So Where Exactly is This GDC Online Hall of Fame? October 13, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Ancient Gaming, entertainment, EverQuest.Tags: Game Developers Choice Online Awards, GDC, GDC Online, Kesmai, Ultima Online
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As far as I can tell, it is online. Which I suppose is appropriate. And it certainly makes it easier to visit.
I was wondering about that since a number of headlines have popped up about EverQuest being inducted into the Game Developers Choice Online Awards Hall of Fame.
Which is cool. Yay EverQuest and all that.
And, in each account I have read, it has been mentioned that EverQuest joins Ultima Online in the hall of fame.
And there they are.
The two of them.
Alone together in that virtual hall.
Because this is only the second year, and they only induct one game a year, so there are only the two games.
And for two games representing the world of online games, those two represent a somewhat narrow demographic in online gaming I would say; online, subscription based, fantasy MMORPGs released between 1997 and 1999 and still running today.
Not that I would deny either game belongs on the list, but when you are admitting one game a year into the hall of fame, “Get all the MMORPGs out of the way first” doesn’t seem like the best plan of action.
Ah well. They do also induct people into the hall of fame as well. Last year it was Richard Bartle, so I guess the committee figured they had MUD1 covered as well with that. Still kind of virtual world oriented there, but at least it is old school, text based stuff. Real history or whatever.
And this year there was a two-fer, with the induction of Kelton Flinn and John Taylor, co-founders of Kesmai back in the day, and both responsible for a few games which ought to be inducted into the hall of fame at some point, like MegaWars III, Air Warrior, and Island of Kesmai.
Along with the hall of fame, there are various yearly awards voted on and given out. Last year it was League of Legends that came out as the big winner, grabbing the top spot in most of the categories. In categories for which they were nominated, they only lost out to EVE Online for the “Best Live Game” category. (Categories with definitions are here.)
This year it was more mixed, with only Minecraft and Rift capping two categories apiece.
All in all, another set of awards. While I am sure they are all quite meaningful for the recipients (who does not like to be acknowledged for their work?) I do sometimes wonder what such awards really mean in the big picture. What impact does such an award have?
And, more importantly, which game and person do you think will (or should) be inducted into the hall of fame next year?
I Would Buy Civ II Again… If I Could Find It… October 13, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Other PC Games.Tags: Alpha Centauri, Civilization II, Civilization V, Digital Distribution, FreeCiv, GoG.com, Steam
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One of the things stopping me from writing up what I think about Civilization V is that I cannot find my 1996 Civilization II disc.
Best Civ Ever... Maybe
Civ II is still my gold standard for Civ games. I played the original Civilization back in the day, but once I picked up Civ II, I never went back. Civ II was clearly superior in every way over its predecessor.
Not so the games that followed however. Alpha Centauri was very good. I played a lot of that. But I never liked the fact it wanted to be played full screen rather than in a window and I was never big on the alien landscape. So eventually I went back to playing Civ II.
Civilization III had merit, but it never really clicked with me. There were features I liked about the game certainly, but I never found it as satisfying. I went back to playing Civ II.
Likewise, Civilization IV. Civ IV is probably the version I have played the least. I went almost straight back to playing Civ II.
And then last year came Civilization V. Civ V felt to me, after all these years, like it got back to some essence of what made Civ II such a good game. But to really put my finger on what it is, I want to go back and play Civ II.
Only I cannot find my disc, which is where I started this post.
I did find my copy of the Mac version of the game. But that doesn’t do me any good, as I would need to drag my old PowerMac 8500 (with the G3 processor upgrade card) out of the closet to play, and I am not that interested in playing. (Plus I am not sure where the ADB keyboard and mouse have gotten to. That keyboard turned 25 years old this year!)
Somewhere around the house there is at least one, possibly two, Windows copies of the game. I can dig around in my office some more I suppose.
But ideally though, Civ II would just be available on Gog.com for $9.99. That is where I got my current copy of Alpha Centauri. (Which is what reminded me of the whole “must run full screen” thing.)
My second choice would be to find it available on Steam. As much as I still resent having to have internet access in order to play a single player game (so Steam has taken the sting out of that Diablo III reality), it is mighty damn convenient. But while they have Civ III, IV, and V available, Civ II is nowhere to be seen.
This leaves me with physical means, finding another disc for sale somewhere. Not an impossible task, but it means I cannot have it RIGHT NOW!
I guess this is a sign that I have accepted digital distribution.
