Month: February 2009

Lord of the Rings Online Static Group Update

Casualties of War Kinship members: Eostemir, Joli, Syrna, Fairley and at the end: Zuloin (Zoo-loh-in dammit!)

Level at start: most at 16.

Objectives: Finish Book 1 and then travel to Forsaken Inn to quest in that area.

Book 1: Chapter 11: Othrongroth (Map from The Brasse)

We met at Tom Bombadil’s house in the Old Forest to begin this chapter. Tom escorts us to the South Barrows and points us towards the entrance of Othrongroth. He then turns and skips away, thanks for the help Tom! On the way we fought off a couple of Dourhands and then we enter Othrongroth.

Throughout this chapter, we kept seeing the Witch-king and he would say a little something and then flee deeper into Othrongroth. Our goal was to spy on him and see what he was up to. We fought off more Dourhands and even ten rats at one point. There was quite a few ancient chests to loot here and there, but nothing spectacular was inside them. Eventually the Dourhands make way for wights. Lots of wights. Even a few creeping arms. There was a tough battle at the bottom of some stairs where Joli was defeated in battle. Thankfully old Tom was happy to escort him back to us once again.

At this point the Wight-lord Sambrog calls us down the stairs to see him. We approach him and he tells the “evil plot” (like all evil folks do) before summoning his minions to wipe us out, thus sending us to our graves with the knowledge of the “evil plot” lost forever. Too bad he wasn’t planning on our ability to be defeated not once, not twice, but three times without forgetting the “evil plot” at all.

We debated if we wanted to continue this get-defeated-run-back-strategy when who should show up to help but Zuloin (Zoo-loh-in dammit! aka Zubon) a level 15 Guardian. With his assistance we were able to finally beat Sambrog down (of course old Tom shows up at the last second for the kill-steal). We shared the “evil plan” with Tom and finished the chapter.

At this point almost all of us reached level 17 and we decided to call it a night.

– Ethic

Tome of Knowledge item to adapt

One thing I really like in the Tome of Knowledge is tracking which set pieces you have found. If you are going to have a dozen sets of armor for each class, in assorted tiers, track them. Three reasons, the last of which is where I am going with all this:

  1. Checklist. As a developer, this gives your player a menu of “what do you want to do next?” As a player, this reminds you of what you have in the vault. This is less necessary in the sort of game that has clear tiers where you work on one tier at a time.
  2. Achievement. If you need to pitch that old armor to make room for the new, it would be nice to have some sort of trophy, like an achievement tick saying that you had it. Do this for each piece, not just for the full set.
  3. Cosmetics. Combine it with an appearance system so that you can display any old set (possible restrict this to full sets, rather than single pieces). Completing a full set effectively gives you a new costume. Maybe I want to show off, or maybe I really liked the look we had three or four tiers ago.

: Zubon

Seven Favorites: Warhammer Online

Syp has suggested that we all write our seven favorite things about Warhammer Online. I think this is a great idea, because there is not enough positive thinking in the blogoshere. I think we should go beyond it: start with Warhammer Online, but post your seven favorite things about many games, every game you have ever played if you so wish, all the way back to Pong. I may stick with MMOs, but let’s run with this. My Warhammer experience goes only through tier 3, and went on haitus before the live events.

  1. Favorite Zone: Troll Country. For PvE, it was hard to beat a road lined with public quests, and few monsters in any game are more satisfying than trolls.
  2. Favorite Race: Dwarf. I had planned to go Greenskin, but I ended up switching sides due to population issues and annoyance with funetik dikshun. The Dwarf careers, I found, really suited me. My highest level character was an Engineer, followed by my Runepriest. I like turret pets, and I like the pure healer. I was not fond of the undignified mount.
  3. Favorite Career: Shaman. My MMO roles are DPS and support. Give me a healer who gets DPS buffs from healing and healing buffs from DPS? Excellent. I understand that Shamans and Archmages are still waiting on some rebalancing, but they were stellar in the lower tiers in the first month. Healing is big in tier one, and I played a lot of careers to level 12. Fear the green death ray.
  4. Favorite WAR Feature: Career mechanics. Every career has a toy that defines its theme: grudges, rituals, chants, stances, pets. For my Engineer, that turret was perhaps less defining than her gun and grenades, especially in PvP, but I like the idea. I still need to try The Chronicles of Spellborn, which does something similar for its classes. Second places goes to open groups, which is a good innovation, above and beyond the public quests that complement them.
  5. Favorite Skill: Acid Bomb. It is the Engineer’s instant-cast AE DoT, and I took the tactics to give me more range and AE. It was how I hit 100,000 damage per scenario in tier three. Grenadier was not the best path for single-target burst damage, but it softened up the entire other team so my teammates could kill them. Empty that enemy healer, keep him frantic with everyone in the yellow. This skill also played well in my favorite scenarios, which had piles of people hitting each other: AE skills like piles.
  6. Favorite Scenario: Gates of Ekrund. Nordenwatch was the more popular tier one scenario, but the Gates of Ekrund was basically the same thing on a smaller map that got everyone right into the fighting. It had multiple levels and back doors. I was also fond of Mourkain Temple for being the same plus the dude with the thing and Tor Anroc for being the same in a lava pit. I played scenarios to fight, dammit.
  7. Favorite Live Event: As an observer, that Halloween event looked pretty nice. Nice visual bits, and a good way to funnel people into the same ORvR area.

