Parkour in RIFT

Mostly my gaming weekend was taken up with Guild Wars 2 and RIFT, just for a change of pace, and while I’ll talk more about GW2′s living story tomorrow, I wanted to at least mention what I’m doing in RIFT.

Because I know I have a weakness for alts and sometimes that weakness actually works against me in returning to a game (so many choices, can’t settle down, give in to despair, quit), I’ve decided that if I’m going to play RIFT, I’m going to see my highest-level character — my cleric — through to the end.  It’s been a long while since I abandoned her in the death zones of Storm Legion at level 56, but everything came back to me quite quickly.

Last night I had a great deal of fun doing two things in the game.  First, I created a new build that’s a healthy blend of Druid and Justicar.  It’s seriously one of the toughest and most flexible builds I’ve made for her, because survivability is dang high, plus she can pull out the greater faerie seer and blast single or multiple targets like crazy.  Plus there’s a pull so I don’t have to run up to an enemy to melee — the enemy now comes to me.  Felt like I was grappling them in, good times.

The other thing was that I spent a lot of time just randomly exploring.  The artifacts in RIFT are a great excuse to go off-roading, because you get rewarded more with finding them the more you go off the beaten path.  I turned up six or seven during my parkour adventures diving off buildings, running through thickets, and climbing peaks and overhangs.

I’m keeping it light and fancy-free in the game, but there’s hope that RIFT won’t disappear from my gaming diet, especially with 2.7′s new souls coming up.

Poll results: What y’all are playing

I just realized that I never did a follow-up post to the recent poll I put out regarding MMOs and MOBAs that you’ve been playing.  We had 468 votes (participants could vote for as many games as they liked).  So here’s the top ten, according to you:

1. World of Warcraft (52 votes)
2. Lord of the Rings Online (41 votes)
3. [tie] Guild Wars 2 (39 votes)
4. [tie] The Secret World (39 votes)
5. The Elder Scrolls Online (36 votes)
6. SWTOR (25 votes)
7. RIFT (23 votes)
8. Neverwinter (21 votes)
9. [tie] Final Fantasy XIV (16 votes)
10. [tie] WildStar (16 votes)

That’s a pretty solid top ten, no huge surprises.  The top 20 went on to include EVE, League of Legends, World of Tanks, Landmark, Star Trek Online, Marvel Heroes, TERA, Trove, DCUO, and Defiance/EverQuest II/MechWarrior Online/PlanetSide 2 (all of those tied for 20th).

Bio Break spring cleaning: blogroll and podcasts

I’ve been doing a few things to spruce up the site as of late.  For starters, I’ve updated the podcasts page to include an up-to-date list of all of the Battle Bards episodes we’ve done so far.

I also spent a half-hour yesterday and pruned my blogroll (right-hand side).  I do this every few months to try to keep it at least semi-current if you’re looking for other MMO/video game blogs.  So I took off the list any blogs that hadn’t updated in the past month or so (a couple of sad deletions but I was overall happy to see just how many of them are still thriving) and I’m in the process of keeping an eye on my feeds to add back in formerly lapsed writers who have come back.

As always, if I don’t have your blog on the list and you’re currently writing, please let me know and I’ll make sure to rectify that ASAP!

For those of you reading this via feeds, I’m including my current blogroll list after the break.

Side Diversions

When one can’t decide between two classes in a game, one should break the rules and go to a third class.  Excelsior!

So anyway, I spent a really great evening with my Ranger in Guild Wars 2 doing nothing special.  Initially I logged onto her to do some cleanup of her inventory and whatnot, but that led to selling stuff on the trading post (hello 18 gold!) and then idle killing in the countryside.  Before I knew it, I was hip-deep in clearing out another zone and mulling over whether to peek my head into Lion’s Arch to see what’s going on with the new patch.

The answer to that, by the way, is “I have no idea?”  Looks like roaming-and-killing while doing various events.  I did have fun swapping between weapons and spending some quality time with my shortbow for a change.  I have an 80 exotic shortbow sitting in the bank, so I figure I might as well get used to it.  I do wish that GW2 allowed to save three weapon sets instead of two, because I would very much like to be able to swap between my longbow, shortbow, and greatsword without having to choose just two.

As a pleasant treat, I both dinged 72 and completed my daily achievements without deliberately trying to do either.