And while I am thrashing around on this, maybe I should take a look at FreeCiv, which looks very Civ II-like. And I can download it.
Unity Live on TorilMUD October 12, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Ancient Gaming, entertainment, MUDs, TorilMUD.Tags: Unity, ZMud
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TorilMUD, the MUD I was playing back in 1993 is still going and still getting updated.
They have some new ANSI color at login
While work has been ongoing for almost a decade straight at this point, since the last big pwipe, with a lot of focus on making the game align with D&D 3.5/4.0 rules and lore (the whole thing was based on D&D 2.0 back when I started), the changes have been mostly evolutionary, tuning and improving what had gone before.
Not that some aspects haven’t changed a lot since 1993.
A lot of what passes for user interface in a text only game is more informative. For example, you can now see as a simple percentage how far you are into a given level. In the past you had to run to your guild leader, and he or she would only give you a cryptic message that changed every 10% you advanced. But much of the game nuts and bolts of the game look and feel as they have for nearly a decade.
The major exception has been new zones, which have continued to come online throughout the life of the game, constantly breathing new life into the game and expanding it to its current enormous size.
Now, however, things they are a changing. A new Unity update has gone live on Toril MUD which includes the following.
- All racial grouping and spell casting restrictions have been lifted.
- Dayblind has been replaced with a reflexive Daylight Adaptation power for all Underdark races. This power will allow them to see during the day in exchange for a hit roll penalty. This penalty is gone by level 20.
- Half-Orcs have been added as a new PC race. They can be any class except Psionicists.
- Vision code has been overhauled and restored to its previous state.
- Mountain Dwarves and Grey Elves have been renamed Shield Dwarves and Moon Elves, respectively.
- Trolls’ in-combat regeneration rate has been restored to what it was prior to this January, when it was accidentally downgraded.
Out of that, there are two big items. The first is racial unification, the “unity” after which this update has been named.
Racial Unification
All races and classes can group together freely in Unity. NPCs will respond to good and evil races in the same manner, and equipment can still be restricted to either side, but all characters are welcome to group with whomever they choose.
While role-play and theme are very important to us at TorilMUD we’ve decided that it is time to break the artificial barrier of the Race wars. Just as in tabletop D&D, your character is your character and you can now role play them as you see fit. All player characters are by definition extraordinary individuals who may find themselves in extraordinary situations that wouldn’t be appropriate for normal people. We hope everyone will enjoy this opportunity to forge your character’s own path.
Mixing of the races is a huge change from the old days. There was a time when one of my characters, a halfelf druid, was banished from all good aligned cities because he was caught casting a heal on an evil race character.
Now, while being an outcast kicked off a time that included some of my best adventures in the game, it was meant to be a punishment, a warning to others. If I had wanted to get back in the good graces of the gods and be once again able to walk to streets of Waterdeep, there was a set of demanding tasks I would have had to perform. Lucky for me I was having more fun running with the evil characters, living in the neutral city of Baldur’s Gate, and generally seeing more of the game than I ever had.
And the other big deal is a new race.
Half-Orcs
To celebrate the unification of the races, we’ve added a brand new player race called Half-Orcs. Here are some pertinent details:
- Hometown in Baldur’s Gate
- Can be any class except Psionicist
- Small boosts to Strength and Agility
- Small penalties to Intelligence and Wisdom
- Innate power: Furious Assault
- Can wear both evilrace and goodrace gear.
As was speculated about elsewhere, the penalty to intelligence and wisdom no doubt reflects genetics passing down genes from somebody who thought mating with an orc was a good idea.
But a new race is a rare thing indeed. I believe it has been more than 8 years since the last new race, orcs, came on the scene.
All of this made me want to log back on and just look around. But that lead me to another change they put in place a while back. Accounts.
For the first 17 or so years, each character was an account unto itself. Now, each player has a single account to which he can attach all of his characters.
Making a new account was easy.
Recalling passwords, some a decade old, was not.
I used to keep some of the passwords on my Palm IIIc back in the day. However, that device finally died about two years back, the battery unable to keep a charge. And the data management application that lets you read and edit what has been sync’d to your computer does not appear to run under Windows 7.
However, I did keep all the sync files, and have dragged them from computer to computer over the years. I was able to open up the memo pad data in Notepad++ and retrieve the password for my main character, Zouve.
The other character I am likely to play, a paladin with a holy avenger, is more recent than my last backup of the memo pad though. His password is encrypted in ZMud. I am going to have to figure out a way to get ZMud to spit that out so I can associate him with my account.
