It's all in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and 'Subjective' is fast becoming one of my favouritest words. Much of last fortnight was occupied with a spectacular U-turn and really quite feeble caving in, where I ended up impulse buying Bioshock from a supermarket one lunchtime. See, well, everywhere else about five months ago for a proper review of that, but I found it to be one of those rare but truly awe-inspiring moments that don't come up nearly as often as they should, in my gaming life.
It also somewhat polarised me in a long running debate I'd previously shrugged at; why don't MMOs look as good as A-list single player games? I'm sure there are very good reasons, but I've never quite known what those might be, and previously, not cared that much. It was just The Way It Is; that MMOs are somehow allowed to be behind the times, sub-par, that they were somehow a different breed, and that to care about the 'pretty', was somehow beneath me as an MMO Gamer; superficial. Now, having had my perceptions of what gaming in general can be altered somewhat, I'm not so sure any more...
Anyway, more examination of Perceptions, disguised as formless rambling, here!
The Van Hemlock & Jon Talking Lots Show (Ep16): In which Various News is molested, and a fortnight of Being Molested Back is harrowingly recounted! Space Viruses! Plane Crashes! Supervillainy! Ruminations on Decrepitude! All this and more awaits!
Speaking of Perceptions, here's the Rantgasm we dissect with our brightly coloured plastic tools of Pop Psychology:
Age of Conan: A Post Mortem Analysis
And yes, I know I already linked it in the last post. It probably is pageranking masquerading as catharsis, but one has to respect that kind of sheer determination to unburden...
I remember when this used to be a blog. Ho hum!
Edit: Oops, nearly forgot:
Our Jita Competition Screenshot is here:
And was won by Stuart, with a nearest guess of 589 pilots. Gratz!
Life continues in Everyone's Favourite MMO, and that most rare of things, a Positive Pick Up Group Experience! Like many of my MMOs of late, Age of Conan seems to be turning into a once-a-week thing for me. Quite possibly this is just the result of having far too many on the go at once, but I find a comforting kind of dependability in the weekly routine I seem to have fallen into of late. Mondays is Age of Conan, Tuesdays is, well, the Tuesday Noob Club of course, Wednesdays seems to have suddenly become City of Villains Night (More on that later), Thursdays is the night where I Leave The House, a token nod to a normal life, (and even then it's the pub for the Podcast Planning Meeting), and Fridays, I mind the shop in Second Life. The weekends invariably manage to fill themselves up with less structured gaming, dipping here and there into whichever my whims dictate, and of course, actually recording the podcasts. It's a life, of sorts.
Mind you, it does have consolations, and over the months and years, I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that perhaps MMOs are only meant to be played once a week? It's certainly prolonged my interest in Guild Wars far beyond any expectation I'd have had all those years ago. If I'd have charged in and gone 25+ hours a week on it, I doubt I'd still be there today. AoC seems to be fitting that pattern for me as well of late.
Last week saw myself and my regular cohort in a very capricious mood while out in the Wild Lands of Zelata, and a combination of their enthusiasm, and my own fatalism saw us signing up with a six-man assault on the Sanctum of Burning Souls dungeon. It was the usual barely organised kind of trip, but conducted with a rather unusual amount of patience and tolerance, which was a surprise in itself.
Of course, first we all had to actually get there, which took a while. The Sanctum is at the far end of one of those brooding majestic Acheronian Ruins that i like so much, and included the trademark huge staircase to fight your way up. I seem to have developed quite the fetish for those, which is both bizarre and unsettling. Once at the top, there's a shifty Stygian NPC dishing out a quest in the ruins. Fair enough, I think, as months of conditioning kick in. I'm thinking of marketing some kind of large yellow foam exclamation mark, held together by wire, which you wear as a hat. Armed with only one of these, it should be a simple matter to head to your nearest town centre and get all manner of strangers to carry out all manner of tasks for you, all with no questions asked!
I know it would work on me, anyway, and sure enough, I clicked, only to find myself curses with a cloud of flies. These flies will kill you in 15 minutes, unless you search the ruins for some Acheronian Knickknack, and bring it back to the fellow. Possibly not the kind of thing one ought to have hanging over them as you're on your way to a dungeon crawl. My friend showed me where the knickknack was, helpfully enough, but in one of those incidents which the Age of Conan Player becomes increasingly philosophical about, it didn't work. Ho hum.
