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The Eregion Chapters

I am really digging the Mines of Moria expansion for Lord of the Rings Online, and I have barely scratched the surface.  I started as a level 48 Captain, which got me a little worried.  Turbine seemed to sense the need for more intermediate content and created Eregion (level 48-53).  This got Ravric, Foe of Night up to level 51 with a crit-monster legendary halberd, Meticulous Owl.  The quest design in the first Mines of Moria region is absolutely fantastic, and it truly shows how masterful Turbine can be. Continue reading The Eregion Chapters

Reading – The Lost Art

First off, I’d like to say I blame WoW for this. As a player who played it for three years, I know what I’m talking about. WoW caters to entry-level players, and not reading quest text in WoW was par for the course – in fact, there’s an option to make it display instantly so you can close it right away, and most did. There’s one quest that even mocks this trend, by saying in the quest text “Blah blah you’re not even reading this anyway”. As an Old School(tm) Quester, back in the days of Everquest, you had to read the text carefully. Those devs were devious in their writing, and the hint for the quest was likely buried deep in the words spewed by the NPC. (They relished in this, they told me several times) This said, I miss the days when people would at least try to figure things out for themselves. I took the week off last week and got a good bit of playtime in on the Lord of the Rings expansion. The quests are well written, simple, and literally lead you around the land, telling a story, with multiple quests usually having you kill in the exact same area. There was only one item in days of questing I couldn’t find from reading the text (which was a paragraph or two at most). From the advice channel, you’d think you needed Indiana Jones to find the target. And even worse, you’d see the same question mere seconds after the last one was asked, and you know that person had to be in the zone at the time.

I wonder if they drive around town shouting out of the window “Hey, where is the Taco Bell?” to passers-by.

Introduction to the Kingdom

My occasional references to Kingdom of Loathing seem to miss many, so this is your briefing. Kingdom of Loathing is a silly browser-based fantasy adventure game with a limited number of turns per day. It makes mocking or ironic use of the familiar computer RPG tropes, and most of the game text is humor-based. The graphics are stick figure-based. Over time, it has developed a loyal following, an active economy, and a sort of meta-game developed by/in cooperation with the community.

You pick one of six classes: melee (Seal Clubber, Turtle Tamer), ranged (Accordion Thief, Disco Bandit), or mage (Pastamancer, Sauceror). A Sauceror might protect himself with a Jalapeño Saucesphere and attack with a Saucegeyser, while a Seal Clubber uses Musk of the Moose Ox to find enemies to beat down with his Lunging Thrust-Smack. The three types of classes each lend themselves to different play strategies.

Your goal is to save King Ralph XI, who has been imprisoned by the Naughty Sorceress. Along the way, you level up by completing quests like killing rats at the Typical Tavern, making a Bitchin’ Meat Car, or helping the Deep Fat Friars. Once you save the king, you can hang about and mess with whatever you like (content keeps going), or you can Ascend and start over. Ascending lets you make one skill permanent, and you can get your stuff back (eventually) from Hagnk’s Ancestral Mini-Storage.

Along the way you will fight monsters like filthy hippies, chowder golems, vampire clams, zmobies and zobmies (at The Misspelled Cemetary), and spooky gravy fairy ninjas. You might stab/club them with the ridiculously huge sword, shoot them with a bubblewrap crossbow, or channel your pasta spell through a Gnollish slotted spoon.

It might be worth checking out the wiki for more silliness. You will want that link anyway, because it is probably not possible to reach and defeat the Naughty Sorceress without some spoilage.

: Zubon

Hating Some Random Idiot

I rarely see someone hit almost every single thing I hate about idiots on the internet, and yet here it is. The anonymous commenter consistently calling Tobold “tob” is a wonder.