: Zubon

Mines of Moriaâ„¢ Day 7: Craft Festival

My latest adventure involved standing around The Shire. One of my farmers unlocked Supreme Farming (tier 6), and my cook unlocked Supreme Cooking.

Farming in Middle-earth is pretty dull. It involves lots of time chatting or going AFK. I read about 200 blog posts from my RSS feeds, made and ate dinner, had sex, did a load of laundry, and was still processing seeds. I ended up with a lot of berries and green onions.

Tier 6 cooking is odd. Tier 4, the Artisan tier, has things that sound like what a master chef would make. You brew fine ales, make Shire Rations (“While hobbits think of them as travel rations, the rest of the races of Middle-earth think of these as a mobile picnic.” Before being made cheaper, this included an entire roasted chicken as one ingredient.), the Stew of Kings, Marinated Chicken Cutlets, Honey-roasted Chicken, and Salted Beef Delights, to say nothing of preparing a full Large Feasting Table for your kin hall. Tier 5 goes further, with Ultimate Honeybrew, Lembas (elven waybread), Perfect Pies, Masterful Mash, and the Feast of Rohan.

Tier 6 cooking includes Bread and Jam, Dough, Cup of Red Tea, and Buttered Scone and Jam. I note that Buttered Scone and Jam is defined as “Trail Food,” can be prepared only over a campfire, and is the most powerful Might food in the game. Real Men eat scones. “Rack of Lamb with Mint Sauce” sounds suitably impressive, but you make hundreds of cakes and roast chickens to learn… Bread and Jam?

: Zubon

Guild Wars 2: 2010-2011

NCSoft released their quarterly earnings report for the last quarter of 2008 today.  The company’s sales and profits seem to be on the upswing, but the bad news is that according to the product lineup, we will not be getting Guild Wars 2 until 2010-2011.  This makes sense for the company as a whole if they want to push Aion in the U.S. at the end of this year, even if ArenaNet is calling their own shots.

Things could of course change, especially with the leadership and corporate shakeup going on at NCSoft West, but Guild Wars 2 is very unlikely for 2009 with the little information we have.  For some good Guild Wars news, it is pretty likely that they will have sold 6,000,000 units by the end of next quarter further solidifying the success of a great business model.

–Ravious

EDIT: After listening to the conference call it seems that the internal expectations of what Guild Wars 2 would be really took off during development.  They did intend to make a ‘sequel’ at the start, but it has evolved in to ‘a whole new game.’

Mines of Moriaâ„¢ Day 6: Soaking in Novelty

A week after having bought The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume Two: Mines of Moriaâ„¢, I spent some time in the Mines of Moria. Fun! Big! New!

Finishing up Eregion, I respect how things are ordered within it, even if it works poorly for an existing level 80. It is a textbook example of sending people between quest hubs, quests that lead you through the deeds, and all that jazz. The only error in it is having quest chains from two hubs send you to Pembar. Either you are running both hubs at once, in which case all the “go to the next hub” quest chain caps are pointless, or you are making a LOT of trips to Pembar. I have the School instance and one other quest (chain?) left in Eregion, plus deeds if I feel like killing about 1200 enemies to finish them all.

On to Moria! I stepped inside when I finished Volume 2, Book 1. There is a dwarf camp there, with the usual “go talk to a couple people” and “find the lost dwarf” quests. Going back, I ran past that bit and up the stairs into Moria. And kept going. And kept going. Moria gives you a good idea of its scale by starting out with a staircase that takes 10 to 20 seconds to climb. That would get annoying if I did it a lot, but it makes a good introduction.

Those bridge-like banners up on the balconies at the top of those stairs? You cannot jump far enough to land on them, even if you could land on them. It takes less than 10 to 20 seconds to hit the ground.

