universe did not stick with her is that she is developing her own interests.  LEGO is clearly my influence, and while she has not rejected it completely, it has begun to fade in favor of her own ideas.  Right now, for example, she is very much into the cat society Warriors series of books, having devoured two dozen of the titles so far this year.

So she likes to draw cats and play with things that are cat related.  She even pays more attention to our own cats and has taken to combing them regularly.  Yay for good side effects.  She likes to make up cat names in the theme of the books, which I am told (by her) follow the format of <thing> + <cat body part>.  So you end up with something like Brambleclaw.  Of course, I fail at this, coming up with names like, Toastertail which gets the response, “Dad! Cats don’t know what a toaster is!”  My explanation about knowing a cat that got its tail singed by a toaster falls on deaf ears.

Animal Jam, which lets her play as a cat, trumps a game that merely lets you play with LEGO bricks. (Penguins are also out.)

So LEGO Universe, which was met with an initial burst of enthusiasm now sits idle.  And given its monthly subscription nature, it seems unlikely that we will return to it.  The game competes squarely against many browser based MMOs that offer at least some play aspects for free.  Thus when my daughter to come argue her case with me about why I should allow her to subscribe to a given game, a case that is much easier to win if she can say, “I’m already playing it,” LEGO Universe seems destined to lose.

And so it goes.

Who will speak for LEGO Universe?  Not I.

Shiny Brass Halberd for Two Please! June 16, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest II, Instance Group.
Tags: , ,
7 comments

After more than four years I think I am detecting a pattern in when the instance group goes on hiatus.

While there have been notable times when an individual in the group is unavailable for weeks at a stretch, summer seems to be the season when getting the group together is most difficult.

And so it was on Saturday night, which found, out of our groups of six, only Gaff and myself in EverQuest II.

What to do? What to do?

I got out Sigwerd my 40 berserker to see if there was anything I could work on with him that would help advance the guild, which was closing in on level 35, a level which would grant us two more guild hall amenities.

I did not feel like doing writs, especially trade skill writs, but there are other ways to earn status for the guild.  I had done a few of the heritage quests with Sigwerd, but there were more out there he could attempt.

I decided on Dragoon K’Naae of the Thexians, the heritage quest in Nektulos Forest which rewards you with the shiny brass halberd at the end of the tasks, along with a chunk of status and AA points.

I mentioned this to Gaff on guild chat as I was headed out to find Dragoon K’Naae to start the quest.  Gaff started going through his characters to see if any of them had not done the quest.  About the time he came up with a level 34 halfling dirge named Punt I was out at the owlbears for the first stage of the quest.

Sigwerd and the Ferocious Owlbear

This was the point in time when Potshot and the others were probably lucky to be away, as when idle in an old zone in the game I tend to start rambling along about how things have changed since launch.  And Potshot had suffered from that already.  The previous weekend we had gone out to run some of the Journey is Half the Fun routes and of course Nek Forest was on the list.

Nek Forest used to be a tough run.  In following me through the zone later on even Gaff laughed and commented on how I traveled on the ground.  I never followed the road and always ran in very straight paths that were optimal for getting between two given points, the sure sign of somebody who had run the route in the old days when the time limit was such that following the road meant failure.

Of course, some of what I said about the zone must sound like one of those “had to walk back and forth to school every day in 6 feet of snow uphill both ways” sort of tales.

For example, as we ran to Port Naythex I mentioned how dangerous this section of the road used to be.  Not only were there heroic groups of aggro spiders, wolves, and owlbears on either side of the road, there were heroic groups of bats flying on the road.  And some of the bats, they were on fire!

It is that last bit that I am sure makes people skeptical.  But it was true.  If you were there, you remember flaming firelight shrillers along the road.  But you tell new players that these days and they don’t believe you.

And they probably don’t believe what a pain this quest used to be back in the day with no griffon towers and flaming bats dogging your every step and quest updates coming maybe every fourth kill.

That used to be the real grind of this quest, aside from the travel.  The first two steps involve getting 30 pieces of owlbear meat and 30 pieces of undead flesh, both of which are updates as opposed to items you loot.  When Punt and Chuggs, Gaff’s mystic, mentored down and along to heal and ward, arrived we were able to knock out the owlbears and undead pretty quickly.

