Suzina

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SWTOR – 20 minute video

Bioware treated hungry MMO fans by letting them see quite a lot of SWTOR’s gameplay. Well, to be honest, they just provided a link to IGN who were really the ones to provide the video. Some people on the forums were disheartened to realize that SWTOR is just an MMO, and not the second coming of Jesus. But my reactions were more positive.

It’s an MMO in Alpha, yet it looks very solid. And while the blaster bolts seem to just spray in an enemy’s general direction until it’s out of health, the melee combat looks extremely satisfying. A Sith Warrior can leap across the room, whack you with a saber and impale you. A smuggler can kick a man in the groin to stun him. I don’t need to see see someone’s health bar drop to know that hurts.

Hardly Easy

I hate when instances are made harder after being easy.

I just finished wiping for four hours in the Watcher with my Kinship. I hate that fight. I hate going. But they need me if they are going to go. As it is, we had to PUG a captain because one of our members was a no-show to the raid after signing up. I can’t say these people aren’t practiced. They’ve been wiping an average of three hours a week against the watcher with the same people every week for the last few months. There is a sign-up for next week, and I don’t want to go.

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Sith Warrior

I’m not one to take a quote out of context and over analyze it, but I wonder how much exactly was revealed in a statement by James Ohlen of Bioware. He said quote,

“At E3, we did show off a Sith, and today, we are revealing that the Sith that was shown at E3 was specifically the Sith Warrior. Darth Vader was the primary inspiration for the this character class.”

How very nice to reveal that the thing we saw at E3 was a “Sith Warrior”. We saw the red light-sabers, so we’re not surprised it’s a sith. But a Sith Warrior. Is Sith Warrior a class all on it’s own or a sub-class within the greater Sith class? Perhaps there are two kinds of Sith… a warrior and a healer. I really don’t know.

Maybe, just maybe… Sith Warrior is one of three kinds of Sith to be. I guess I’ll get more of a hint if they officially reveal either Sith Warrior as a class or just plain ol’ Sith.

EDIT: While I was reading a thread this morning on the SWTOR general class forum, a thread I was reading was actually moved to a newly created Sith Warrior class forum. This ends all speculation of “Sith Warrior” as being a mere subclass. Subclasses, don’t get their own forum.

Elite status

I was reading a post on the US LOTRO boards about a person who wanted legendary weapons to be much more rare. This poster also called for there to be deeds to do things like kill 10,000 orcs to achieve “signature” or “elite” status. Players who completed this deed would have rare and powerful characters.

Somehow, this person actually thinks that putting in a massive grind and tying it to a massive reward is a good idea.

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SWTOR Devs won’t say a word

I was reading an article on IGN about an exclusive interview they had with the SWTOR people. Question after question was met with, “We can’t talk about that yet.” They could have used this opportunity to tell me about some pixel shader I’ve never heard of or a tid-bit about jet-pack based vehicle in their game. Such tiny tid-bit would have me drooling and talking to my friends about the article.

Instead, I’m left feeling like this game is ages away from release because there aren’t any details about even the simplest systems and I’m writing a blog about how upset I am with it.

-Ugh.

Grass is greener on the other raid planner

So my husband looked at another kin’s raid planner recently. They had all these raids set up. We were jealous… Who am I kidding. We are jealous. On the one hand, I want to gear up my character, I want to see the new raids, and I want to get back to that feeling of excitement at being at the cutting edge.

On the other hand, I only know one person in the other guild. In my current kin, I’m on friendly terms with everyone and know their name. I’ve been with them for six months. If I went over to that new guild, I might not come to be friends with anyone there, and I could really hurt my relations with my current guild.

I probably won’t go to another kin, but sometimes I wonder if I’d enjoy the game more if I left.

Now what?

Before Book 8 went live, I kept pushing my kin mates to take a stab at 16th hall or Dark Delving to see about getting me the 5th piece of radiance I so desperately needed to fight the watcher. I felt like I would miss out on exploring the new raid with the kin if I didn’t. I was worried they would do it until it was boring and I would be left behind.

Eventually, I did get that 5th piece of radiance armor on my Runekeeper, as well as two +15 pieces of radiance armor. But I haven’t seen the new raid yet. My kinship just doesn’t have enough radiance or confidence to attempt the new raid. We all still need the +20 radiance pieces from the watcher before attempting the new raid. Each week we to the watcher to spend three hours getting wiped.

The tactics we use are the same as those that have been posted and seen on youtube. The characters who go to the Watcher raid are all decked out with the rare drops from the instances and radiance armor. We all have the best food, potions, traits, tokens and scrolls. These are some of the most skilled players I’ve ever played with in any game. Yet every time we try it, some people die half-way through the fight and everything falls apart.

I wanted to get to the new content so badly, but I don’t think my kinship will ever see it. Now what?

Guild Recruitment Pre-Launch

I was recently looking at the guild recruitment forums in SWTOR. Considering the game isn’t launching any time this year, it’s a surprisingly active forum. The first recruitment thread I clicked on had a link to a website which just dropped my jaw. The leader of the guild has invested in custom art for his slick website and a Ventrilo server. There was so much effort expended on this recruitment effort that I actually had to take a step back and wonder. Why do guilds recruit pre-launch at all?

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Copy / Paste

New MMORPGs are accused of being rip-offs of WOW. Before that people compared MMOs to EverQuest. New MMOs always copy what they think is working and slap on a new theme and and tweak a few mechanics. We could say that the developers are greedy and want a piece of that WOW pie, but I hardly think that’s all there is to it.

I used to play Muds, and every mud I played was a rip-off of some other Mud. I don’t just mean they copied some game-mechanics or ideas about leveling, I mean they copied entire zones and sections of code. I played Vampire Wars, which was a rip-off of God Wars, which was an altered version of Merc, which was a modified version of DikuMud. I coded for Cythera, which was a split off from World of Carnage, which was a heavily modified version of CircleMud, which itself also derived from DikuMud.

To this day, slash commands like /bow from early Muds are still used in the most modern of MMOs. We still have hit points and mana points and we still work on getting better gear when we’re done with leveling. We still have these things because they work. Why fix what isn’t broken?

I couldn’t kick him

My kinship wanted to do the turtle raid. We didn’t have enough people to do it without inviting people from outside the kin. One of the people we picked up was a guardian. The first thing we noticed about this guardian was his health pool. My squishy little runekeeper had the same amount of health as he did. An inspection of his traits revealed that he had terrible equipment. Many of the things he was wearing were quest rewards in dire need of replacement. His virtues had such gems as “Charity 9” and “Wisdom 4”. He also didn’t have his traits set up to hold agro.

My kin-mates were complaining about the guy on our teamspeak server before we started, but we went with him anyway. During the battle he had the attention of the turtle for about half the time. He just couldn’t hold agro. When the turtle was down to about 50k health, we wiped. I’ve seen turtle raids before, and if you wipe when it has 50k left, you’re in trouble.

Continue reading I couldn’t kick him