If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say…

Boy oh boy do the summer doldrums continue.  Unbearably hot weather and the all consuming fires of hell devouring our fair state of California puts the kaibosh on most fun outdoor activities.  Almost a recipe for an extensive gaming jag– not unlike those short day, long stormy nights of winter that almost force you to game to excess.

Sad to say, I haven’t had that itch much.  More acccurately, I’ve had the itch, just found nothing much to scratch it of late.  When I start digging through the old game box, you know its bad.

I got into the beta of Wizard101 which many have mentioned of late.  I’ve explored a bit, but am loath to say more without having explored more.  Suffice it to say the turn based card combat is interesting and a new twist.

To show you how bad it is, Mrs. P and I picked up a couple of shooters for the CONSOLE and we are anything but console players.  We do enjoy a good run around and shoot em up from time to time, but its like eating popcorn– great as a snack, but unless you’re still in college, hardly a meal.

Summer vacation schedules has kept the WoW group on informal status of late.  With our self imposed level cap removed, the horses, now unleashed, largely remain at the gate.  I’ve mentioned it before, but doing anything outside of an instance in WoW as a group is almost shooting yourself in the foot, groin and then head.  Diligent progress can be made as a group, but it pales in comparison to any focused solo effort.

As I managed to ding 69 and get a good way into the level, I did start to get that horse-to-stable itch.  One. More. Level.  20 chiclets… Its pretty tempting and watching the bar slowly progress from left to right on its (for now) last march has got me in that “lets just get it over” mood though I’ll see if it lasts.

Oh, I guess I should say something about Warhammer and the recent hoo dee doo.  I told you so.  Actually I didn’t, but lacking sufficient insight as to whether the sky has fallen with the announcement that 4 classes are getting cut and 4 out of 6 capital cities wont be in at launch, all I can really comment on is the fact that EA Mythic-no-just-call-me-Mythic has even less cred now.  Assuming launch is actually coming, seems like a crappy interview is probably the last place to Make a Major Announcement.  But then again, they’ve been blathering incessant jibberish for three hype-filled years, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when they developers run out of unobtainium to finish all the features marketing sold to the public over the last few years.  Of course how could the hype about the hype ever live up to the reality about the hype?

Another week or two like this and I think it might be about time to reload Age of Kings.

Pithy Insightful Commentary

Actually not.  Its just hard to come up with continuing variations on a “Weekend Update” theme.

WoW

The instance group is on temporary hiatus due to certain vacation plans, so while we are all about 68+, the slog up the final Hillary Step seems to be exactly that.  A slog.

We have been extraordinarily efficient in leveling almost exclusively via instance work once a week and only one other noninstance session each week which, particularly since the 2.3 patch, has allowed us to pretty much remain level appropriate for all instances with our modest play budget.  With the crack like concentrated xp that instance work has generated, its very hard to feel like you’re making any progress by “merely” doing quests.  Even more so when you’re running a group of more than two or three.

As Wilhelm, the Ancient Gaming Noob reported, we lifted our self imposed stay at level rule for our group since we were so close to 70.  Playing mostly with the group twice a week, I hadn’t really noticed how significant the solo bias has crept in.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m pro solo experience but I’m also very pro small group.

A week or so ago, I happened to take a Sunday– ostensibly a non-WoW day– to grind a bit to get over the hump to level 68.  Several of us were still stuck in the last half of 67.  In a matter of a relatively short time, I knocked out some green quests in Terrokar and Shadowmoon to get over the hump.  Others of our group, playing only during our “appointed” group times twice a week have failed to keep pace when doing non-instanced content.

No news here, but for the same amount of time that we play together, we make less progress than had we undertaken the same content for the same amount of time.  Playing with a group of three or four, we simply don’t make as much progress as a solo or group of two.

That’s frustrating.  Instance minimum is five but if I can’t make the same experience (or more) working together with a group for the same amount of play time, something’s borked.

EQ2

So much for WoW.  Mrs. P and I logged into EQ2 for a brief session and managed to level and nearly get another as we scale the teens and try to remember how to play the game.

Diablo

Like so many other bloggers, we took obvious note of Blizzard’s announcement of Diablo III.  Go them.  Despite the gameplay being so NOT MMO, I loved the original and will give them at least $50 as a nostalgia dividend.  If the multi works decently enough, I could see our WoW group trying to explore this game ad nauseum.

Others

Given my state of boredom with the MMO space, I downloaded the Spore creature creator and spent some time playing with that.  Lots of fun and I’m very interested in seeing what the rest looks like.

One of our instance buddies mentioned that he had been looking around for something else and mentioned Sins of a Solar Empire. I started drooling at the possibility of rekindling an RTS night.  Before MMOs, RTS games (C&C, Warcraft, AoE, AoK) ruled our universe for years and Sins seems like a good opportunity to go there again.

Blogosphere

I can’t believe the continuing “conversation” that has grown from Richard Bartle’s off the cuff comments “I’ve played Warhammer.  Its called World of Warcraft.”  or somesuch (I’m too tired to link the quote).  Raph Koster has weighed in and said that MMOs left more features of MUDs behind than they implemented.  A ridiculous quasi-historical discussion ensued on Raph’s site that seems to be racing to discover the Big Bang of the current MMO genre.  Most folks left it at  D&D was a major root influence from which all or most MUDs, MOOs, MUSHs, and later MMOs flowed.

So we owe everything to Gary Gygax’s Chainmail (R.I.P.) or Avalon Hill or Tolkien or Risk or Parchesi.  Meh.   Two questions go unanswered in all this conflated Gas Baggery:  1) Why hasn’t anyone innovated on the basic game mechanics in 50 years and 2) WTF happened to the single most distinctive feature of the table top gaming system that purportedly evolved into MUDs and MMOs:  the Game Master.