Back in the day these two steps used to be the bulk of the time spent on the quest.  As I mentioned, you used to get an update about every fourth kill, which meant killing at least 120 owlbears and undead.  Oh, and only certain owlbears used to work.  They had to be plain Ash Owlbears, and not Elder Ash Owlbears or Enraged Ash Owlbears, or as I seem to recall, Burned Owlbears, who were probably scalded by those damn flaming bats.

Now though, any owlbear will do and you get an update every time.  So we burned through the owlbears, turned in that step, then burned through the undead.  Travel took more time, even with the griffons.

No Direct Flights for us in Nek Forest

And the griffons only take a while because the flights are not always direct.  To go from the Darklight griffon station, which is in the NE part of the zone,  to the griffon station just a bit north and west of us, we had to fly via the Commonlands and Port Naythex stations, both of which are at the extreme southern end of the zone.  We ran back from that one.

With those two steps done, we moved on to collecting water from Behemoth Pond, yet another travel adventure, and one with a timer no less.  But it is a pretty lax timer when you take into account that you can take a griffon flight.  We had time to slay the named beaver, Paddlefoot, on the way back and had time to spare.

Then it was off to the big fight with Captain T’sanne.  Again, this used to be a camp-fest like most named mobs, where you had to sit and kill his placeholder, plus any other mob in sight “just in case” until the Captain and his entourage made their appearance.

Arriving at Captain T’sanne’s little castle, we found him out.  I was actually surprised to find a named mob not up and waiting for us.  A little investigation later on made me determine that another group must of just finished him off so we were just waiting for the respawn.

We did find another player there alone looking to knock off the Captain, so we invited him to the group and attempted to impress him with our knowledge of the quest.  He was level 27 so Sigwerd mentored

Oh yeah, this is the place... unless it isn't... I think

Falling back on old habits, we slew everything in sight as we waited for Captain T’sanne, who showed up about 15 minutes into our camp.  The fight, a multi-round event, went by so quickly that I did not even get a screen shot.

The it was time to travel back to Dragoon K’Naae for the very last step, the one that historically almost always gets messed up.

When you speak to K’Naae, you get attacked by a group of bad guys.  This is the very last fight in the quest.  Oh course, it is a group, so the first thing you do, standing there next to K’Naae, is kick off an area attack forgetting that K’Naae is not a magic invulnerable NPC like most quest dispensers, but somebody you can actually kill.  And now you’ve aggro’d him, so you have to kill him and wait for him to respawn to finish the quest.

I’ve had to go through that wait for K’Naae to respawn multiple times.  I’ve been there when another group shows up just as he comes back only to have them kick off the last event, AOE, and kill him before I could turn in the quest.

So the group had to put up with me saying, “NO AOE ATTACKS” about 27 times as we traveled back to finish the quest.

I seemed to have said it as many times as it needed saying, as we managed to finish the final fight without killing Dragoon K’Naae and were able to finish the quest.  This was also just enough status to push the guild over the top to level 35.

Quest Finished, Guild Leveled

That also earned Sigwerd and achievement and a title.


Finishing five heritage quests gets you both, though the achievement doesn’t really mean much to me except as a screen shot item.  Amazing how SOE could copy WoW’s achievements so directly and yet make them feel completely sterile and unfulfilling.  I cannot put my finger on why, but earning an achievement in WoW makes me happy and earning one in EQ2 does almost nothing at all for me.

But the title, Treasure Hunter, that is good.  Most titles in EQ2 feel as good as a title in WoW, if not better, and while perhaps a bit common, they are not handed out quite as readily as they are in, say, Lord of the Rings Online.  I still have to go find the right guy in Qeynos to speak to in order to get the title, but it is out there waiting for me.

And that was it for the evening.  We shall see how many people we get in game this coming weekend.  I am not sure that Father’s Day is a big deal in any of our households, at least not to the point of necessitating out of town travel.

But as a backup Gaff and I were looking into what might be interesting to run with Nehru, my level 52 templar.

Still One Kunark Boss to go on Fippy Darkpaw June 16, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.
Tags: , , , ,
3 comments

Which surprises me, since the forums seemed to think the whole thing would be wrapped up in 72 hours.  But the last required quest, The Staff of the Four, was only completed on the 14th.

