Towers of Midnight

Book 13 of the Wheel of Time made it to my hands. Was up till 2 AM reading last night. So tired here at work.

I’m not dead in the traditional sense, merely consumed elsewhere.

The rats have landed

As you should be well aware of by now, The Verminous Horde RvR pack arrived last Thursday, and we just had our first full weekend of play with the new toys it brought. Rats have been roaming the lakes left and right. As far as patches go, this one was implemented incredibly smoothly. No game-crashing bugs, or campaign-destroying issues were there, and downtime for it was relatively minor, especially when considering how much was added in. That’s not to say that there aren’t issues that need to be dealt with, and the importance of the various issues will vary from person to person. For instance, on some servers, it was discovered over the weekend that scenarios were obliterated into non-existence. And of course, in typical, and perfectly reasonable ( is my “/sarcasm” needed?) internet fashion everyone cried bloody murder in response.

WAR is not a good MMO

But it is an amazing GAME.

Okay, so the title was intentionally sensationalist, but that doesn’t mean my point is wrong. I want you to reread the title of this post, and that first line again.

When I think of what an MMO is, or is supposed to be, I think of a virtual world. An electronic location created with rules and systems in place that continues in motion regardless of my participation. A series of interconnected systems that influences one another to create a place where players LIVE a second life. This is a topic that has been getting bandied about the last few months by some well-known bloggers as well as some industry people, and various other folk.

The gaming genres were historically broken into very distinct and separate categories. RPGs had levels, stats, character progression, classes (black wizard anyone?), and lots of dialog. Shooters were first-person view, with all the gore they could muster, and roaming monsters that begged the player to blow them into juicy meat-morsels. Except now, we’re seeing a bleed across genre lines. Dead space was gory (and scary) as hell, but there were methods of leveling up, and progression, as well as numerical stats to follow. FPSs are going the same way. Every modern FPS game in the last couple years have had progression elements, with different kits, or jobs, and ranks that unlock new gadgets, weapons, or peripherals. The same bleed is happening with MMOs.

Video Q&A

Last night, Mythic held a live-streamed video Q&A session. Representing Mythic was Carrie G. , Andy B. , James C. , Keaven F., and Steven E. They were fielding questions from their U-Stream channel, as well as from twitter (there’s a reason I participate in the micro-messaging social tool). Once again, I didn’t get to watch except for about 30 seconds of it, as I was in school. Getting my degree. Being responsible.

Stupid responsibilities.

Anyway, you can catch the show after the fact, as it was recorded in two parts found here and here. Additionally, for the video-phobic, you can read a rough transcript, thanks to Warhammer Alliance here (much thanks to Charlotte for her endeavors).



Tomorrow, Tomorrow

It’s the day of the RvR packs. The waiting ends. Many of us have been playing for two years now, and of that population, a large portion have stopped seeing sexy purple numbers as tangible representation of our accomplishments. We’ve had to “settle” for bloody satisfaction instead. Along with a slew of other great things to come that has been poured over, analyzed, critiqued, praised, derided, and just treated like a piece of meat in general by the chomping masses, we get to play what is, arguably, the biggest addition of content to the game since launch. Additionally, we get to play the game in a whole new way. How we interacted with the world before is about to change forever.

So, relax tonight. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

Incursion

I’ve been feeling the itch to get back into Eve for a while now, craving a sandbox to play in. And now that I’ve finished replaying through the original Metroid on the Wii (no more need for complicated passwords is a plus!), EVE seems like a perfect fill-in for my Sci-Fi junky craving. I’ll say this, CCP knows how to promote themselves and entice players back. With the upcoming expansion Incursion coming as precursor to Incarta, I wanted to play around again in their internet spaceships, so what does CCP do: offer 5 free days of play followed by a two month deal for $19.95.  If you’re curious about more Incursion details, follow this link and read all about it.

With joyful abandon, I accepted their invitation for the free 5 days at the onset of weekend, and started looking for a corp to join up with. Hopefully a new home will make my stay last a good deal longer than usual – a tough call with the WAR RvR packs coming out in two days. As-is, I’ve hunkered down and started doing some chain missioning of level two’s with an odd rat-kill in between to help my sec status. I’m sitting at -2.95 right now, which means I can go into 0.8 space for the most part, leaving only the highest-security systems out-of-bounds. What I’m hoping to do as a result of my new-found freedom of travel is go around collecting all my random goods and items scattered across multiple regions and centralized them in one place. I have a badger I can do this with, and a Minmatar shuttle that I think will be great for jumps in between stations with a ship stashed away.

To the outsider, that all sounds probably insanely laborious and overly complicated, but it’s part of what makes the game great. The necessity for travel and planning makes the game a world (er… universe) as opposed to “just” a game. It’s that eternal persistence that keeps drawing me back to Eve every time I stray away.

Self cross-promotion

I’ve started a second blog, for anyone who cares.

Like WAR bloggers that have come before me, I’ve started to run, and despite advice to the contrary, not only am I NOT keeping it quiet, I’m telling everyone. It’s a form of keeping myself dedicated. I let myself slip up, and fall out of a commitment unless I do something to reinforce my will. This will be that support. Even if noone reads it, I will be chronicalling my progress, and putting it into the world, and that should keep me honest.

I’m in week two right now, which may be a bit early to start writing about it (but screw it), and will have a post about it soon.

Sooo…Thursday

Yeah, I know what I’ll be doing after work on Thursday.

Trying to squeeze into an overloaded server along with the thousands of other people who will be coming back just for this expansion, vainly hoping that I’ll be able to get into the game and actually play on the most difficult day to play in an MMO – that’s what.

I need a banner

The title says it all.

I need a banner created for this site, and honestly, I’m too busy to be able to do it myself. So, I’m reaching out to you, talented masses of the WAR community to put something totally awesome and sweet together. It can be whatever you think might fit best if you think you have a good idea, or you can go with a generic Archer/Ranger/Shooter/Warhammer type thing, or a Jesus with eagle wings, both are fine. My original idea was a compilation of various archer tropes compiled into one long banner. Kid Icarus, Robin Hood, etc… The only restriction is that it needs to be 960×80, or at least made in a way where it can scale to that, or a portion of it that is that size is banner-worthy. Or if what you make is really awesome, like a T-rex flying an F-16 awesome, I may re-do the whole damn site to fit your banner.

Anyway, whoever does the bestest ever job on this and who’s work I use, I’ll send you a Collector’s Edition Copy of Warhammer Online if you’re in the US, and if not, well, we’ll figure something out.

So, people with more time than I: I look forward to your help!

No room at the inn

Last night was the North America PTS event to test out the RR100 templates. To say it went well is an understatement. To say there was a good turnout would be a disservice. My class ended early last night, so I was able to rush home in time to catch the tail end of the event. I sat down in front my computer screen at 8:25 PM EST, and was met with an unsettling message when I tried to bring my newly created Shadow Warrior into WAR: “Population is full”.

Wait, what? I thought that I’d have better luck if I tried to create a destruction character – Blackguard incoming!

The results were no different.