Continue reading Mines of Moriaâ„¢ Day 6: Soaking in Novelty

Watch Ads For Your Subscription

A quick idea to throw to the masses.  My wife and I watch all our shows on the internet.  We get to watch our favorite shows for about 1-3 minutes of ad watching for an hour long show.  Could this be brought to MMOs?

Obviously MMOs have tried in game advertising.  Planetside had in-game advertising while players waited for transportation between battles.  Matrix Online had them strewn throughout the MegaCity as well.  I believe Anarchy Online was the first big MMO to implement in game advertising.  I think the problem was two-fold: (1) it impinged on player’s feel of immersion.  Seeing Fanta ads in Planetside breaks the feeling that the developers were trying to create through lore, props, etc.  (2) the advertisers could not be sure how well their ads were doing.  I know I barely look at the developer created wall-hangings and stained glass windows depicting actual lore.  In a world where my mind automatically parses out ads on countless web pages, why would anything be different in an active game?

But, what if just prior to a play session a gamer could watch a few ads?  The player logs in, the system checks to see how much ad-time is “owed” based on past play time, and then it starts streaming a few ads to the player.  A player who is “hardcore” with “no time for this $%#&” could pay the monthly subscription fee and get no ads.

This allows advertising without breaking the game immersion, gives players more options to pay for the game, and gives advertisers a way to gain access to an audience they may not normally get.  If I can generate enough money for a big TV studio to keep LOST afloat through minimal ad-watching, shouldn’t there be a way I can pay for a $15 subscription by doing the same?

–Ravious
tuned to a dead station

Meta-PR

I have been hating on PR lately, but what sort of PR do you use to snow people who believe their own PR? The Arnell Group figured it out. I could leave the commentary to Bruce Webster, but I, like Language Log before me, feel the need to highlight. They have covered the text (“Emotive forces shape the gestalt of the brand identity.”) well, so let me outline the visual explanations.

  • Page 3 explains how the new Pepsi logo was developed by sending DNA into the future and then backtracking a bit.
  • Page 5 relates the logo to 5000-year-old Hindu traditions and the Mona Lisa.
  • There are nine pages of loops that have a tenuous relationship to anything in the world, but claim proprietary geometry to Pepsi, so don’t you go using circles and ovals.
  • Page 21 claims a relationship to the Earth’s core, its magnetic field, and … no, that’s completely incoherent.
  • Two pages of molested happy faces follow. Show me on the Pepsi can where the bad man touched you.
  • Page 26 shows how a sufficient quantity of Pepsi (3) will create a relativistic gravitational pull, sucking the shopper through the wall of the aisle and into a spherical Pepsi aisle. This may relate to page 24, which shows how 2D figures can transform into 3D figures. Mario simply failed to move correctly.
  • It concludes with the creation of the universe, in which units of distance are equal to units of velocity. There is an exponentially expanding 8 light year Pepsi universe.

: Zubon

Mines of Moriaâ„¢ Day 5: More Cleanup

I did a few quest chains from Echad Dunann. Yeah, not too exciting, but there are a bunch of quests and someone asked about Day 5.

I mostly spent time crafting, on my main and alts. There is a lot to pick up in Eregion, and I am finding myself with stacks of (processed) ancient iron, ancient silver, and black ash for my alts. None of them are using those materials yet, but it will be waiting when they get there. My real bottleneck is silver for my jeweler, which seems to be more expensive on the AH than ancient silver. I may finish mastering a tier by polishing gems.

Oh, and Ethic found me for the COW static group. Once I de-mule my Loremaster, I will join that party.

: Zubon

We Are Loved

I was not aware that Kill Ten Rats appeared in a couple of developer podcasts recently. Granted, Kingdom of Loathing developer podcasts, but I like the game, and it is probably more popular than any MMO you have made. For most of you, at any rate; if you have a link to the right under “MMORPGs,” okay, most of those out-sell Kingdom of Loathing. Not all.

Anyway, 120 Minutes with Jick and Mr. Skullhead on January 29 and February 5 continued discussion from the The Price is Right post and Ultimatum follow-up. Which means this has now spilled into three KTR posts and two KOL podcasts. For your convenience, xSmootx made this video mocking everyone involved. Huggles! He then connects it to professional wrestling.

For reference, the “scathing criticism” was why I get burned out on KoL periodically. We exchanged a couple of e-mails. I may not have mentioned then that I binge heavily when I play KoL, like MMO player heavily, two hardcore characters while speed ascending on another. I am not entirely healthy, but I have a dancing badger pet, so life is good.

: Zubon