Of course, the main topic on the progression server forums right now is how out of balance the Shadow Knight ability Harm Touch is at the moment.  Somebody posted an example:

[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Caleros begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Caleros hit Trakanon for 2751 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Elesh begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Elesh hit Trakanon for 2751 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Luminescent’s song ends.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Ultralisk begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Ultralisk hit Trakanon for 2751 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Brosex begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Brosex hit Trakanon for 2586 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Gotterdamerung begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Gotterdamerung hit Trakanon for 2751 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Matta begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Matta hit Trakanon for 2751 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Dannin begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Dannin hit Trakanon for 3301 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Terminator begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Terminator hit Trakanon for 3081 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Minimax begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Minimax hit Trakanon for 2861 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Velvett begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Velvett hit Trakanon for 2751 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Abusive begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Abusive hit Trakanon for 2806 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Wargrade begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Wargrade hit Trakanon for 2751 points of non-melee damage.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon writhes in the grip of agony.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Trakanon has been slain by Wargrade!
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Merrdox begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Merrdox begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Senni begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Senni begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Senni begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:45 2011] Ravisher begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] Reaperr begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] Reaperr begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] Alfred begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] Daiken begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] Daiken begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] Allahlav begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] Allahlav begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Jun 15 03:21:46 2011] <SYSTEMWIDE_MESSAGE>: Trakanon has been defeated by a group of hardy adventurers! Please join us in congratulating Caleros along with everyone else who participated in this achievement!

That is something like 32K points of damage done with a coordinated Shadow Knight Harm Touch attack.

Elapsed time: 1 second

This is how bosses go down so quickly it seems.

The SOE team is starting to sit up and take notice of the issue.  Sort of.

Well, they have started herding all of the posts on the subject into a single Harm Touch thread.

We shall see what comes of this.

LulzSec Hits EVE Online… Again June 15, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online.
Tags: , ,
5 comments

LulzSec, which brought down the EVE Online login server yesterday as part of their Titanic Takedown Tuesday, started tweeting about hitting EVE Online again today.

They already proved they could do it, but they did it again anyway.

For the Lulz, no doubt.

Of course, not everybody seemed to mind.

Later, LulzSec went after bigger game, the cia.gov web site.  But they have already honked off the FBI and the US Senate previously, so what could the CIA possible bring to the game?

What an age we live in.

One wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Monitize Your EVE Online App or Service… For a Fee… June 15, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online.
Tags:
26 comments

I’m still trying to digest this blog post from CCP.

It seems you will now need to obtain a license to create a 3rd party application or utility, but if you are willing to throw down $99 you can charge for said application or utility.

The key part of the announcement:

Starting this summer you will be able to charge people for usage of your applications, websites and services for EVE Online.

This new system was introduced at the Dev Track and discussed at the Fanfest round tables. We got a lot of good feedback at Fanfest and would like to get more before finalizing the service.

Highlights

  • Simple process – Sign up on a webpage, get started straight away
  • Inexpensive – $99 per year, no other fees
  • Developer-friendly – Very few restrictions
  • Open-ended – You can charge subscription fees, receive donations, sell your app in an app-store and more
  • Non-commercial websites and apps will now require a (free) license

Grueling legal details

  • CCP will license 3rd party developers to create commercial applications and services created using the EVE API, In-Game Browser, Static Data Export, Image Export and Eve Image server.
  • To become a licensee, developer must enter into a commercial license agreement with CCP. The fee for a commercial license is $99, payable annually by credit card or wire transfer (for identification purposes). We do not require further payments from developer or royalties.
  • Developer can choose how they monetize their app or service, provided that they conform with the EVE EULA and ToS. Examples of monetization could be donations, one-time purchase, in-app purchase, subscriptions or ad-supported sites or apps.
  • For ad-supported ventures, we require that licensed applications or services not be associated with ISK selling/buying, macros or bots. An example of unacceptable monetization would be accepting Google AdWords from sites violating our EULA and ToS. (this is essentially similar to our terms for fansites)
  • CCP may at its discretion, list developers’ application or service, and provide other publicity.
  • Developer may not market their application or service as being associated with CCP in any way, other than to include a logo and credit line identifying application or service as a licensed application for EVE. Or similar attribution as may be required by CCP from time to time.
  • We will continue to provide technical assistance via the Technology Lab forum and IRC channel, but CCP does not offer formal technical support to developers or warrant the API in any way. It’s provided as is.
  • 3rd Party applications and services may not accept PLEX.
  • CCP also allows non-commercial apps and services, subject to simple clickwrap agreement substantially similar to the one that is provided to registered fansites.

