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Guild Leadership Metaphor

I am in an abusive relationship with my cat. That he contributes nothing to the household except his presence is a given. He wants to be left alone to do his own thing for most of the day. When he wants attention, though, he wants it now and he wants it on his terms, or he will crap on the floor. He wants attention at odd hours, usually when I would prefer to be sleeping.

Given the chance, he will gorge himself to the point of vomiting. I get to clean that up too.

: Zubon

KO* MMO

Every time I see “KOTOR MMO,” which is more or less constantly in the VirginWorlds feed there, my brain first registers “KOL MMO.” Because the world needs 3-D Pastamancers.

: Zubon

It would be pretty cool if a mainstream MMO tried the “Ascension” scheme of letting you start a character over with something from your last class. Or it could be a huge disaster, but hey, I’m probably not an investor.

Of Death Penalties

Playing The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume 1: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ this weekend, I was reminded that it has a soft death penalty but one that still encourages you to stop playing the game. When you die, you take item damage and get dread. Dread reduces your hit points (“morale”), reduces the effectiveness of healing on you, and increases damage to you; if you have too much dread, you may cower and be unable to act. For reasons we can discuss another time, Turbine seems big on giving any significant boss a dread aura, and the biggest ones dispel hope (the counter to dread). Which, for the record, is not fun.

The dread lasts for ten minutes and is worse in later zones. It does not stack. If you get a rez, you do not get dread. Minstrels can clear one person’s dread every ten minutes.

Dread basically encourages you to stop doing whatever you were doing for ten minutes. If you failed the first time, your odds are worse with fewer hit points and more incoming damage. If you had a lag spike or got an odd add while fighting, ha ha, better luck next time, take the debuff anyway. There is no healer to cure your dread. That long-timer, single-target Minstrel ability is the only dread cure in the game. You just wait. When you have a team wipe, the rezer typically takes the dread hit and runs back to rez folks, but then you wait anyway because you do not want to fight whatever just wiped you while someone has dread. This increases downtime, solo or in groups. Which, for the record, is not fun.

But at least it is 10 real minutes. You can log off and go play something else.

: Zubon

Of Foot Soldiers and Heroes

Copra has a great point on Warhammer:

the characters are soldiers fighting for their faction. And this is where it becomes a different bowl of porridge. The players assume their role as warriors for a cause, and are not in fact expecting to be the heroes or the protagonists of the great storyline.

I criticized The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume 1: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ for this. I stand by that, but I like what Warhammer is doing. Warhammer does not create the expectation that you are The Hero of The Realm. You are one of many. You do not solve problems; you beat back the enemy for a while. There is not an epic story going on, one that logically has a beginning, middle, and end. There is endless war, and you are taking part in it. It does not declare itself the most epic fantasy ever and then force you to watch instead of being the protagonist.

Would you rather come over for soda and board games, or be told that I am having the greatest party ever so could you please come over afterwards and help clean up?

Of course, the eternal, meaningless war with no victory leads to its own problems of “this does not matter.” But I notice that I keep saving the city and the problem never goes away.

: Zubon

EVE Offline

How many people do you think they could get to sign up for this deal:

Due to popular demand, CCP is proud to announce EVE Offline! This evolution in MMO gaming allows you to create a new type of character, one accessible from the internet or your mobile phone, without the full game client. Take EVE Online’s acclaimed real time skill advancement system to the next level, changing your training in progress to another skill or even queuing up to five skills to start when your current training completes. No need to worry about losing points! As an extra bonus, EVE Offline characters will accumulate skill points 50% faster than normal characters.

You should know a few things before you take the plunge offline. First, EVE Offline characters are not part of a standard account. You can start an EVE Offline account for $5/month or add one to an active EVE Online account for $3/month. Second, these must be new characters, although we are working on a system to convert existing characters to EVE Offline. Third, because they are not using the game client, EVE Offline characters cannot log onto the game servers.

How will I get my skill books, you might ask. All EVE Offline characters get them free! You will have access to all skills at no cost, provided you have the prerequisite skills. As an added bonus, you can buy skill books with your existing EVE Online character and send them to your EVE Offline character or your friends’, and training points will accumulate an additional 50% faster on bought books, twice the normal speed!

Take your game to the next level by making your next character EVE Online character an Offline Character!

They could probably get a few more by denying rumors that do not exist, like “there are no plans at this time to allow EVE Offline characters to be converted to EVE Online characters.” But my real question is, how many of you play your EVE characters like this anyway, except for ~12 hours a month, only at full cost with no training bonus?

: Zubon

Chosen at Level 10

The Chosen is the Chaos tank. His special mechanic is auras: +x to you and your allies, -x to your enemies. He uses them one at a time, but the effects last 12 seconds and you can switch them every 4, so you could be a fair melee-range debuffer if you focused on twisting your chants.

