The MMO multitasker

Are you an MMO multitasker?

I’m not driven to multitask the way I’ve seen in some others, but I won’t deny that there’s a certain pleasure in getting two things done at once.  For me, I’ll engage in a secondary activity while gaming because I feel that it makes good use of my (limited) time, particularly when I’m playing a session that doesn’t require a lot of active thought.

Puzzles to solve?  Cutscenes to watch?  Tricky dungeon runs?  Building something?  Those situations get my full attention, but they aren’t the bulk of my playtime.  When I’ve loaded up on quests and go out into the world to knock them off, one by one, my brain mostly gets freed up to work on something else while I make progress by boinking things in the head.

So what do I do while MMO multitasking?

I am not the type of person who can play more than one game, and even in the great year of 2015, I do not have a second monitor and have never multiboxed.  Instead, I find myself usually doing one of the following:

• Listening to podcasts/videos: I like learning through my audio choices, so my current main go-tos are Scifi Debris (because his analysis of Star Trek is both amusing and insightful), The Tolkien Professor (I have learned so much about Middle-earth through his lectures), and Renewing Your Mind (reformed Christian radio series, courtesy of my man RC Sproul).  I’ve sprinkled in gaming podcasts here and there, but oddly enough I don’t usually like listening to them while I game.
• Vetting soundtracks: I have piles of video game soundtracks (many MMOs in there) to listen through and note which tracks are my favorites.  I can’t listen to music while working — too distracting — but doing so while gaming is perfect.  It allows me to really pay attention to the melody and get a good feel for each piece.
• Prepping blog posts: I’m never off the blogging clock, even while gaming.  Every so often I’ll stop my gaming to tab out to take notes or screenshots of certain situations or to jot down a subject to talk about.  Finding the story in a gaming session is a welcome challenge and I’m always happy when something happens that’s blog-worthy.
• Giving my kids love: Sometimes there’s a kid who pops in for a post-bedtime snuggle or a sick one, and that’s when I’ll transform into a human-shaped body pillow.  I have a “I’ll never say no to a hug” policy at home and I always want the kids to know that they come first before any game.
• Reading: Long load screen or travel time?  Waiting for a group to show up?  I’ll break out my Kindle on a moment’s notice to squeeze in a few more pages.  There’s a danger that comes with that, however; I’ve had more than a few gaming sessions terminate early because I get so into what I’m reading that I’d rather keep doing that than go back to the game.
• Write encouragement notes: I believe that hand-written notes are incredibly important in affirming my teens, even though I hate, hate writing things out by hand.  So gaming is actually a great way to break up the task: write one postcard, game for five minutes, write another one, game some more, etc.  I’ve also done this for stuffing envelopes and other menial jobs.

Again, I don’t always have to be doing something else.  But it’s nice to walk away from a gaming session at night having not just gotten my character through another questline or to a new level, but also to have made progress in another project altogether.

TSW: Don’t fear the dead, fear nothing

After the Christmas Conspiracy mission last month, I took some time off of The Secret World, although I anticipated coming back to really tear into Issue 10.  I had a bit of a setback one day when a few side missions kept kicking my butt — mostly due to impossible-to-kill mobs and repeated deaths.

But here we are, deep in the Orochi projects (one of the new Kaidan areas) going through the main story mission.

I came across a playground for the Happy Smiles day care (one of Orochi’s things) and my character found something… quite puzzling.  A kid with gigantism (an oversized head) on the seasaw by himself.  While my character never speaks, I have to say that Funcom does an excellent job letting my body language talk for me.  There are a few excellent bits in this cutscene that show hesitation, morbid curiosity, fear, and… well, one last one that I’ll talk about in a bit.

This is Jung, and even though he’s only four years old, he talks like a professor and has mental powers.  He’s also got poor emotional control, because he’s only four years old.  You feel bad for him and a little wary at the same time.

Dang.  This line gave me chills.

I like Jung, if for the fact that he actually does a good job spilling some key exposition and tying together plot points that may or may not have gone past the player.  The whole Morninglight/Fear Nothing/Atun/Orochi connection has been pretty apparent in the game, and all of it is absolutely nasty.

You know how I make fun of how much Orochi gets killed?  This is Syp-in-game talking here, but good.  I’m glad they do.  Because this is an organization that, among its many other sins, has conducted extensive experiments, torture, and kidnapping on kids.  And they so need to pay for that.

I want to add that this bit here bowled me over.  This is why TSW excels at storytelling in ways that other games… man, they can’t even imagine it, otherwise they’d try to do it.  But at the end of Jung’s speech, he crows about how he’s finally top dog in the playground… now that everyone else is dead and he has powers to keep the filth dudes away.  You hear his power, but then you see his extreme loneliness and sadness.