There is an additional Q&A section which I did not copy and paste that is part of the post which tries to clarify some of the detail.

What this will mean to the EVE apps and services we have all grown used to, such a EVE Mon, I do not know.

Original Level Cap At Last… Do Copies Count? June 15, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest II.
Tags: , , ,
5 comments

About a decade back I read a science fiction trilogy that covered the ability of inter-stellar travel via a mechanism that made a data copy of a being and then was able to transmit that data across space to reassembled at the destination.  As I recall, in the novels (Frederick Pohl’s Eschaton Sequence if you must know, a tidbit of information that I was only able to recall thanks to Amazon.com keeping your entire order history on file) there was a certain amount of philosophical discussion as to whether these copies were really the original (which was deliberately destroyed during the process… or so they said) or… well… just copies… or new beings… or something else.

If that sounds a bit vague or uncertain, well the novels were not that good, this was more than a decade ago, the question was somewhat tangential to the whole tale, and I am surprised I remember that much.  But it was part of my thought process and I am going to write it down if just to keep me from having to go look up those novels again.  Diverge early and often should probably be my motto.

The question of what you were post-travel was complicated by the fact that the transport device could (and would) pop out a new copy of you, with memories only extending up to the moment you started the process, if you died.  And death was expected as the technology was used for exploration and contact with distant civilizations.

All of which came to mind, though in an even more muddled fashion… no, really, the above was pulling it all together and trying to make it coherent… because a character of mine on the EverQuest II Extended server, Freeport, by the name of Nehru hit level 50.

And your reaction might be somewhat along the lines of “so what?” since I have other characters who have gotten at least a dozen levels past 50 in the past, level 50 isn’t all that tough in EQ2 these days, and the level cap is 90 and so on.

The thing is, Nehru is special, and not just because he has a totally awesome name. (And I’d totally get him the jacket if there was such an appearance item in the SC store.)

Nehru is my first EQ2 character.

Well, a copy of my first EQ2 character.

Nomu was my first character in EQ2, rolled into being on November 13th, 2004.  He was my only character for nearly two weeks before I was afflicted with alt-itis yet again.

After that Nomu mostly he ended up being the guild alchemist, as demand for his many chemicals and inks, all essential to most of the other trade skills back then, was quite strong.

He still got played now and again.  I managed to keep him with in grouping level range (you had to be within 6 levels or 1/3 of the lower characters levels, which ever was more, if I recall correctly) of most of our guild so could tag along, stand back, and heal.

But he was mostly a character for trade skills, and because of that I chose to copy him over to EQ2X during the great double XP event to help with our drive for a guild hall.

When that was accomplished, I let him be for a bit until I decided that, as my highest level character on the EQ2X server, Freeport, that there might be some value in playing him.

If I could remember how to play a templar.

It had been a while, something given perspective by the age of some of the quests in his journal.


That was the oldest one I could find, though I purged his quest log of a pile of gray quests as it was full, so I am sure there were a few in there that were older still.  But most of those which remained ranged from mid-2005 to early 2006 when Kingdom of the Sky came out and I took a break from the game.

I was determined, without much real reason, to get him to level 50.  That was the level cap for EQ2 at launch, and he never quite got there.  So I started him off in the Sinking Sands, which is where I had left off back in 2006. (I was surprised to find that he was an ally of the Court of Truth already.  Memories of hunting guards for tokens is a dim memory at this point.)

I mentioned my plan to Gaff and he thought maybe something like the Temple of Cazic-Thule in Feerrott would be a good choice.  There was another place I had not been since probably 2005.  He got out a couple of his level 80 range characters, we grouped up, he mentored Nehru, and off we went.

