World of Warcraft: Do murlocs wear boxers or briefs?

It was a bit of a mixed bag of a week last week in World of Warcraft. Yay for holidays and extra gaming time and all, but I keep jumping from project to project without really settling down. One of these projects was checking out some of the anniversary content and downing a trio of world bosses who were resurrected from Way Back When for the amusement of us veterans. Oh Lord Kazzak, are you tired of being our punching bag?

I did get a couple of nice pieces of gear upgrades, which probably happened because in my absence my Death Knight fell behind the gear curve once again. Oh well, I hear there’s this new expansion coming out, so I’m just going to time travel to next August, grab some green quest rewards, and then come back to be the envy of raiders everywhere.

Another one of these projects was getting back in touch with my poor, neglected Dwarf Shaman. I had a ton of fun with her in the waning days of Warlords of Draenor, at least until that horrid 7.0 patch came along and gutted her easy going enhancement lifestyle. Gone were her totems, her elemental pets, and her rotation.

I had tried numerous times to see what I could do with her after that, but it was a hard sell. Picking an artifact meant I needed to at least temporarily commit to a spec, so resto was out because no one in their right mind wants to level as a healer. I was so mad at the enhancement changes that I went over to elemental — I mean, at least my pets were there. But after a lot of experimentation and trial, I couldn’t find a really solid build that worked for me… and so I found my way back to enhancement.

At least this time I got the artifact and did some homework to see what most people were doing with their rotations. It’s mostly smacking things around with a hammer and trying not to die. I find that my health can dive really quick if I’m not paying attention, but at least there are instant heals and my helpful wolves every now and then.

I seem to have activated the Super Bloody mode. This game is rated M for “MOM! DAD IS PLAYING A VIOLENT GAME!”

Actually, I think this was some enemy spell. Still, it’s fun to take pictures out of context.

Tell me, why can’t I loot and sell all of this treasure after killing these mobs? I’d be set for life with WoW Tokens if I could!

Aw little murloc buddies. At least there are missions to make friends with you and help you on your way so that you can grow up and be a quest objective for an expansion. Don’t forget to tote around some vendor trash when that happens!

Do murlocs wear boxers or briefs? I’m 95% sure that this guy is rocking boxers, but I’d have to get closer than I’d feel comfortable to confirm. At least my kids thought this little undies window was pretty hilarious.

Secret World Legends: It’s a filthy sort of hell

Am I over Tokyo? I’m starting to suspect that I am.

Don’t get me wrong, Tokyo is an amazing zone. It took forever to be fully built, this is true, but the final result is an incredibly detailed metropolis slathered with a post-apocalyptic feel. It’s got some highly memorable NPCs and quests, that whole Fear Nothing Foundation quest that’s one of the most terrifying things this game has ever cooked up, and a terrific storytelling climax in the Orochi Tower. It’s the end of the first season of the game’s mythos, bringing us to Ground Zero of the filth bomb and exploring what really happened to trigger the end of days.

But… I’m kind of done with it. It hit me this past week as I was dutifully going through these quests and not feeling particularly excited about them. That seemed weird to me, since I have only really done most of these missions once on my old TSW character, but when I started to think about it, it made sense. Tokyo has been out in the game for literally years at this point. It’s been the “endgame” of the story for a long time now, and I’m probably not alone in being ready to move on from it. It’s kind of like when you outgrow a place — say, a school or your childhood home — and you’re just ready to go to the next step. We’ve been spinning our wheels in Tokyo for too long now, and instead of being a captivating part of the adventure, it feels like a delaying tactic (much like how Venice felt like an extended intermission between Transylvania and Tokyo).

I can’t help it. I keep thinking “what’s next” and am starting to get a little concerned that I won’t have all of this wrapped up in time for whatever Funcom is planning with Dark Agartha, the agent system, and season two. We might still have a while yet, but I wouldn’t mind having the main storyline all done.

So after a week of going clockwise around the map, I put that on hold to follow the blue missions to their conclusion.

I’m also vowing to pay a little more attention to the story. I have a feeling that I’ve missed some of it or have forgotten what I did learn a while back, leaving a question mark why I’m diving into a Japanese hell to chase a demon for reasons unknown. Probably to get flattened by these giant boulders, which must be a PAIN in the rear for the bad guys to roll back up and reset for the next traveler. I’d feel sorrier for them if I wasn’t ground into paste.

At least I can continue to thank my lucky stars that I’m not fiddling around with AEGIS. I keep finding myself flinching when a mob attacks because I’ve been conditioned to look for a shield type and try to quickly swap what I have. But no, now I can simply attack. I appreciate that, I do.