First, the writing style indicates stupidity, a complete indifference to expressing himself coherently, or most likely both. The random capitalization and punctuation, and lack thereof, is especially effective. Sadly, I do not spot a “u,” or better yet: “ur.” Second, he willfully misinterprets the author and then condemns him for the made-up version. Third, bonus, he interprets his lack of reading comprehension as Tobold’s dishonesty. Fourth, “why can’t you just admit I’m right?” Fifth, “I’m not a fanboi, you’re a fanboi, and you’re a hateboi too!” Sixth, the scorn for the VNBoards community is really quite touching given the context. Seventh, the classic “longtime reader, and this is not what I expect from you.” Eighth, repeating the same thing across multiple comments. Ninth, replying to himself twice in a row. Tenth, representative statistics in support of your position are laughable and shameful! lol!

I should stop at a top ten, but his last comment (as I write this) has its beautiful self-defense. Those disagreeing are “tobold fanboi lol.” He objects to being called a troll, calls the other commenters communists and McCarthyites, and ends on some confused notion of democracy and why must all you intolerant communists insult people who disagree with you?

I very rarely need the mod button here, except for spam. I want to be able to ban people on others’ sites. And IRL.

: Zubon

Great Moments in Testing

Back Alley Brawler, City of Heroes animations developer, combines awesome with oops:

When we were testing the invasions on the training room, I logged into Galaxy City while an invasion was going on, flagged the BABs trainer as invisible, stepped into his spot and made myself visible, and then joined in the fight against the Rikti.

After it was all over I went back to the trainer to make him visible again, but being invisible…I couldn’t find him to target him. He was completely invisible, even to me.

A couple of days later we got a bug report through QA about the Invasion causing trainers to disappear.

: Zubon

Filtering

Throwing things away unread is key to internet literacy.

To be able to focus on anything, you must immediately ignore 99+% of the content out there. If you are reading this, you are not currently reading about knitting, extreme kayaking, the history of Cambodia, upcoming metal shows in Berlin, the proper care of camels as pets, or homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck (actual Wikipedia topic). Once you narrow your interest to MMOs, you have dozens of games (in English), and once you have one game, there are still dozens of sites.

I cannot take it personally if you pass on Kill Ten Rats. There are literally millions of other blogs you do not read either.

: Zubon

Which ToS Have You Violated Today?

Lori Drew convicted. Possible dismissal or appeal to come. Previous discussion.

William Roper: Arrest that man!
Sir Thomas More: On what law?
Margaret More: Father, that man’s bad.
Sir Thomas More: There’s no law against that.
William Roper: There is: God’s law.
Sir Thomas More: Then God can arrest him.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

– Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons

: Zubon

Unbearable suffering of being

So I finally got around to completing the Death Knight starting zone that the world and his dog have been raving about. I should be joining in with commending on how good the quests are (they are) and how well designed it is (it is) and what a great, story driven experience the whole thing is but as much as all that really is true, I just can’t bring myself to do anything other than complain.

Nota bene: there will be spoilers and this is fair warning about them. Read on at your own peril if you have yet to roll a Death Knight.
Continue reading Unbearable suffering of being

More of “The Guild”

Episode 1 of The Guild: Season 2 is now available for viewing.

Unless you’ve had your head in a kobold hole for the last year or so, you’ll be aware that The Guild is a web based comedy series that was conceived, written and starred Felicia Day – an actress a gamer who happens to also be a gamer an actress. The show is about a group of people who, unsurprisingly, are all members of an MMO guild. The storyline of the first series centres on them all meeting outside the game for the first time to deal with some, um, personal issues. It’s very funny and well worth the 30 minutes or so of your life it’ll take to watch.

The Guild garnered a lot of critical success and a huge fan following. Deservedly so too. They released the series on DVD and used the profits from that to start funding production of the second series. Felicia and her co-producer Kim Evey have also managed to partner with Xbox and Microsoft and the show is now sponsored. This is most definitely A Good Thing and is very evident in the very amusing second series opener.

I’d like to say that I had an exclusive interview with Ms Day for you about her experience playing MMOs and about writing the Guild but I’m sure she’s a very busy lady and there’s also some trivial matter of a restraining order that means I’m not allowed to make any further contact even over the web which is more than a little annoying but anyway.

So, here’s the link to the official site and a little thought: if you hadn’t have spent the last couple of minutes reading this rubbish then you could have already been watching it. Bet that’s really annoying.