Looking across the temples

We did managed to pick up the lead-in for the heritage quest for the Screaming Mace.  Named mobs continue to be up almost every time we go looking for them in the older zones.

In addition to that, we picked up some quests in the zone.  There are lots of them that follow the quest philosophy of early EQ2: Kill 10-30 of a specific mob in a zone where maybe 4 or 5 of that mob spawn.  These are handed out by any number of clickable objects in the zone, so as we went along we collected quite a few of these quests.

I think we only completed a couple of them though.  We made the screaming mace our focus and anything else was incidental.  Nehru did finish up his Lizardman Lore & Legend quest, and gain the Thulian language due to the drops we got.  And he even hit level 50 not too far along into things.

50 in Cazic-Thule

Nehru doesn’t look very dwarf-like there, as he was wearing the free Ratonga disguise they were giving out in the Station Cash store for free as part of Ratonga Week. (Whatever that was about… I often feel like I am in the community, but not of the community.)

We actually called it a night shortly after Nehru hit 50, it being a week night and such, but we returned the next night (or the night after that) and managed to bash our way through the zone and finish up the Screaming Mace.

It was a strange run.  First, the zone feels a more than a bit surreal. (Did you see those eyes in the picture?) Then add in the vague memories from having done this zone and quest line with another character back in the 2005 time frame and it was a unique experience.

But the mace was obtained.

Reach out and take the mace

And it is a very nice mace.


Though I think it is kind of bunk to give out a level 42 mace at the end of a level 50 heroic quest.  I’m sure it made sense back in 2004, but now that items lose some of their abilities when they are more than 10 levels below your adventure level, this probably will only be a weapon I can use for two levels.

Still, it is a nice mace

Nehru and his new mace

It will make a nice house item.

And I got my original EQ2 character to level 50, the original level cap.

Or did I?  Does this count?  Nomu is still level 48, but his copy is past 50 now.

In any case, only another 40 levels to go until the current EQ2 level cap.

Will This Help Me To Moria? June 13, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Lord of the Rings Online.
Tags: , , , ,
8 comments

Turbine has announced the next expansion, Rise of Isengard. which should arrive on September 27th of this year.  This will bring out new zones and raise the level cap to 75 from the current 65.

However, my highest level character is only 44.  I haven’t seen any of the key content of the first expansion, Mines of Moria, slacker that I am.

There is, perhaps a glimmer of hope.

As with past LOTRO expansions, there are some pre-order incentives to consider.

There are, in fact, three tiers of pre-order, base, heroic, and legendary.   The differences between them is mostly about access to a variety of cosmetic items (including horses), the opening of some content that I already have with my lifetime subscription, and some additional Turbine points.

But all of the packages include one key item, Derudh’s Stone.

I’m not sure who Derudh is, but his stone grants a 25% boos to experience gain when equipped.  And it is a pocket item, perhaps the best slot in the LOTRO equipment hierarchy. (Giving one the answer to the eternal question, “What has it got in its pocketses?”)

It is actually very nice that this is an item as opposed to a potion with a timer, as EQ2 tends to hand out, or a general cut in the experience curve with each expansion, the WoW way of things (though that tactic has been used by EQ2, LOTRO, and others as well).  When you want your experience boost, you can equip it.  If you feel the need to slow down, you can just take it out of your pocket and put it back in your bag.

Like most such items, you get the stone on every character, including characters you make going forward.  It appears in your bags when you log a character in or create one anew.

I went through some of my characters, just to see who got what, being of a suspicious mind.  I was surprised to see that almost all of my many characters on Firefoot already had an item in their pocket.  My mind must be slipping.  Back at launch, such items were somewhat rare.  I would bet that if I logged on to Winfola and checked characters made at launch, few would have anything at all in their pocketses.

As for which pre-order I chose, I went heroic.  And I did it specifically to get the green versions of the special cosmetic gear and horse.

Green Clad Mount

The pre-order process is not without wrinkles, the first being the order system seeming to insist that you create a new account (the term it uses!) when you know you already have one.  But it really just wants an email address to which to send the activation code.  You might want to check out the pre-order FAQ put together by A Casual Stroll to Mordor if you find yourself at a loss.