RIFT isn’t getting much of my time as of late — but it’s not getting deleted, either.  I’m really intrigued by the news that there are four new souls (one for each calling) coming with 2.7, giving every class an option to play every role.  I also noticed that the anniversary carnival is going on right now, which means that there’s a special lootable on the mobile app that hands out glass beads like candy.  So even though I’m not logging into the game, I’m checking the app every six hours to stock up on beads.

A shocking announcement

Well, this is a first in many years of gaming.

So last night I’m playing Guild Wars 2, do be do be do, and it’s cold so I’ve wrapped a fleece blanket around me like I’m an old lady.  That’s a good mental image for you to get.  Anyway, I get warm, cast off the blanket, and grab my mouse…

…and a large burst of static electricity arcs out and fries my Naga mouse.  Fries it dead.

I sat there stunned for about two minutes.  Did that just happen?  That totally just happened.  Crap, there goes a $60 mouse.

The waiting game

Even with a bounty of games to play, right now I feel as though I’m in a holding pattern, playing a waiting game.

I’m waiting for WildStar to announce a release date and get here already.

I’m waiting for Lord of the Rings Online to come out with Update 13.

I’m waiting for The Secret World to drop in new missions and open up Tokyo.

I’m waiting for Guild Wars 2 to get done with the Scarlet Briar storyline and do something else for a while.

2014 may be shaping up to be a significant year in terms of releases, but so far it’s been a wasteland.  We haven’t had anything significant since SWTOR’s spacefighter expansion in December — and it’s been a long, long winter.  Studios going on vacation for a few weeks there definitely slowed the works down, and nobody seems too eager to put anything around the April launch window for Elder Scrolls Online.  I think ESO is really going to benefit from so much quiet before it, because I can’t be the only MMO gamer who is champing at the bit for something new.

I guess I just want something to happen, already.

What does an MMO have to do to get me back?

I haven’t made great mention of it here on the blog, but as the Wildstar Wait™ continues, I’ve been flirting with several MMOs for that empty third spot.  I’ve loaded up RIFT, SWTOR, Trove, Landmark, and thought about many more, but for various reasons haven’t really committed to any of them (knowing that they’re temporary kind of hurts that chance).

But it’s certainly made me think of what an MMO needs to do to get me to come back to it.  Usually it’s one simple factor: coming back into my sphere of awareness in a positive way.

What do I mean by that?  Well first, if I’m not thinking about an MMO, I’m probably not tempted at all to play it.  When I leave an MMO, there’s a good period of time where awareness would be a moot point in relation to temptation — I’d probably be in a semi-burned out state anyway — but after time soothes over that, then it’s usually a matter of something happening that brings it to my attention.

This event could be something significant that the game is doing: a big patch, an expansion, a business model change, a giveaway, or an in-game event.  Subs of WoW saw a 200K bump following BlizzCon and the Warlords of Draenor expansion reveal, so it’s definitely a phenomenon that is wide-spread.  Good news is honey to us gamer flies.  It gives us hope that there’s a golden future in the game.

The event could also just be several people talking up the game publically.  Word of mouth is really important for me, between bloggers, commenters, and my friends.  We’ve certainly seen this over and over in the blogosphere, where it seems that there are MMOs of the day/week/month that suddenly everyone’s talking about.  I think it’s a snowball effect that sometimes starts with something the game is doing and sometimes just some fervent interest on behalf of gamers.  (This snowball effect also works in a similar fashion with bad news, and in both cases can grow out of proportion with what’s actually happening in the game’s community.)

Once in a while a game has to do nothing to get me back other than exist, as long as I have strong fond memories of the past with it.  I reloaded SWTOR because I really loved my Agent’s journey through the game and the fun I had with my guild.  I quickly uninstalled it because no other class can top the Agent, the F2P model is horrible, and I do not have the time to invest in all of that, but still, the fact that I even flirted with the idea (as I’ve sometimes done with WoW) shows that those fond memories have long nostalgic hooks.

I’m thinking about all of this because chances are that this weekend I’ll be loading back up Guild Wars 2 after a pretty lengthy sabbatical, and the reason for that is a combination of all three above factors.  The recent Escape from LA event looks pretty awesome, has really strong word of mouth going for it, and I miss my time in Tyria.  Plus, GW2 is one of the most friendly pick-up-and-put-down MMOs out there, perfect for that third slot right now.