Battle Bards Episode 110: Acoustic guitar

The Battle Bards are quite familiar with the power of the strummed guitar and lute, knowing that such simple instruments can bring down walls, devastate armies, and dethrone monarchs. But on their off days, acoustic guitars are simply pleasurable to hear and are sprinkled throughout many a-MMO’s soundtrack. It’s six-stringed serenity in the 110th episode of this podcast!

Episode 110 show notes (show page, direct download)

• Intro (feat. “Sunlight of Morning” from Aion, “The Fringes (Daytime)” from FFXIV, and “Hills of the Shire” from LOTRO)
• “Auf zu neuen Welten” from Drakensang
• “Firelight” from TERA
• “Lisbon” from Uncharted Waters Online
• “Aughaire and Angmar” from LOTRO
• “Dion Theme” from Lineage II
• “Pre-Alpha 4” from Shroud of the Avatar
• “Breeze Island” from Ragnarok 2
• Which one did we like best?
• Listener comments: Rafael12104
• Jukebox picks: Retro Game Audio, “Emerald Falls” from Revelation Online, and “Main Theme” from Spyro’s Adventure
• Outro

• Talk to the Battle Bards on Twitter!
• Follow Battle Bards on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM , Google Play, and Pocket Casts!
• Find more podcasts at The Gaming and Entertainment Network!

Try It Tuesday: Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

I don’t get Animal Crossing. Never have, probably never will.

If you were anywhere on mobile last week, you probably saw that Nintendo finally released its long-awaited Animal Crossing Pocket Camp as a free-to-play title. It quickly became THE hot game download of the week, and roped me in out of curiosity more than an actual desire to play it.

I never really connected with this series. I played the original on Gamecube back in the day, spending more time puzzling out why any of this was supposed to be enjoyable than actually enjoying it. It was a glorified task simulator with sickeningly cutesie graphics and some very bossy animals. I messed around with it for a few days, changed the Gamecube clock to make different stuff happen in-game, and quickly moved on.

But perhaps, I thought, this time would be different? Everyone seems to go bananas for this series, and when you lay out some of its features on paper, they line up pretty closely to game elements that I enjoy. Housing. Life simulation. Um… a laid-back mellow vibe. I guess that’s it.

From what I can tell, Pocket Camp is a pretty bare-bones version of Animal Crossing (which wasn’t THAT deep to begin with) coupled with an online element and F2P microtrans. You are sort of building up a campsite — which has a large wooden floor and no walls, for some reason — and to make best friends with animals by throwing gifts at them left and right. In reality, the animals are a fence, turning your useless apples and cod into useful crafting “rewards” like cotton and perfume. Then you craft items to attract more animals, pretty up your campsite, make money, and… yeah, that’s about all I see there. The game does hint at being able to throw parties and do some other things with amenities, but to tell the truth, it kind of lost me after the second session.

There’s just not enough meat on the bones here. I’ll go through grind and do silly activities if I feel like they’re worthwhile to progression, but here it just all feels like meaningless busywork. After one round of shaking down trees for fruit, catching bugs, and fishing, I could see the future of doing this a million times and not finding that terribly compelling. I wasn’t thrilled with how many transition screens existed and how many times I had to keep clicking on prompts to make things happen, such as visiting friends’ campsites and crafting.

Another significant issue is that, like with previous versions, I really cannot get into the art design. The human characters in particular look like creepy Raggedy Ann dolls that scream to me that this game is meant for those ages six and under.

In the end, Pocket Camp made me yearn for a game that did a lot of this just way, way better — Stardew Valley. There is a lot of points of comparison between the two, but Stardew’s pixelart is easier to get into, its farming system offers a great core gameplay loop, and there’s a far bigger town full of residents to get involved with. Now why isn’t THAT on mobile already?

MMOs and the peer pressure effect

Here’s a weird thought I had the other day: What if WildStar was, er, wildly popular right now? Same game, same patches, nothing different from Carbine’s end, but what if there was a much larger and more prominent community about it these days? If everyone was talking about it, if it was getting more coverage on Twitch and YouTube — how would that change things?

In other words, if nothing was different about the MMORPG itself other than increase activity and numbers with its community, how much — if at all — would that persuade you to play it or return to it?

At least for myself, I think it would matter a lot.

The “community question” is one that you see a lot in general MMO discussions when people are asking about certain titles or looking for recommendations. Players generally not only want an MMO that matches their playstyle, but one that sports an active community. Nobody wants to get seriously time invested in a dying game (real or perceived), and conversely, a lot of people want to belong to a surging movement. It’s exciting to be part of trendy games and to share in that excitement with others who are talking and playing. We want to be uplifted about our involvement and feel as though this game could last forever.