Will a pre-order item from the third LOTRO expansion help me get to the FIRST expansion?

We shall see.

What do you think of this sort of experience boost item?

Would you rather have something more temporary like a potion with a timer, or something more sweeping, like a general cut in the experience curve with the launch of an expansion?

SOE Station Access Returns to 2004… And Then Some June 10, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Gaming Industry Trends, Lord of the Rings Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Sony Online Entertainment, Vanguard SOH.
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I was going to wait until SOE posted something official on the SOE web site about the Station Access price reduction, but their community team seems to all be at E3 and unable to do anything besides post pictures to the SOE Facebook page.

I thought a bit of caution might be required, since the stories that announced this coming price reduction all seemed to lack an official original source to which they could link to, only linking to other similarly sparse reports on the subject.  Given how the press “misunderstood” and repeated certain stories during the Sony hacking fiasco, I thought a little care with SOE related stories would be a good thing.

Color me a cynic.  I want the deal in writing.

But I am also impatient, so let’s just treat this as if it is true, and that SOE is going to reduce the price of Station Access to $19.99 a month, down from its current $29.99 a month, at some date which we will refer to as “soon.”

I remember when Station Access was announced, way back in late 2004.  A mere $21.99 a month would cover your subscription fees for all of the Sony Online Entertainment MMOs. (I had to go back to my SOE billing history to get that number.)

For me, the fact that I could be subscribed to EverQuest II and still go tinker around in EverQuest was a decent draw at that price, but the clincher was the fact that, with Station Access you also got a couple more character slots in EQ2.

I will grouse to my dying day about SOE launching a game with 24 character classes that only allowed you to make four total characters.

The price went up to $24.99 later on, and then just a little over four years ago it jumped up to its current $29.99 a month.

The speculation at the time was that this was to help cover Vanguard being brought into the SOE family of MMOs, and there was worry that with each new game a future price increase would come.

Fortunately for those of us at the consumer end of things, the price did not rise any further with the addition of games like Pirates of the Burning Sea.  I would guess that the $29.99 price seemed to SOE to be perhaps the most the market would bear.

For those who are not familiar with Station Access, it is one of the SOE subscription plans.  It allows the subscriber to play any of SOE’s online games as though they have subscribed to that particular game.

In theory you must buy the game box before you can play any particular game.  In practice I was able to download and play Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix Online, and Planet Side without paying for anything aside from my Station Access subscription.  And the games you play benefit, as your Station Access subscription is allocated out based on what game you play over the month.

At $21.99 it was a hell of a deal.

At $24.99 it was still a very good deal.

But at $29.99 the package deal lost some of its luster.

At that price it was a penny more expensive than simply having two month-to-month subscriptions for any given pair of SOE games.  Furthermore, with a standard subscription you can get a further discount by subscribing in 3, 6, or 12 month increments, something not available to Station Access subscribers who can only pay on a month-to-month basis.

This lead to a rather amusing, in my opinion, Station Access Savings Calculator that would tell you how you could “save” nearly $75 a month in subscription fees (if you otherwise subscribed individually to every SOE game), but could not explain why you should subscribe if you only played one or two SOE games.

So unless you were active in 3 or more SOE games on a regular basis (and there are some of you out there who have been at times… I’m looking at you Stargrace and Tipa… and speaking of Tipa, here comment on this post is worth noting just for context) or really needed one of the few other benefits that Station Access offered (like more character slots in EQ2… of that I am guilty), the value proposition for Station Access was not so hot.

But now, if the news is to be believed, Station Access is being reduced in price, back to a level below what seems like a good deal back in 2004.  At $19.99 a month I would subscribe to SOE games only via Station Access, if only to allow myself to peek into EverQuest now and again and keep myself going in both versions of EverQuest II.

Which leaves me with the usual question, “What does it mean?”

Certainly SOE has been a leader in subscription options.  Just looking at EverQuest II, does any other competing game offer as many ways to subscribe and play?  We have free (EQ2X only, granted), $10 forever (ibid), a 3 day a month plan (EQ2 Passport), a standard monthly subscription, and Station Access.  If there was a lifetime plan and an option to buy your subscription time with in-game currency I think they would have almost all the current options in the MMO sphere covered.