But TorilMUD still lives. There were about 50 people online when I finally got logged into the game. A far cry from a busy night in the old days, but a respectable number of players for such an old school game in the age of FarmVille.
Related Nostalgic Links
- Lost in the Faerie Forest
- Getting to Kobold Village
- Exciting Ways to Die in Kobold Village
- The Way Questing Used To Be
- The Salesman of Waterdeep
And, of course, just about anything else using the TorilMUD tag here.
Blizzard Endorses the Transfer of Capital to the Proletariat October 11, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, EverQuest II, World of Warcraft.Tags: Companion Pets, Guardian Cub, PLEX, RMT
13 comments
Blizzard announced yesterday that their newest and cutest companion pet will not be bound to your account when you buy it from the Blizzard Store for $10.
This means you can turn around and sell it at the auction house for GOLD!!!
I can make you rich! Maybe...
Ostensibly, the reason for this is that Blizzard wants to allow people without the real world fiscal means (or the stubbornness to refuse to play the cash shop game) to be able to purchase the pet in-game… and to stop people scamming with bogus pet codes.
Since the introduction of the Pet Store, many players have been asking for ways to get the companions we offer there without having to spend real-world cash. By making the Guardian Cub tradable (much like the BoE mounts from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game), players interested in the new pet will have fun, alternative in-game ways to get one. In addition to trading the pet, players can give the Guardian Cub as a gift to another character for a special occasion; guild leaders can use them to reward members for a job well done; and so on. We also hope this change will help reduce the number of incidents of scamming via trading for invalid pet codes.
Of course, for some in the community, this was a huge, “AHA, GOTCHA!” moment! The RMT alarms have been sounded!
Unfortunately, if this is Blizzard breaking down the doors and letting RMT run rampant, they aren’t doing a very good job of it.
In the continuum of cash shop MMOs, with LOTRO at one end, where Turbine (last I checked) doesn’t let you buy anything that can be resold on the auction house, and Rune of Magic where, the last time I played, you could simply list RMT currency for sale at the auction house for people to buy with the in-game only currency, this is a lot closer to the LOTRO end of the spectrum.
The first blush comparison is with PLEX, CCP’s own cash shop item that is the root of many a quickly realized stellar fortune. Both can be purchased for cash, both can be sold in the marketplace for in-game currency.
However, PLEX is a consumable. The market for PLEX is insatiable it seems, and the market price has slowly risen since it was introduced about two years back.
Companion pets, on the other hand, are… well… forever. You buy one and there it is, you have one. Blizzard has made the guardian cub a per character pet, as opposed to previous pets, which were per account, which meant once you bought one ALL of your characters, including any made going forward, had one. This might increase demand some. There will always be somebody rich in gold who will want one on every character.
But Blizzard has made the cub less attractive for people to buy outright for themselves… which pet would you spend $10 on, the one all of your characters get, or the one that only a single character gets… so I would guess that most people who are going to buy a cub are going to do so with the intent of reselling it, thus increasing the supply in the market.
It almost makes me wish I was still subscribed to WoW, just so I could go in and watch the behavior of this new guardian cub economy. (Somebody please do this? Gevlon? Anybody? I want a “Cub Watch” economic report.)
As a method to reduce fraud and to allow people access to companion pets via in-game currency, this seems like a reasonable, if unambitious plan.
As a sword in the heart of gold sellers, this will probably be a non-event. The in-game economy is too small on most servers to absorb many guardian cubs, especially on the downtrodden half of some servers, like the Horde side of Eldre’Thalas.
Frankly, EverQuest II Extended has a more open path to go from cash shop to in-game currency, and barely anybody screams about that. You can buy rare crafting materials for Station Cash and turn around and sell them on the market if you need some platinum quickly. Common thread – consumable.
When Blizzard is really serious about putting gold sellers out of business, they will follow CCP’s lead and put sellable game time in the in-game economy. That will close the loop and cut the gold sellers out.
Addendum: Blizzard, surprised as usual that anybody is upset about something they did, had this to say when accused of endorsing RMT with the new guardian cub:
TCG Loot card mounts like the Spectral Tiger have been BoE for a long time now (since patch 3.2), and that was and continues to be well-received, and as far as we’ve been able to tell hasn’t had any adverse impact to the game or economy – despite them selling for sometimes astronomical amounts of gold.
It’s potentially worth noting that no new gold is being introduced into the game’s economy with those mounts or the new Guardian Cub pet.