It seems unfair to judge this class in any way at level 10. I have not had a chance to tank for many groups. Until I have more taunt skills and healers have their suites, there is only so much we can do about that public quest hero.

Continue reading Chosen at Level 10

Seriously Not Ready – Goldspam Edition

Despite claiming to be serious about goldspam, I have been getting tells from the same guy since last night. This would not be a problem except that the game’s ignore list does not work. Why is Mythic advertising an add-on? Because it cannot program basic functionality. I have canceled my account, although I will be playing out the month. Without tells. Great, I must throw out the basic means of communication in-game because the game does not have a functioning system for chat or player harassment.
call me when you can get an ignore list working
: Zubon

Update: Yep, turning off tells. The add-on does not work either. I should have known, given that Mythic was advertising it. edit: That was an unfair shot. They’re trying.

Update 2: “The stuff no one ever used in beta, like the chat system, sure that is not functioning properly. But I promise, tier 4 and the city raids will work.”

Update by request: the previous bug post, Zubon likes his Engineer, Zubon likes his Shaman, Zubon likes Warhammer bloggers, Zubon likes his guild, Zubon likes the flavor text, Zubon gives a mostly favorable review.

Much later update: about a month into things, they seem to have it fixed. There is a good reporting system (which the mail system should also use), there is server-side filtering, and SpamMeNot is working well.

Not Quite Ready for Prime Time

Finding myself awake early, I decided to log in and finish a few quests. I was reminded that, while Warhammer may have been the most ready-for-release MMO I know of, it is still not possible to play for five minutes without hitting a bug. In about an hour:

  • Attack animations do not always play. This consistently happens with my Engineer’s Hip Shot
  • Monster movement animations do not always play. One of every two or three monsters will take two steps, appear to pause for a couple seconds, then teleport next to me.
  • Morale abilities show themselves as ready when they are still on cooldown.
  • Tome tactics have been disabled. Nothing in game mentions that, but Google knows all. This counts as not being able to go one second without seeing a bug, because the spot where you would put a tome tactic is still there, empty.
  • Pet controls disappear on zoning. The pet still follows. Hope you are not exiting a scenario with it set to aggressive. The “dismiss pet” button is part of those controls. (Tip: you can right-click the “pet buff” icon under your name or summon a new one and dismiss it.)
  • My career trainer keeps offering to re-sell me Steam Vent, even though I got it several levels ago. Since I already have it, there is no price and he will not sell it to me. It just sits there at the top of the training window.
  • The mount icon grabs a meaningless “will expire in” time from who knows where (another constant bug reminder).
  • Random “interrupt” messages after completing abilities, especially my Flak Jacket or using my mount.
  • The Tome of Knowledge lists the wrong trophy reward for the “scavenge 1000 corpses” unlock. You can still get the right item from a librarian, but you must guess it on your own.
  • When you get that trophy, it will not display because it says another trophy is already there, even if you have no other trophies equipped.
  • The quartermaster in Sigmar’s Hammer says it is locked. I can still buy Apothecary ingredients from it. I cannot use them, so maybe those are locked.

Not today, but these reminded me:

  • Pets in defensive mode will sometimes attack your target even if you do not. Sometimes this is just the annoyance of having the pet pull while I am casting, so I do not get to use all my ranged abilities, but other times it will just shoot something.
  • Flying messes up scenario queues. If you arrive to an invitation, it will not work.
  • Has this one been fixed yet? If a scenario ends while I am casting something, I have gotten continuous “interrupt” spam after zoning until I cast something else.

There are probably more, but those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

: Zubon

Engineer at Level 20

Previously

The class is coming into itself a bit more, with a shift towards AE DoTs. It does two things very well: single target burst damage and AE damage-over-time. Survivability is still low, but it is adequate for PvE and improving in PvP as I learn how to play better.

By level 20, the turrets have a permanent improvement, doing what they do a bit better. I have fallen into what seems like the proper use: the gun turret is the generic, single-target damage, what you use in solo PvE; the flamethrower is for close PvP fights and AE PvE, as in public quests; the bombardment tower is used less, for ranged PvP where clumps of enemies are more likely that solo targets. I think I will use that last one more when I start doing more open-field RvR.

I got most of my levels from tier 2 scenarios, which you can reasonably start doing around level 16. People start at 10, but they are mostly wastes of space that help their teams lose. The Order/Chaos scenario uses single-target ranged damage well, along with the flamethrower at the flag. The Dwarf/Greenskin scenario is great for AE, since people clump around corners or near spawn points. The Engineer is the default defense class for protecting your flag in the Elf scenario.

Continue reading Engineer at Level 20