But with all of that, why upset things with a radical change in the price of Station Access?

My speculation, and that is all it is, is that the market has changed, both inside and outside of SOE.

Back when EQ2 launched, $15 a month was the defacto standard subscription fee.  (Remember how we scoffed, well I did, when Mark Jacobs suggested that Warhammer Online might charge more, positioning it as a premium game? And now the first 10 levels are free.)  $15 was the line, and the MMO companies held to that, because there were not a lot of options for your western fantasy MMO dollar.

But with the market now flooded with choices, price has become one of the points of competition.  With Lord of the Rings Online, for example, even before it went free to play if you couldn’t find a way to subscribe at $10 a month (basically a $5 discount off the list price) you were not trying hard enough.  And after going free to play, $10 a month became the standard monthly VIP price.

$15 a month has gone from being the standard to being something of the cap on MMO subscription pricing.  How can you charge MORE than WoW, the bestest MMO ever if we use subscribers as our sole metric like so many people do?

So for something like Station Access to “fee” like a deal, pricing it at double WoW is no longer really viable.

And SOE has changed as well.  When Station Access came out… and even when it went up to $30 a month… SOE games were all monthly subscription that, with the exception of Planet Side, were at the standard $15 a month.

Now, however, we have FreeRealms which is nominally free, as are EverQuest II Extended, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures.  If that does not necessarily break the Station Access model, it certainly adds a new dynamic to it.

And you have Station Cash, which has been around for a while now and which was not met with enthusiasm. (And it still has the purists screaming. See race change potion on Fippy Darkpaw.)  Station Cash has become, over the last two and a half years, an increasingly bigger piece of SOE’s revenue pie.  And this, I am going to guess, is probably the key item.

While market changes certainly had no small influence, I am going to bet that somebody did the math, went through and figured out how much revenue there was in attracting each free to play player and how much that revenue changed… went up… when a free to play player converted to a subscription.

Those would be very interesting numbers to see, but I would guess that Station Cash purchases for a player that commits to a subscription are higher than for a free player.  And, I would additionally be willing to bet that somebody willing to spend Station Cash in one game is more likely to spend it in other SOE games.

And if that is the case, getting somebody to commit to all of your games probably nets out better in the long run if Station Access is less expensive because more people are likely to commit over all.

Or so goes my theory, which I will summarize as “market change and the increasing importance of Station Cash purchases to the SOE bottom line.”

Syp took a look at the value proposition of the change, which for a consumer can simply be said to be “better,” but I haven’t see much on the “Why” front.

What do you think is really driving this change?

Addendum: They posted the webcast to YouTube and mentioned the Station Access pricing change in their post on the Station Blog, so we now have something in writing.  Still no details… like an actual date.

The Odd Quests of Fallen Gate June 9, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest II, Instance Group.
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Saturday night found us short of a full group again.  It was just Gaff, Earl, Potshot, and myself in EverQuest II, so content that I was hoping to introduce to the whole group, Stormhold or Crushbone, had to be set aside for another evening.

Still, there we were and we needed something to do.  Finishing up the Dwarven Work Boots quest from the previous week slipped my mind, perhaps because the majority of what was left was the 72 minute wait for the boots to be made.  We could wrap that up on another night.

Instead we headed to the Commonlands and to Fallen Gate.

Gaff got out his mystic Chuggs and his berserker Sixo and mentored Earlthedogwo, who was level 21.  Potshot got out his warden Deneldir, and I opted for my swashbuckler Sedgewick.  So the group was:

  • Sixo – Level 82 berserker (mentoring Earl)
  • Chuggs – Level 82 mystic (mentoring Earl)
  • Deneldir – Level 29 warden (mentoring Earl)
  • Sedgewick – Level 24 swashbuckler (not mentoring)
  • Earlthedogwo – Level 21 berserker

I did not mentor with Sedge because I wanted to get him to level 25 and the coveted scout ability of escape.  With that you can pull the whole group to a safe spot in the zone if an when things go bad.

We had no real problem assembling, except for Earl dropping connection while he was riding towards me at the docks at the Frostfang Sea, which caused him to continue in a straight line out into the sea.