Our goal with the Guardian Cub is to provide alternative ways for players who don’t want to spend real money to add these pets to their collection. Even though this has been available a while now with the TCG mounts, this is obviously a new kind of way to deliver Pet Store pets, and we’re definitely interested to hear your feedback and ultimately see how this will play out.
Which is pretty much what they said in their original message. So they either think you cannot read (a pretty safe bet in quite a few cases) or they are demonstrating how to stay on message.
GM Fypnosous Draws the Low Card, Gets Assigned to Fippy Darkpaw October 11, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.Tags: Fippy Darkpaw, Progression Server, Vulak
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And that other server.
From the Fippy Darkpaw section of the official EverQuest Forums:
Greetings!
We have some exciting news to announce for our progression players. To help bring back more of the original game feel and to assist with some of the current inter guild raid progression issues we are assigning a server GM. I hope everyone will welcome GM Fypnosous to the servers, be kind to her, and work with her on all raid issues.
I will be bringing more exciting news on changes to how CS is working with the progression servers later this week, so stay tuned!
Regards,
Head GM Kaeldread
Customer Service Manager
Sony Online Entertainment LLC
Reactions were… mixed, with skepticism being the order of the day for some. I cannot imagine why.
We shall see if this settles any of the ongoing issues. (Current proposal on the forum: Just run fast.)
Meanwhile, there is more exciting news yet to come… or so says Kaeldread.
Azeroth Travel Poster Contest – Win a Sparkle Pony! October 10, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: azeroth, contest, Screen Shots, Travel Posters
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It has been over a year since I had a real contest here at The Ancient Gaming Noob.
As I noted previously, the collapse of the World of Warcraft Magazine has left me in possession of surplus codes for a couple of companion pets and a celestial steed.
Celestial Steed / Sparkle Pony / Greed Steed
So to dispose of these excess codes… even my daughter has a sparkle pony… there will be a new screen shot contest.
The basic premise is, as always, simple.
You send me an in-game, World of Warcraft screen shot which you have turned into a travel poster enticing us all to visit exotic Azeroth.
This screen shot can be edited, cropped, Photoshopped, lettered, bent, spindled, mutilated or otherwise modified in any way you see fit, so long as it ends up in .jpg or .png format when I get it.
I look at all the entries and pick a winner.
I send the winner the code for the Celestial Steed, which is valued at $25 in the Blizzard Store!
Simplicity itself!
The devil is, of course, in the details, which are spelled out after the break.
Does Anybody Else See the Resembelance? October 9, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Facebook.Tags: Empires & Allies, Gabe Newell, Valve, Zynga
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Every time the little “recruit your friends” request comes up in Empires & Allies, the picture that comes with it…
… makes me think, “I really don’t know Gabe Newell.”
I mean, the resemblance isn’t exact or anything.
But I cannot help wonder if somebody at Zynga is having a little joke.
Despite Rampant Hacking and GM Shennanigans, Fippy Darkpaw Server is Still Stuck on Velious October 7, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.Tags: Fippy Darkpaw, Hell of a way to run a railroad, Progression Server, The Scars of Velious, The Shadows of Luclin
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Another entry in my sporadic attempt to chronicle the key events of the Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server.
And the way things have been going, you might think that SOE had never done a progression server before. (They have.)
Either that, or that somebody there feels that drama is the best advertising they can afford.
First there were complaints about absentee GMs when it came to contested raid bosses, which turned to complaints about how the GMs started handling things when the did show up.
Then there problems with the raid bosses themselves and the wardens guarding the Sleeper, whose awakening is the keystone event of the Scars of Velious expansion.
Along with that, some of the drops needed to complete the 72 item quests that make up lions share of events required to “complete” the expansion were missing. This is one of those, “You know, you did one of these progression servers just a couple years back, did nobody take notes?” sort of things.
By way of a solution, if a couple of now deleted posts on the progression server forums were to be believed, some GMs took it upon themselves to hand out missing items to a few people who asked… just not to everybody who asked. Like people weren’t already torqued about the GM sponsored Fight Club thing.
Meanwhile, Ten Ton Hammer has a piece up about the prevalence of hacks in EverQuest, and how they are especially common on the progression servers where there is fierce competition for the fame of being the first on the server accomplish one of the key gating tasks required to unlock the next expansion.