I arrived at the entrance of the dungeon just in time for the flies to instakill me. The group leader seemed more bemused than angry though, and at any rate, we were the first two of the hired hands to arrive. I bounced up at the distant shrine, which was okay, because I got to fight up the Big Stairs again! Meanwhile, at least two others of our would be group were also struck down by flies, before I could warn them about the whole Broken Instant Death thing. I supposed as a test of groupmate patience levels, it did serve a useful purpose, and no sudden sullen groupquits so far!
Eventually, we did all get sorted out and headed in. I'm a Herald of Xotli, and my cohort is a Ranger. With us were also another Ranger, a Barbarian, a Guardian (which I gather is the Tank class), and a Priest of Mitra (the big Healer class). Looked good on paper, and after a few false starts, worked well in practice too.
The Sanctum is a large ruinous area with all manner of staircases to fight up, which was excellent, and is populated by monsters of the 'Group' grade. Interesting to fight actually, as they really are pretty buffed, and clearly balanced for a proper group, meaning that the fights actually last long enough to get some of the combos off, which is nice. There were a number of quests in there, apparently, along with a satisfying variety of Group Bosses, that took a significant amount of wailing on to defeat.
We did wipe a few times, largely down to a slight philosophical difference in gameplay styles, in that some of the group prefer only expending energy and resources on the big bosses and quest ticks, while others (myself included), prefer to scour the map clean, trashmobs and all. This ideological discord tended to manifest in several botched attempts to creep past whole sections of trashmobs, which works well in theory, but only if everyone knows that this indeed, The Plan. Also, with six people all moving together, the aggregate 'footprint' of the group as a whole, tends to be much larger than that of just one player alone, meaning that accidental aggro is much more likely, even if you are all trying to creep.
A few wipes is enough to drive home the lessons though, and things picked up significantly after we'd all been trampled a bit. The rest of the excursion went well; there were lakes of blood, enslaved undead spirit zombie things, evil Princesses, defiled altars, the ubiquitous Demon Infestation (again!), and a suitably epic final confrontation with a Warlord, no less!
We finished heroes, but I suspect that we finished at all mostly due to the surprising patience and determination of our sudden coalition of strangers; much of the antics I saw in the place (my own included) would have sent most PUGs I've tried in the past, in other games, yanking the network cable out in disgust. Our lot didn't seem to mind or care, and on the whole, everyone seemed to be enjoying the ride. Perhaps, if all the stories of falling numbers, doom and gloom are based in fact, those folks remaining in the game are, by necessity, somewhat less inclined to be consciously driving other players away from the game, and in any case, by definition, are probably the sort of people who will put up with more hassle than most. Who knows?
I overanalyse a bit I think. We went, we saw, we conquered, and that's what really matters. I got some phat loot from the night out, which was a bonus, but mostly, it was nice just to see somewhere new, and do well once there.
Mind you, the Bug-O-The-Week didn't help matters; a newly patched in and disappointingly regular spate of CTD out-of-memory issues that make zoning a matter of taking your life in your hands. While much of the stupid stuff is bearable; missing hair after demonform, fire buff effects never going out, etc, this particular gremlin is very much of the gamebreaking grade (litterallly!), and one I'll be keeping a very close eye on, from a continued subscription perspective. I put up with a lot more than most would in these matters, but even I have limits...
Anyway, I'm Level 40 now, which means a horse, and that I can finally start on the crafting. Too bad I sold 20 levels worth of harvesting materials to pay for a horse...
Something of a different show this time. We've had a number of excellent suggestions for show topics over the past few months, most of which we've simply not had time to fit in, what with the self-impose one hour show, and us rambling on far too long about news and games and such. This time we get very Radio 4, launching into an epic one-topic ramble.
Van Hemlock: Guilds (Ep15): In which we look at the ins and outs of that age-old staple of the MMO, the Guild. Featuring in-depth interviews with the leaders of Guild Wars' Tuesday Noob Club, and EVE Online's [Name Removed For Paranoia Reasons] Corp! We also touch on Multi-Game Guilds, plug the Causalities of War Warhammer Online Blogerrati Supergroup and somewhat inevitably, trot out that rambling anecdote about the Star Wars Galaxies City, and how Guilds influenced it, for better or worse.
I think the plan at the moment is to try alternating the Making Fun Of The News and What We're Playing show, and these new Rambling On About One Thing For An Hour show. Let us know what you think. I'm in the process of rounding up all the Topic suggestions everyone ever left for us, but do add any below if you'd like to hear us blather on about them for a bit!