Earl heads into the deep

And then there was a bit of a mix-up about where Fallen Gate actually was in the zone that ended up with three of us taking the griffon to one station and two taking it to another station.

Eventually though, we were inside the doors of Fallen Gate.  And I didn’t even start in on, “I remember when there was an access quest to be able to get in here….”

Spelling up inside the zone

My worry about Fallen Gate is that, being on the Freeport end of the world, we might not be able to find many quests to drive our time in the dungeon.  Yes, we could just go in and kill stuff, but it is nice to have a set of tasks to help you gauge, if nothing else, when you are done for the evening.

The listing of quests shows 69 quests that involve the zone, but I was only sure there would be one quest would be available to us.  At the entrance, there is a quest to find Mr. Burpbelly, a halfling who has gone missing in Fallen Gate.  That was at least something we could take care of.

And getting to Mr. Burpbelly was not an issue.  There were four or five other groups also in the zone, including a group that appeared to be on the same quest just ahead of us, so the path was pretty much clear.  We had to kill just enough in getting to him that Sedge hit level 25.  So when we found him…

Mr. Burpbelly in the Pot

… we were able to use the ability escape to zip back to the start of the zone and turn it in.  There the quest giver, Logan Belchbottom, gave us another quest that asked us to slay things between him and the zone exit, but seeing as there was really nothing between him and the door, that did not seem possible.

As it turned out, killing 10 of anything in the zone finishes the quest, so that was taken care of pretty quickly, leaving us with no quests for the group.

Individuals had quests.  Items drop in the zone that start quests, but they only start the quest for one person and cannot be shared.  So while I had a quest for gloom snakes, somebody else had one for undead rangers.  That ended up with us simply ignoring these quests for the most part.  Instead we went exploring, looking for named mobs.

Exploring Fallen Gate

And, as I have noted previously, named mobs seem to be up, if not 100% of the time, then with a frequency I would put at somewhere around 80%.  With Sedgewick using his tracking skills, we were able to spot a named in a multi-story building just to the right of us in the above picture.

While there, we also found a clickable bookshelf that gave us all a new quest.

Bookshelf Quest Dispenser

Unfortunately, the fist step on the quest was to go speak to somebody in Freeport.  That was not high on our list of things to do.

We continued on, slew the named, then had Sedgewick use his skill smuggle, which is a group wide sneak ability, so we could all take a break and refill our glasses and such.

Smuggle break time

On returning, we pushed on further into the instance in search of named mobs and the special chests they drop.  We found a few.

Time for loot!

We even ended up behind a group who was killing but not looting their chests.  They left a master chest behind.  Chests are freely lootable after a timer specific to its type runs out, and the master chest they left behind had 17 minutes to go when we first ran into it, so we found some stuff to do in the area while we waited.

Waiting for more named

You can see that we now have a guild cloak pattern for Credence Qeynos Revival.  Sedgewick was the only one without an item in his cloak slot, a serious oversight since he was still sitting on a completed Frostfang Sea quest which gives a cloak as a reward.

We kept the area around the chest clear of mobs as they began to respawn.

Deneldir Smote!

Earl's Mighty Tulwar

I might have to turn off those target marking arrows.  They work well in combat, but look bad in screen shots.

Eventually the timer ran out and we were rewarded with a master level skill.  Somebody left that behind, so it was money in the bank for one of us.

At that point, it was about time for us to start heading towards the exit.  We had seen every point on the map, the group had no further  quests for the zone in common, and the hour was growing late.  We found another named mob or two as we fought our way back, but there were no more surprises.

Once out of the zone, we spent several minutes trying to setup a picture in front of the doors to Fallen Gate where we were not all staring at each other.

What are you looking at?

We failed miserably.  We need a “break eye contact” or a “look at the camera” or “look straight ahead” command to fix this.  Sixo managed to not stare, but even his minion, the mini goliath in the background, is staring at somebody.

And so we had a look into Fallen Gate, where we finished all of two quests.

Earl, with three people mentoring him, popped up to level 25 during the run, so he will have to switch and mentor somebody else when we get the full group together again.  If we get the full group together again in EQ2.  We haven’t been doing well on that front so far.

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