When asked by Massively about the hacks issue, EQ Producer Thom Terazzas said that the EQ team was primarily focused on the upcoming expansion. (Which sounds like the same response Ten Ton Hammer got with their own inquiries.)
All of which adds up to mean that the Scars of Velious expansion, which went live on the Fippy Darkpaw server on August 29th, still is not complete.
The Current State of Velious
No vote on the next expansion can occur until that happens, so the 60 day buffer between the final event and the affirmative vote for the next expansion going live still looms between current players and the Shadows of Luclin expansion.
At least I think that is how it needs to go. I have saw a post over at the unofficial Fippy Darkpaw forums that said that waking the Sleeper was the sole gating event to starting the count down to the Luclin vote. The Sleeper was woke 17 days into the Velious cycle. I still think you need to need to complete everything to kick of the timer for the vote.
I suppose we will see what was the real trigger. If it was just the Sleeper, then the vote for the Luclin unlock should show up in the middle of November.
Otherwise, we are now into 38th day since Velious went live on Fippy Darkpaw with no end in sight.
Compare this to the Kunark expansion, which was done in 13 days, and the goals for the initial release were brought down within 10 days of the server launch.
And finally, over on the unofficial Fippy Darkpaw forums, people are trying to assemble a list based on memories of what happened with the last progression servers, The Sleeper and The Combine which launched back in June 2006, of what issues might come up with Luclin.
They will at least be forearmed. Will SOE be forewarned?
Farewell Steve Jobs October 6, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in General, In Person.Tags: Macintosh, Steve Jobs
9 comments
He grew up just a couple miles from where I did in the Valley of Heart’s Delight, the valley that became Silicon Valley in his youth, and in mine.
He was one of the founders of a company that influenced me greatly.
There was a small Apple II lab at my junior high school, which backed up to Apple’s Mariani Avenue campus, back in 1978. It had been donated by Apple.
I was 13 at the time. He was only 23.
Being able to use that lab, loading programs with cassette players, was a seminal experience for me.
I finally wrangled my own Apple II a few years later. It was the gateway into my future.
But even as I acquired that precious machine, the next wave at Apple was emerging, the machine shaped by him, the Macintosh.
My goal was to some day work at Apple.
My own career followed the Macintosh, and I worked closely with Apple at different companies, but never for Apple.
At times that was a disappointment.
At other times that was a relief.
It was especially a relief in the dark days of the mid 90s, when Apple was faltering. The companies I worked for started slowly developing Windows products. At low ebb, in early 1996, having a resume with all Apple focused experience was a serious liability.
And then he came back to Apple.
Micheal Dell at the time said of Apple, “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
But Apple flourished. Michael Dell has since had to eat those words.
Legends were born, stories oft repeated in the valley, rumors and the like, about him. There was Fake Steve Jobs, which gave voice to what we thought was going through his head, and the legendary reality distortion field that seemed the only explanation at times as to the fierce loyalty people had for Apple products for people who failed to grasp the “less is more” design philosophy.
And while I moved away from Apple products professionally, I do not have to look far around our home to see things that he influence, my wife’s iPhone, the iMac in the family room, a selection of Pixar films on the shelf.
And, of course, the memory of half a lifetime’s worth of influence.
So when my wife called me at the office to tell me that Steve Jobs had died, it was a blow.
It was like somebody in the family had gone.
Steve Jobs Announcement from Apple
It is hard now to imagine a world without Steve Jobs.
It is hard to think of someone who has had as much influence on my life.
Scouting Telara October 5, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, Rift.Tags: Steam
16 comments
Telara is, of course, the world in which the game Rift takes place.
And it seems that the temptation of the Rift Digital Collector’s Edition for $10 was too much. I broke down and bought it about an hour before the offer expired last week.
But my purchase was not completely impulse.
There was some speculation as to whether Rift might be a decent vehicle around which to reform the instance group after its summer hiatus. Autumn is upon us, after all, the traditional start of the virtual campaign season. It is even raining in Silicon Valley this week.
Of course, I have no real interest in playing Rift solo, so I prodded Potshot and his wife into coming along with me. The grabbed the 7 day trial version and we were pretty much downloaded, patched, and ready to go by Saturday.
Steam sort of let me down. One of the few things I will grant Steam is that they make patches and updates easy. Not so with MMOs though, or so it seems.
I had Steam download the game client over night, launched the game in the morning, then had to let the client launcher patch another few gigabytes of updates. (This is one of those things that I like about CCP, the EVE Online client is always up to date when you grab it.)