Who will play with Jung?  Who will love him?

My character raises her hand to push the seesaw down, but Jung uses his mental abilities to do it instead.  And my character walks away, leaving this little boy going up… and down in a tomb-quiet playground in the middle of a city of corpses.  Argh, I wanted the option to take him along with me.

And that’s just the opening cutscene for this main story mission.  The actual mission skews to an investigation format, where you have to solve clues to find the next clue, and so on.  It’s cleverly done — not too easy, not too hard — and encourages exploration of the projects.  My only complaint is that the mob density here is way, way too high.  In fact, I would be totally find with no mobs whatsoever here.

The scavenger hunt led to this, a secret door that goes into another Orochi place, The Clubhouse.  Flashbacks to The Nursery and Virgula Divina made me pause and then log out for the night.  I don’t know if I’m ready to go into another lab of horrors.

Battle Bards Episode 42: RuneScape

Talk about a challenge!  How do you pick a handful of tracks to represent a game that’s been around for so long that it has over 1,000 pieces of original music in it?  Fortunately, the Bards are up to the challenge as they tackle RuneScape, that free-to-play game that probably deserves more respect than it gets.

• Follow Battle Bards on iTunes
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• Episode 42 show page

Episode 42 show notes

• Intro (featuring “Theme B” and “Royale”)
• “Dune”
• “Breeze”
• “The Reaper’s House”
• “Honky Tonk Medieval”
• “Barking Mad”
• “Supreme Champions”
• What did we like?
• Mail from Adrien
• Mail from Thoroughmas (and the video link he mentioned)
• Speakpipe from Scott
• Outro

Listen to episode 42 now!

• Email the Battle Bards!
• Special thanks to Tesh for the Battle Bards logo!
• Battle Bards is part of The Gaming and Entertainment Network of podcasts

SWTOR: Happy new year! Get ganked.

When I rolled on a PvP server for my recent return to Star Wars: The Old Republic, I didn’t give it too much thought.  I did so because my multi-game guild — for some reason — was on this particular server, and sometimes PvP servers are pretty beneign.

In fact, most of my experiences to date have been pretty tame, to the point where I totally forgot that I’ve been constantly PvP flagged.  However, last night reminded me in a quick fashion why I was a fool to venture onto such a server.  You think I would have learned by now.

I’ve been questing on Tatooine, almost finished with both the world and personal story quest lines.  I was in the middle of the dune sea doing a short quest, and right after I triggered a brief cutscene, a level 60 Sith came out of nowhere to hack my character into short bits.  My immediate instincts were to fight back — flight is impossible, really — but when you’re 30 levels below, there’s no chance.  He was there to gank and I was there to be ganked for his ego.  You’re welcome, Mr. Tough Guy.

Fine, whatever.  I rezzed (no field medic probes for me, as I’m F2P) and started to venture into a giant underground bunker for the final planet story quest.  It’s one of those areas that is dense with mobs and takes a lot of methodical progress via fights to get through.  Nothing too above my capabilities… that is, until the Empire showed up.

At first it was just one guy who was there for the same quests, and I gathered had as little interest in PvPing as I did.  We even cleared mobs for each other and I tried hard not to accidentally catch him in my bomb blasts.  But as I’m finishing up a room, a Bounty Hunter comes out at me and starts going postal on my face.

This was the one shining moment of the night, as I actually managed to fight him off and kill him (see above screenshot as proof).  That’s a minor miracle, as my brain always locks up in PvP situations.  I’m like “HIT ALL THE BUTTONS IN A PANIC” with no time to think through and react appropriately.

Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there.  For some reason, I was the only Republic player in this area, but there were just scads of Empire all over the place.  I want to reiterate that I needed to get through this place to wrap up the final quest, so I didn’t have an option to leave or do something else.  There wasn’t anything else to do.

Another level 60 Sith killed me.  Sigh.  I do the long, long run back, fight more mobs to get back into the bunker, only to turn the corner and have a pair of Empire players pop out at me and kill me again.

Now, I’m not here to grind any axe about PvP.  I intellectually understand why people like it and don’t begrudge its existence.  But man, I hate it, and this night was a prime example of why.  None of this was fun; it was being a punching bag for other players who cost me time and progress.  There was no help around and no epic team-ups.  Just a particularly vicious game of tag in which I was always It due to the color of my name plate.

I logged out, frustrated, and strongly regretting going against my experience by rolling on this server to begin with.  Listen, I like my guild, but even good people aren’t worth gaming aggravation.  This is not the kind of journey I want to have going forward, but I also didn’t want to reroll my character now that I’m level 30 and have invested some actual money into her unlocks.

