October 2005 Entries
Well, seems like the Warcraftosphere is alive with bits of expansion news, following the ‘Blizzcon’ event, the chiefest of which seems the confirmation of the ‘Blood Elves’ as new Horde race. General opinion seems to be that of disappointment as far as I can tell, a sentiment I share. I mean really – Caucasian-Textured Night Elves? That all ya got?
I always got the impression that on the whole, the Horde was the side to pick for players who don’t take themselves too seriously. “We come from the Orrrrrrrcs, we eat with spoons and forrrrrrrrks, we love to eat our...
I’m a Farmer! Gah, it sounds so sleazy when I write it down like this, but I can think of no other way to describe it. It’s a familiar tale, of course; the happy-go lucky Adventurer races through World of Warcraft, almost incidentally earning enough pretend money to cover the costs of skill training, maybe buy a few nice shineys to help with viability, and then level 40 turns up and bam! A bill for a horse and skill to ride it, totalling 90g.
Forewarned is forearmed though, and having seen so many blogs go on about it already, I know...
Ha! There ya go...
WoW Wiki: Instance Grouping Guide
Extremely detailed, and very comprehensive. There are no more excuses! Read! Learn! Improve!
Well, after yesterday’s concerto for the smallest violin in the world, a happy tale of things gone right. Scarlet Monastery again, which I’m learning actually consists of four separate sub-instances, each with a boss at the end. The line up: Me (Warrior), another Warrior, a Warlock, and…get this…TWO Priests! As you can imagine, I felt somewhat more optimistic about the whole thing as we sallied forth this time.
It went well – I was main tank, which is just as well. I have absolutely no experience as secondary tank, and haven’t a clue what is involved – keeping an eye on...
And so my epic saga of heroism, derring-do, a desperate fight against overwhelming evil, and all that jazz, continues. Blackfathom Deeps (23-27), a waterlogged cave system plagued by sea monsters, snake-people and angry elementalists, passed me by entirely – despite my best efforts with Meeting Stones, shouting in the appropriate zones, joining the occasional guild, and even forlornly one-hitting lowbie mobs outside in the hope of attracting passers-by, the optimal levels simply passed too quickly, and before I could get in on a group for the place, I was already too powerful. Nothing prevents me form entering the place anyway,...
Ah, here we go:
Warcraft Realms: Server Stats, All Servers
Well that explains a lot, in particular why so many of my pickup instance groups have three Tanks, a Mage and a Hunter if I'm lucky, and NO HEALER! According to the charts for my server, there are only 49 Horde Priests, and 62 Horde Druids with five levels of me, and how many of those are actually online, available, have even heard of a Meeting Stone, and not busy being desparately twinked and powerlevelled by the other 60s in their guild, is anyone's guess. Meanwhile there are 123 Warriors, who all...
Mystic Hemlock speaks!
SCORPIO Oct 23 - Nov 20
A good week for new encounters and a pick-up group may end up giving you a lot more than you bargained for. Generosity with loot rolls will be repaid a hundredfold. Characters with misspelled Anime names will be lucky for you.
SAGITTARIUS Nov 21 - Dec 20
One respawn too many will leave you asking yourself a lot of meaningful questions, and a change maybe better than a rest. Look out for new Open Betas, as it may be time to strike out anew. Don’t roll a melee character in your new game.
CAPRICORN Dec 21...
Well I’m sure you’re all dying to know how I’m getting on with this whole beating-other-people-to-death for points thing, and the first week’s results are in! I’m a Scout! I get a neat red tabard with a Horde symbol on it. I don’t wear it much, as I end up wearing my Amazing Technicolor Guildtabard mostly instead, but that isn’t really the point (and another story). I also get the word ‘Scout’ appended to the usual floatey name above my head that keeps following me about, so everyone can be impressed and intimidated in equal parts, by my presence. In...
And so the Epic tale of Instance-Based World of Warcraft Heroism continues. The Wailing Caverns (15-21), a cave network full of big snakes, insane druids and dinosaurs, came and went without much to report to be honest. It took a while to get a decent group going, but once that happened, the trip went perfectly – everyone knew what they were doing, and did it well. We only got wiped out once, and most importantly, no-one logged in a huff when that did happen. All very good from a game experience point of view, but lousy for ranting material.
Next was...