So Steam is completely useless past the purchase, as far as I can tell. It is just a log in I have to do before I can launch the client and actually log in.
Fortunately, I still had the Rift beta installed, and while the beta client won’t update at this point, copying the files from the Steam installed version to the folder for the beta client seemed to solve my problem. The short cut for the beta in the Win 7 apps menu even launches from the Steam-free location.
And if that hadn’t worked, I was just going to download the client from Trion, another option, to break the link with Steam. Unless connections like that just bug me.
Anyway, by Friday night I was able to log in and make my first character in Rift since beta.
I picked the Alsbeth server (Hey HZ!) and went with the warrior archetype, starting with a beastmaster soul. This was on the side of the Defiant, whom I recalled had worse character models (went with an ugly male Eth rather than one of the ridiculous male blue meanies) but a less annoying set of starter quests than their opposition, the Guardians.
Over the course of the weekend I got him to level 15 and arrived at the Defiant city of Meridian.
In the capital
I also rolled up a rogue and cleric archetype and ran them both out to the Freemarch.
The whole soul mechanism still seems a bit of a blessing and a curse to me, but I am not a fan of having too many choices. One of the joys of going back to play EverQuest with Potshot earlier in the years was freedom from choice. When you played a class in old EQ, you got what you got and if you didn’t like it you could go play a ranger and really feel slighted.
I get that some people like the mix-and-match element of the souls, but I have not been at the game long enough to what to pick to do what I want to do. So I just pick what sounds interesting, knowing that a few months down the road somebody will say, “LOL noob! You went with beastmaster/champion/warlord for warrior DPS?” I just hope the peril of bad choices is not as great as it was for Champions Online at launch.
And with three souls, there are three talent trees to compare. Which do I climb and which do I ignore? Too much to think about.
Pretty much just winging it...
But souls and talent points and the like were an issue for the future, we were scouting to see if Telara could potentially be a place for the instance group to regroup before SWTOR comes along. (Everybody seems to be on board for that.)
Fortunately, Rift seems to have improved some since my time in beta, and it was still very smooth back then. If anything it seems even more refined. And that was an important point. One of the things that ended up failing for people in the group with LOTRO and EverQuest IIx was the user interface.
When World of Warcraft is your benchmark for interface responsiveness, both of those games clearly come up short. I tell myself that the difference isn’t that great, and then I go back and play WoW and realize that it is.
Rift comes as close to WoW in smoothness as any MMO I have played recently. Like the rest of the game, while it tries to set itself apart… it doesn’t mimic WoW exactly in any look… it still strives for a sense of familiarity.
It isn't an MMO without boars!
And with the dark atmosphere in the starting zones, the choice of fonts, and the public group/public quests (rifts) all going on, it feels like it plucked some of the more striking bits of Warhammer Online and laid them on top of a WoW PvE world.
The fights themselves can take a bit and you can easily get in over your head and die in the new player zones. I will nit pick that it can be tough to tell which mobs require a group and which do not. I suppose I should have assumed that giant just outside the Defiant starting place was more than I could handle, but I did not see any feedback telling me to steer clear when I targeted and examined him. But I might be missing something in the UI.
Can I take these guys or not?
The world itself is as pretty as it seemed in beta. Out in the Freemarch, where the skies are blue when the sun is up, the rifts make pretty backgrounds.
Turtle before the rift
They seemed to be everywhere as I was working my way through the quest line.
Rift in the distance
And, as I suspected might be the case seven months after launch, at least at the early levels, most of the rifts were going uncontested.
Another one over there!
If I was here to play the game solo, this would probably seem like a bad thing. But since the idea is to get the group together with the intent of taking on group content, having rifts handy and available might very well be a good thing. The five of us can form the nucleus of rift hunting raids as we work our way through the game.
And frankly, I would rather have that than the way rifts seemed to go in beta, with dozens of people rampaging after each rift in a giant, endless zerg rush.
It's the tier 1 Telara marathon!
By the end of the weekend, at least Potshot and I thought that Rift might serve well as a way point for the instance group.
An email out to the group regarding Rift was well received. I think the group is interested in the new game, which Potshot described much more succinctly than I, as well as getting back to a regular gaming night with the whole group.
Earl is actually tied up for the next two weekends, so we won’t be jumping into the game as a group right away. But everybody has committed to having the client installed and patched up so we will be ready to go.
It might be a good time to take a look at the Guardian side of the game while we wait.
But it looks like Rift will be where you will find us for the next few months.