In all of the years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve noticed — and felt — the pull to certain games when a lot of us are talking about them, when there’s big movement happening (launches, patches, events, expansions), and when the game’s popularity is on the rise. The games change and rotate with a few remaining pretty consistent in the top five. But that positive peer pressure exists and it’s a real factor in influencing players’ decision to jump into a title or not.

I kind of think that this is a shame, that games should be played and enjoyed for what they are, as we do outside of the MMO genre. But that’s the “massively” at play, and it’s a double-edged sword for our genre. It’s the inescapable factor of the community that’s intertwined with the games and the culture of this hobby. It’s terrific and also frustrating when it doesn’t swing toward games that you think deserve the spotlight. It can feel thrilling when it pushes a game to the top, and it can be terrifying when it cascades a game into oblivion.

I mean, look at the late great Marvel Heroes. It had a marvelous peak in popularity around 2015 and even into early 2016 with so much going for it, but then it lost that momentum and the positive peer pressure fell away and dissipated. Just about nobody was talking about it this year, probably because Gazillion was busy shooting itself in the foot and licensing issues and other nastiness going on behind the scenes. The school of fish darted away, leaving a few stragglers behind while everyone else went to seek more lucrative gaming grounds.

It’s hard not to be affected by this peer pressure, especially when it comes to wanting to play games that have been abandoned or are nowhere near the zenith of the popularity that they once were. It’s really odd playing DDO these days, because outside of a very small and tight-knit community, nobody is talking about it. I remember how it was scorching hot in 2009 when the whole free-to-play thing happened and how DDO had its 15 minutes or so in the spotlight as an MMO that a lot of people played and took seriously.

But that’s how the life cycle of MMOs go, and barring unexpected surprises (of both the good and bad variety), there’s a pretty predictable pattern.

Secret World Legends: The Swarm wants you

I’m getting into a pretty good stride with Secret World Legends progression in Tokyo. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but I make sure to log in every day to do at least one mission (if not two or three, depending on how quick they go). I definitely feel that I’m on track to finish up the whole zone by the end of December, and that’s a-ok with me. Not having to fiddle with AEGIS has made this whole place about 50% less annoying, although there still is a noticeable increase in difficulty in the types of quests and mob attacks. At least it’s pretty cool to explore.

This picture never fails to crack me up while still making me wonder what the what is going on with this demon’s obsession with the foul-mouthed Illuminati boss.

Anyway, last week we had a nice quality-of-life patch that honestly did improve the quality of life around SWL. I’m starting to feel better and better about the switch over to this new game, especially now that we’ve seen Funcom pick up the pace of support and development once again.

There was a lot of nice extras in the patch, although the primary feature was the new anima allocation system. This was nothing short of a major gear overhaul, taking the individual roles of different gear pieces away and giving control of their ratio to the players. On the fly, we can now adjust the healing, DPS, and tanking power of our gear — and for no cost to adjust. That is absolutely fantastic and relieves a lot of stress in collecting exactly the right type of gear. Now we just have to concentrate on pips and quality levels, as well as signets and glyphs.

I tinkered around with this, deciding on a 20/20/60 ratio of heal/tank/dps. I know it’s on the low side for damage, but I like to survive things, and after testing it out a bit, I’m killing fast enough to be acceptable.

I don’t think I ever noticed these creatures crawling all over the towers before. Guess I never looked up!

I had totally forgotten about the Hive quest. Yes, it’s another chain of text adventures, but those are kind of brilliant for this game and incredibly creepy to boot, so I don’t mind a redux. And the whole concept of the Swarm — a mysterious collection of bee-powered individuals who didn’t choose a faction and were imprisoned indefinitely in the Hive until they broke out — fascinates me. They’re downright unnerving and yet sympathetic. For the record, I didn’t turn the info for the quest into the Templars. I think I’ve decided that if I’m ever given a choice to break with my faction and go with the Swarm, I’ll do it. We bees have to stick together — that’s how the honey is made.

I sure hope we get more Hive/Swarm stories in season two! It’s definitely one of the more interesting loose ends that the story writers have set up.

44 upcoming MMOs I’m keeping an eye on

Every so often I realize that there is a certain game I haven’t heard about in a while or have forgotten about, and then I have that flash of “oh yeahhh, I should stay up to date on that!” and do some quick research on what’s been going on with it. Usually, I’ll dig up a news story or two from it.