Fortunately, upon some investigation I discovered that my account did have one free character transfer on it.  I didn’t have to think twice.  I said goodbye to my guild and moved my character back to the RP-PvE server on which my old stable of characters reside.  Yeah, it’s going to stink to have to scount around for a new guild, but to me it’s worth it to avoid being some PvP chump.

Quote of the Day: Sane

On the one hand, I don’t get the use of “casual” as an insult. “Casual” could reasonably translate to “sane,” particularly in the MMO world. They spend only a few hours a week playing? Yes, that’s a good idea.

~ Kill Ten Rats

Temple of Elemental Evil: Showdown with the Master

(This is part of my journey playing through The Temple of Elemental Evil. You can follow the entire series on the Retro Gaming page.)

The Fellowship of Elmo’s adventures pick up today deep in the catacombs underneath the basement at the bottom of the moathouse.  Naturally, we stumble upon a giant crawfish guarding a treasure chest because the monster manual isn’t depleted of giant things-that-are-normally-small yet.  My favorite part of this fight is that we surround it and then the crawfish tries to move, opening itself up to about seven attacks of opportunity in a row.

Next up on our tour of this fantastically weird place, we come across a pack of gnolls that are more angry at a “Master” whose poor planning has cost them lives on raids than homicidal toward me.  For a bargained 150 gold, they not only leave but also tell me where the Master is.  O…kay.  Guess that’s good.

Just around the corner from the gnolls is a secret bandit base with more bandits than I can shake a stick at.  We burst into this room and find ourselves in deep, deep trouble, as there are almost a dozen of them, many with long spears and bows.  Trying to move through this room and position attacks is difficult, and I lose two guys before reloading.

The next time, I keep my pocket army in the hallway and send my meatshield around to drag a few bad guys onto my turf.  Doesn’t work; the guards just stay in the room.  Guess we have to rush it and hope for the best.

I eventually prevail with a few casualties, praying that I’m almost done with this place.

In the final (?) room is The Master, the gnolls’ hated enemy.  We have a brief fight, but one guy against eight is not much of a battle, and he begins talking before we skewer him.  Apparently, he knows the way to the game’s titular Temple of Elemental Evil, if we’ll spare him and let him join the party.  Fine with me… but first I have to ditch someone and I’m not quite sure how to do that.

I reload an earlier save file and talk to “Spoony” (Spug) and tell his worthless butt to leave.  So far he’s been an eight-hit-point floozy with a dagger and no magic spells to speak of, so I’ll gladly trade him for the much more proficient Master.

Hilariously, in the ensuing fight, Spoony actually attacks my party (as he hasn’t gone anywhere) — and over-exterts himself and falls unconscious and dies without me doing a thing.  That’s how worthless he was.

The Master joins our team and brings with him a delightful attitude of supervillainy.  That’s what I need!  More evil geniuses!  I don’t even mind that he cavorts with Lolth, as long as he keeps the prayer chanting down during nap time.

Well that’s it for the moathouse — it was a good run that netted us some loot, some experience, and a (hopefully) better teammate.  We return to Hommet… and apparently everyone wants us dead.  Seriously, I try to go back to the farmhouse to sell loot, and the widow and her kids come at us like they’re possessed.  Of course, they’re of no real threat and we kill them with a single blow, but still, that’s disturbing.  Is it because we killed Spoony or that we have the Master with us now?  This might make selling our stuff a problem.

What’s there to get excited about in January?

Let me tell you, I always dread the start of January. 

I’m sure I’ve grumped about this before, but after the excitement of the holidays, end-of-the-year lists, awards, holiday sales, and the usual batch of fall expansions, it’s as if we are thrust into this gaming (and general entertainment) dead zone.  Plus, winter is just getting going here in Michigan, so that means that there’s this icy wasteland to contend with.  Emotionally, it feels like plunging off of a cliff, and I don’t usually find my bearings until the middle or end of the month.

In MMOs, this is as dead as it gets.  Very few games or expansions are released in January or February, although there will be some content updates to fill the void.  News is slow as studios get back to normal footing after extended vacations.

So what do I look forward to?

It’s not all duldrums and woe.  There are three things that are going to help me get through this period.

First, the start of the year is traditionally the time when studios like to come out with overviews (state of the game, etc.) and announcements of big upcoming plans.  Expansions, business model shifts, content pacing — anything could be revealed around this time.

Second, while there’s little coming in the immediate future, there is a lot of previously released stuff that is still begging for my attention.  I’m nowhere near to the point where I’ve exhausted the “new” stuff in TSW, RIFT, GW2, LOTRO, WildStar, SWTOR, and, well, everything else.  One of the perks of not living at the endgame is that there’s somewhere to go practically anywhere I look.  Plus, I barely touched Dragon Age Inquisition and Dreamfall Chapters, not to mention not having picked up Sims 4 and Wasteland 2 yet.  All of those could use some attention.