I love stats, and so does this guy:
Next Gen: MMOG Player Trends Detailed (Via Slashdot)
Theres a few of these doing the rounds now; The Daedalus Project, The Bartle Test, and this chap’s one, Project Masive, and aside from being obvious Doctorates In Progress, they do offer some quite fascinating ‘Gamers Under The Microscope’ insights. Well, they fascinate me anyway.
I’m not entirely sure how these kinds of microcosmic psychological field trips can then further be applied to the Real World, and I doubt World Peace is something that can come from World of Warcraft, but for better or worse, I do...
From the latest Planetside update notes:
"Combat Engineer Window: We added a Combat Engineer window for viewing deployables. You can toggle the C.E. window by pressing Alt-E by default (remappable in the global keymap list of the Options page). This window shows how many mines, boomers, motion sensors, and spitfire turrets the player has deployed, along with the deploy limits."
Theres also some nonsense about 'Rabbit Ball' tweaks too, their latest atempt to make War interesting. I've always thought that the basic game, you know, the attacking and defending of fortified bases in a combined arms setting, was heap...
Ethic has a fascinating interview here:
Kill Ten Rats: Interview: Istvaan Shogaatsu
Istvaan and his corp recently achieved a great deal of infamy by 'owning' another player corp in just about the most comprehesive way possible - an elaborate months long confidence trick hiest, far beyond the scale of anything like Ocean's Eleven, resulting in the absolute ruin of the target corp, to the tune of 30 billion ISK + Reputation, and the sheer scale of the caper even warranted a four-page spread in PC Gamer magazine, out there in the Real World.
Regardless of my own opinions on the means, I can't...
Flush with not humiliating myself (or having it done for me) in Warsong Gulch, the next stop was The Crossroads in The Barrens. The Crossroads is a small walled village in the middle of the main Horde L10-20 development levelling zone, The Barrens. Most Horde players will spend a good week or so here in their early days, and The Crossroads is their main goods and services hub for the essentials, and loot selling. It also occupies a key point at the centre of the Wyvern air travel routes to the further away and higher level zones. This means that...
So, as promised, I spent a lot of the weekend throwing myself into the fray of World of Warcraft PvP, (and indeed, threw myself into the fray of Fray Island at one point, but that’s another story,) and you know what? It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. I guess a lot of my problem is with Rallos Zek induced psychological scarring. The kind of post-traumatic stress disorder you could pick up there doesn’t go away, instead colouring your perceptions of all online games, and the people who play them, hence my unrelentingly bitter style. On the whole, I’m...
Life continues to be interesting in World of Warcraft, and progress is steady. Most remarkable of all, my usual Level-Buddy is still actually my level, which is quite a departure from the norm in my experience. We’re approaching 30, which I realise is not an especially arduous feat, but the options for different sorts of evenings online are continuing to open up.
There is the bread and butter of course; the thousands of solo quests available, and one thing I’m having trouble coping with is that I don’t have to do them all. I’m usually quite obsessive about the Quest Journal,...
On a somewhat lighter note:
The Seventh Carnival of Gamers
Go see!
And we have a winner: (via Slashdot)
Erotic MMO Targets Female Audience
My god...I'm not entirely sure what to say. There was me, cackling with glee at the thought of how badly an MMO based on Star Trek could possibly go, and then someone comes up with an idea like this. Reading through the article does little to answer the main question I have; which would be "What the hell are you thinking?", but the basic premise seems to be that women don't like conventional pr0n, like men do, but would prefer something more interactive - obviously, an MMO is the answer!
Frankly...
Some new news here:
Via MMORPG.com: STO Devblog
They have ten people on the job now, and still hiring. I’m not an expert, but I’d guess it probably takes a few more than that to design, build and run an MMO – particularly one based on a franchise with that much baggage. Sounds like a general ‘Hi, we’re still here!’ shout, the kind you make in lieu of the screenshots being ready to flaunt.
I do kind of want to play this one actually. I’m not a Trekkie, or Trekker or whatever; I’ll watch it if it’s on telly, but won’t go out...
It’s a flashback episode today, and not even about World of Warcraft, but gather round anyway as we travel back, back, back…
It was the heady days of early Star Wars: Galaxies. Combat was still delightfully anarchic, spaceships hadn’t been invented, and even land speeders and player towns were still on the ‘Coming Soon’ list. I’d been playing for about a month, going through the usual early ‘first go’ incarnation – the one where you make all the crippling development mistakes while still coming to terms with stuff like ‘Walk Forward’, ‘Attack’ and the like.
I’d had my heart set on being...