But I was getting tired of constantly forgetting which games I wanted to track, and so I began to make a list — primarily of upcoming online games and MMOs — and put it on the right-hand side of the site here with links to each of the games’ respective Twitter feeds for fast reference. This is mostly for me, but as the list started to grow, I thought that it might be worth sharing, if nothing else than to point out that there are a lot of titles in development and some odd little lesser-known ones worth keeping an eye on.

So here goes, 44 MMOs that I’m tracking. Note that I’m not equally interested in all of them, just that I want to keep tabs on them to see how they shape up between now and launch.

1. AdventureQuest 3D
2. Amazon’s New World
3. Ascent: Infinite Realm
4. Ashes of Creation
5. Broke Protocol
6. Camelot Unchained
7. Caravan Stories
8. Chronicles of Elyria
9. Closers Online
10. City of Titans
11. Crowfall
12. Cryptic’s Magic MMO
13. Cyberpunk 2077
14. Dogma Eternal Night
15. Dragon of Legend
16. Dual Universe
17. Eden Falling
18. Edengrad
19. Forsaken Legends
20. Fractured
21. Freeman Star’s Edge
22. Global Adventures
23. Harry Potter Wizards Unite
24. Identity
25. Legends of Aria
26. Lost Ark
27. Pantheon
28. Peria Chronicles
29. Project Genom
30. Project Gorgon
31. Project TL
32. Saga of Lucimia
33. Sea of Thieves
34. Ship of Heroes
35. Shroud of the Avatar
36. Soulworker Online
37. Star Citizen
38. Stash
39. Survived By
40. Tale of Toast
41. Wild West Online
42. Worlds Adrift
43. WoW Classic
44. Valiance Online

DDO: Optional objectives

Moving into the Marketplace to quest in Dungeons and Dragons Online has been great. I’ve been averaging a mission or two every night, which I usually do first thing when I sit down to game. It’s a great, breezy way to settle into relaxation while at the same time being a mostly new experience to me. At least, it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten most of these missions if they did exist back in the day.

What I’ve become really fascinated with is DDO’s propensity to add optional objectives in missions. As the name implies, they don’t have to be done, but if you can manage the extra challenge, then you’ll get a better XP reward at the end. What I’m finding is that many of these objectives can change the flow of the mission — drastically or subtlely — and even present the element of choice.

For example, in one mission in the Sharn Syndicate chain, I had the optional objective to keep a brother of the barkeep alive. I did my very best, losing him only on the last part of the fight. Because this happened, I not only missed out on a bit of XP, but the ending of the quest changed. The remaining brother mourned his fallen sibling, and the DM narrated the death to me in detail. I genuinely felt bad that I wasn’t able to save him — although there’s always a repeat run, I guess.

In another mission, stealth was of the essence, and I had the option to bash down doors and go in crossbows blazing or find a hidden switch to access the room. The search for the switch took time, but it gave me the element of surprise and the satisfaction of doing things the harder way for better rewards.

Perhaps the most interesting optional objective I saw lately was when I was being taken on a tour through a bank vault. There were deposit boxes all over the place, and right as I was going to break them open to see what’s what, I saw the mission tracker tell me that I could get extra XP if I elected not to succumb to that most basic reflex of RPG adventurers and leave the containers alone.

That was agonizing. I really, really wanted to break them open then, all the more so that I was being told — or at least advised — not to. I resisted the temptation and got the objective, although now it bothers me thinking of what some of those containers might have offered if I had gone on a smash-and-grab spree all the same.

I really do applaud this approach to mission execution. The scripting and optional objectives of DDO quests make the story feel more immediate and the choices more real. Wouldn’t mind seeing that in other MMOs, to be honest.

Probably my proudest moment from this past week was beating “Proof is in the Poison,” which turned out to be an extreme challenge dungeon (DDO’s words). Very long, very twisty-turny, and very difficult. Must’ve killed around 200 mobs as I was skipping over acid, desperately trying to heal myself, and searching for keys in this place. But hey, I conquered it, and when I did I felt that rush of accomplishment and pride.

Makeup: My MMO kryptonite

The other day, a slightly ridiculous tweet from Black Desert Online prompted the staff at Massively OP into a frenzy of discussion over makeup and why there is just no way that the picture on the right there is a girl without makeup.

But as we discussed this around the office, I confessed that makeup is, to some extent, my MMO kryptonite. As a player who almost exclusively picks a female character, I’m often stymied when I come to the makeup screen. It’s equally bad in games like The Sims 4.