Absent the game master, the game is simply a ruleset, generally applied to static content.  No MMO to date has anything even close to the approximation of a real live breathing game master.  Therein lies the next generation my friends.

We can all learn how to kill Van Cleef as a staged, canned encounter.  Its the same whether its a group of 5 alliance mages or a mixed group of hordies or a level 70 warlock and 4 various classed noobs or whatever.  “Van Cleef pay big for your head.”  And you for the box and the subscription.  Make that encounter dynamic based on the level and mix of classes in the encounter– and what they’ve done in the virtual world then to date– and I’ll buy stock in that company.

Non Game

Finally, it warmed my heart to hear that the 73 year old Leonard Cohen stole the show at the Glastonbury Festival.  My faith in humanity may have been restored.

And the first tomato from my garden was harvested and it was good.

P out.

Blog Faded

Boy, have I become blog faded.

Simple fact of it is, I’m just not compelled to spout off about anything much going on in the gamespace right now.  Conan is out, I’m not playing it and I really don’t care to read or participate in the Conan Rocks v. Conan Sucks debate, nor the perpetual discussion about polish.

Seriously, the most drama the MMOgosphere seems to be able to drum up is who would win in a steel cage match:  Tobold or Richard Bartle?  See what I mean? Its like the dreaded August in journalism– a non news month.

Blizzard’s super announcement in coming up in a few days, but whatever it is, we wont actually see it for a few years in all likelihood if past is precedent for Blizzard.  Seriously, today’s modern hype machines just wear you out sometimes years in advance of a release.

Warhammer? Meh.

Wrath of the Lich King?  Meh.

I’ve still been playing a number of games.  Our WoW group marches on as we are all on the verge of hitting 70.  We have an extended instance hiatus coming up, so I respecced shadow and am having fun face melting.  That’s rekindled a bit of interest but not any kind of must-play feeling.

I’ve fired up EQ2 again and am making steady progress though I continue to resist writing about EQ2 v. WoW v. everything else.  Covered ground and I’m not likely to provide much entertaining insight.  Suffice it to say, I’m having a decent enough time and the frequency of rewards at the lower levels is enough right now to keep it entertaining.

Work ebbs and flows, so its not like its keeping me from gaming or blogging.  So it feels like maybe a little break or low input period is just what i need.

Mrs. P and I are backfilling various movies and TV series we’ve missed or not seen in proper order courtesy of Netflix.  We thoroughly enjoyed HBO’s Rome and have moved on to Battlestar Galactica since we didn’t get caught up when it first came out, or should I say the new series first came out.  Fortunately or unfortunately, I watched all the originals in the 70’s with Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict and yes, Lorne “Don’t call me Ben Cartwright” Greene.

Also spending a lot of time out in the vegetable garden, biking about and starting and finishing a never ending series of home improvement tasks.  There must be some serious malaise in the MMO world if digging ditches, pouring concrete and building fences in 90 degree (F) heat is a more compelling proposition than sitting down to kill ten rats.

And so, rather than posting for posting’s sake… I let the blog battery recharge a bit.

Winter respite

Ah winter. Yes, winter.

The usually somewhat grey and occasionally wet that is a Northern California winter has granted us a bit of a respite in the form of mostly sunny, mid-sixties (F = 18C) weather. Inevitably each year seems to have a wee break from winter sometime between the middle of January and the middle of February giving us a hint of spring to come before returning to our monsoonal winter weather until April.

So, with the sun out, its too tempting not to climb out of the game cave to enjoy it while it lasts, hence the dearth of posts of late. Likewise, after the release and mild disappointment of PotBS, there is not much on my gaming radar now other than our WoW group and related alts.

Loyal readers may recall that four of us migrated to a new server to start our instance group leaving behind a couple of then-capped sixties and miscellaneous alts. Quite a few alts stuck near the old level 40 doldrums. With the 2.3 patch, however, those alts have been released from purgatory, so I thought I’d actually try Blizzard’s paid character transfer and bring my 40-something hunter to the new server.

Paid character transfer costs $25 which is probably about $20 too much IMHO. Still, considering what MMO companies think they can get away with for a whole crappy game, its cheap for the additional gameplay it would provide to me on the same server as friends and guildies.

So, with no other games on the radar worth playing right now, I bit the bullet and did the transfer. All in all it was painless and only took about 20 minutes on a weekend. I spent a few minutes loading him up with gold (it varies, but I could take up to 5,000 gold with me on this guy) and items from my other toons and then went to the WoW paid character transfer page. Some restrictions apply:

A few clicks and it told me it was awaiting approval. Blizzard has a handy timeline that lets you know the current status:

Despite the warning about taking days to complete, or the 1 hour approval time, it only took about 20 minutes. Once approved, I had to confirm the transfer (that’s the point it bills you) and voila! I logged in to see him in the character selection screen on the new server. When I first logged, I had to change his name since it was already taken on that server, but no big whoop, I was expecting that. Painless.

And what a difference 2.3 has made. My hunter was 43 when he came across and with modest play, I’ve managed to get him to just a hair under 49 in about a week– all while dropping old professions and taking up mining and engineering. The run from 50-60 always felt faster than 40-50 to me at least, so I suspect he’ll be exploring in the Outlands before too long.

One

Just did a year in review post not so long ago, so I’ll avoid a re-hash, but today is the one year anniversary of this blog. People who know me or who read my writing with any regularity will certainly say it sure feels a lot longer than that. ;)

Thanks for visiting!