Third, yes, I am a sucker for making new year’s resolutions — and I actually enjoy using the start of a new year as an excuse to set goals and strive toward them.  This year I decided to keep my resolutions to five and to fix goals to each of them: one for gaming (my try more MMOs thing), two personal, and two familial.

In a weird way, it helps that 2015 will be a “smaller” year

Last year we had so many big-name titles on the horizon that waiting for them was agony.  This year, the lack of huge names and set release dates has freed up the year to be as it will be.  I truly hope to be pleasantly surprised by how everything turns out!

Ten quick wishes for MMOs in 2015:

1. I wish that WildStar would go B2P/F2P soon and work on catering more to casuals
2. I wish that Elder Scrolls Online would go B2P/F2P so that I would have a good excuse to try it
3. I wish that we’d hear one, if not two, announcements of big new upcoming MMOs based on major IPs or franchises
4. I wish that Guild Wars 2 would get an expansion already and scale back the living world stuff
5. I wish that we’d get one new mobile MMO that actually looked worth playing
6. I wish that more studios would officially release their soundtracks
7. I wish that studios would get their act together and have fewer clownshoes moments this year
8. I wish that MMOs would make significant gains, not only in population but in reputation
9. I wish that Turbine would get back to making new MMOs
10. I wish that a popular dead MMO would be brought back to life

January 1st blog cleaning

To get this year started right, I’ve given Bio Break a bit of early spring cleaning — mostly updating little things and tweaking others.  Here’s a quick list of notes:

• The Nostalgia Lane page is now called Retro Gaming to be more understandable to visitors (same URL tho).
• Removed “Syp’s Most Wanted” widget.  The right-hand side was getting too long as it was.
• Updated “Currently Playing” widget to reflect my actual progress/status.
• Removed several lapsed/dead blog links from the blogroll and added many more (a blog link is eligable for deletion if it hasn’t been updated in the past 30 days, as I try to keep it full of active blogs).  Let me know if yours should be on this list!
• Added a “Follow Bio Break via email” button on the right-hand side.

SWTOR: Toy soldiers in the desert

Why do the idiots always come to me to die?

This thought has been echoing through my head as I explore the sandy wastes of Tatooine in my turquoise-and-green getup.  It seems that no matter where I go in this game, I keep bumping into space yokels that are designed to be so annoying that it requires an epic feat of will not to pull the trigger seventeen times or so in their general direction.

I mean, my time is precious.  I’m not a heartless Smuggler, either.  I hear the sob story of a guy who had his daughter kidnapped by pirates, and I want to see justice done and the girl returned.  I do not mind that detour, and I do it gladly not looking for the label of hero.

But then there are situations like this one NPC I met last night who was distraught that some other bad guys stole his precious valuables.  I gave him lip about it not being my problem, but his companion stuck up for him saying that this guy was the paragon of virtue and help in the community and that he deserved some assistance.  Sigh.  Okay.

So I do the standard Rambo stuff: blast into a base, kill a jillion faceless minions and drones, and find a chest with his stuff… which turns out to be toys.  Toy action figures.  I am so dead serious right now.  It completely caught me off guard, and I returned to that NPC with an expression of disbelief so severe that my eyebrows still haven’t lowered after a full night of sleep.

Even the guy’s companion was taken aback when I reveal that it was a rescue mission for toys.  Then I’m given the choice to give the toys back or stomp on them, and it’s not much of a choice at all, is it?  I get dark side points for wrecking the toys, even though this moron just sent me into a mortally perilous situation to get his G.I.Joes back.  My only regret is that I couldn’t go back and stuff him into the chest.

At least it was something different, I’ll give BioWare that, but the resolution left a bad taste in my mouth (especially being “dinged” for having a very reasonable reaction to a guy almost getting me killed over nothing).

Casting off my cares

I’ve been shifting how I’m approaching SWTOR lately and having a much better time for it.  Instead of feeding that latent completionist side of me, I’ve decided to cut out activities such as datacron hunting or hanging around on a planet forever to find a group for heroic quests in favor of going through the storylines and simply enjoying the ride.

Another big (for me) decision was to stop getting worked up over orange gear.  Previously in SWTOR, I prized orange (moddable cosmetic) gear over all else and would constantly sell any other quest rewards.  But keeping that gear on the up and up requires a lot more work — 2 to 3 mods per armor/weapon — and was slowing me down.  So now I’ll equip orange if the stats are better, but I’m fine using other quest rewards and drops if they’re upgrades.  I’ll hang on to any oranges I find for endgame cosmetic fiddling, but right now I want to keep the ball rolling.