I just don’t know what to do, I really don’t. Eye shadow, mascara, blush, lip gloss, lipstick, foundation, concealer, eyebrow highlighting, cheek implants… I am absolutely clueless when it comes to picking any of these. I know that if I start messing around with them, then chances are I’ll end up with a raccoon-faced emo raver despite any intentions to the contrary. My best bet is usually to select “Thanks but no thanks” to every makeup option and move on.

This is most likely because I’ve never had a proper education regarding makeup in real life. My need for such information has been minimal, aside from getting the stuff caked on my face for a few high school plays. I’m always in a kind of awe at all of the techniques I see women use to “put their face on,” as they call it. It’s like they’re painting a self-portrait without any hesitation, whereas I keep thinking that if I ever ended up in a 1980s-style body swap movie with the opposite gender, I would probably end up looking like Pennywise or a coal miner if I tried anything.

It’s only a very little bit frustrating when my lack of knowledge hits the MMO character creation page. I generally like sassy and fun-looking characters, and I feel like I’m slightly missing out on making my toons all that they could be. Fortunately, it’s not like your default female face looks like a bedraggled woman who just got out of bed after cramming a pillow against her face for eight hours. MMOs are pretty generous when it comes to making you look good despite your ignorance.

Maybe there’s a market for makeup experts to come in and explain all of this to clueless players. Probably a very, very limited market, but still.

My rollercoaster relationship with World of Warcraft’s Warlocks

While my Gnome Warlock — the Original Syp (O.S.) — was not my first World of Warcraft character, she was definitely my first main. I created her back in September 2006 following a lengthy break from the game and played her non-stop through the rest of Vanilla, all of Burning Crusade, and all of Wrath before my second and much greater break.

Warlocks were pretty much broken and useless on release, as I recall, but by mid-2006 they had stabilized enough to be viable. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the character and concept, which married my favorite race (Gnome) and a pet class. There was tons of utility, a choice of pets, and pretty decent survival for a cloth class. Vanilla wasn’t the easiest haul, since there was no jack-of-all-trades pet (most everyone I knew quested with voidwalkers and grouped with imps for the buff), plus there was the eternal annoyance of collecting soul shards and having them hog inventory space.

The Burning Crusade was a huge game-changer for my Lock. It was then that she got her Felguard, a splendid pet that did great damage and tanked at the same time. From then on out, I was a demo spec all the way, a pint-sized hero and her gigantic companion. She was the one that I quested with, did dailies with, crafted with, and even raided with (in Kara). Good times. And then Wrath came along and I ended up drifting away.

When I came back to the game for Warlords of Draenor’s second year, it took me a while to get around to catching back up with the Warlock. I was pretty pleased when I did, because she felt more powerful than ever. I had more abilities and now an even better pet — the Terrorguard. I didn’t play her as much during this period, but I liked it when I did.

It all came crashing down with the Legion pre-patch — you know, the one that muscled in all of those “class fantasy” changes and rebalances. Overall I hated this patch, because it took what I enjoyed out of three classes — Hunter, Warlock, and Shaman — and made it worse in various ways. Less fun. Less enjoyable. Beast Masters became this awkward thing, my melee Shammy could no longer summon totems or pets, and my Warlock found herself stripped of the Terrorguard.

I had a very hard time dealing with the new Demonology build. I tried, I really did, because I am all about those pets, but this new format didn’t seem to flow. It didn’t help that I had to make all of these changes at level 100 and then try to figure out how she played. It left a sour taste in my mouth up through the start of Legion, and by level 102, I respecced her as Affliction just so that I could get my DoTs back.

But I missed my Felguard something fierce, which is why I’m pursuing Demo again with my Forsaken Warlock. Sometimes it’s easier to “grow into” a build than abruptly change to one, as there’s a lot of time to experiment with incremental changes and choices. I keep fiddling about with her talent points, trying to find the best build for my playstyle. Might not be the most optimal one, but I’ve long since stopped caring about min/maxing at the expense of my personal enjoyment.

So far I’m cautiously optimistic. My main problem is soul shard generation, because I hate the idea of standing there and spamming my shadowbolt with its 1.87 second cast time. So I’m exploring some other ways to get more shards and flipping fights so that one is mostly focused on getting more shards and one is focused on spending them. It feels a little more varied and I even have those moments of feeling pretty powerful when I have a troop of pets out on the field ravaging a group of mobs.

I can’t wait until level 40 and the return of my Felguard. It will be like a reunion between the two of us, especially as we face the prospect of going into Outland once again (unless Blizzard gets those leveling changes into the game before I hit 60). I’m keen to hear what the studio has planned for the class come Battle for Azeroth, because I know that demo isn’t a highly loved or well-performing spec at this point. Hopefully it’s due for a renaissance.