So I’m hoping to come back on Monday to talk about GW2 and report on whether I’m ready for round 2 or if it’s too premature.  I am excited for next month’s promised feature updates as well as the end of whatever this Scarlet Briar thing is.  Being on board for the game entering a new cycle could prove fascinating.

Do any Kickstarter MMOs interest me?

We’re definitely living in a golden age of Kickstarter/crowdfunding video games, and whether this will see bountiful harvests or deflated failures or lukewarm efforts is the purview of the future.

But I’m asking myself today, do any of these Kickstarter projects, past or present, interest me?  I still haven’t invested in any of them, unless you consider my $20 support to Trove within that.  That doesn’t mean that I won’t partake when these games come out or am not hoping to be pleasantly surprised, just that the risk/reward isn’t favorable in my eyes and I’d rather have my money for things now than uncertain things in the future.

So let’s see…

Shroud of the Avatar definitely will get a play or two out of me when it opens up to the general public just because I have some respect for the Ultima franchise now that I’m playing one of the older games, plus there’s some real love for housing here.

Star Citizen?  I’ll play it if it isn’t just a PvP gankfest or EVE 2.0.  I’m hungry for a good space sim that treasures exploration and shipbuilding as much as dogfighting.  Elite: Dangerous is a good backup in this field, although I haven’t heard as much about it (it does look gorgeous, though).

Weirdly enough, I’d be very interested in Camelot Unchained if it was PvE.  I am attracted to the worldbuilding and concept art that it’s put out.

TUG is on my interest list.  It’s got visual charm and a lot of fun sandbox ideas.  We’ll see if it can package those together well.

The game I really want to see put out another campaign is Anthymn.  I know they’re working on a better presentation, and man, I hope it can capture enough attention to fund.

But really, that’s about it right now.  Other games like the Repopulation and Pathfinder Online will need a lot of strong word of mouth testimonies before I’ll give them my time.

Quote of the Day: Admin mode

“The best argument for admin mode is clearly this: some players just love to build but not gather. While gathering, maybe similar to leveling up new characters in MMOs, is fun to some players, there is an audience for every sandbox building game that are exclusively there to do one thing and one thing only: to build dazzling worlds and run rampant with their imagination.”

~ MMO Gypsy

Am I worried about LOTRO?

Scott left me a question today that I’d like to address as a blog post, because it’s something we all think about sooner or later:

“I’d be interested in your thoughts on the layoffs and LOTRO’s future, trying to keep it as drama-free as possible. My main character is much like your captain, maxed out and fully attained of my goals. I’m trying to level my new guardian through the Trollshaws (not my favorite zone) but I’m having motivational issues when I wonder if LOTRO’s future is in serious jeopardy. It’s hard for me to fight Sauron’s servants when I wonder if Mordor will even get made.”

I wrote a bit about this in my Road to Mordor column last week.  To add to that, I understand that fear, because what we want (assurance of a future, stability, growth, permanence) is something MMOs can rarely provide.  All MMOs will go away, eventually, and facing that fact — not willfully ignoring it — helped to recenter me as a gamer.

As I said back in 2012, “I think the most meaningful results of time spent in MMOs are the memories you make and the people you make them with. A game may end, but you retain the stories and the relationships. Those cannot be taken away.”

So I see it as a matter of perspective.  Honestly, we don’t know whether or not LOTRO is in “trouble” past the hysteria, cynicism, and legitimate worries.  But if we love the game, enjoy the game, why not play the game?  It’s going to end sometime, but in the meanwhile should I let others’ worries stop me?  Should I only seek out games that give the appearance of having an eternal future?  In my opinion, that’s a false security blanket that’s kept gamers from diving into many titles.

But I get the “motivational issues,” and I don’t want to dismiss those.  I understand that when a game or its studio looks shaky, then there’s that temptation to go elsewhere or to feel unsafe.

Games have certainly weathered a lot worse.  Remember back in early-mid 2013, when Trion was having all of those layoffs and studio shutdowns?  That must’ve been a difficult time to be a RIFT gamer, I imagine.  But today the studio seems solid, the team is actually growing, and F2P has given RIFT more financial solidity than its old sub model.

I guess my advice is to engage in two mental scenarios.  In the first, imagine that it’s a year from now and LOTRO is doing just fine — it’s had updates, new zones, and there’s talk of a new expansion.  In the second, imagine that it’s a year from now and we’re getting word that the game will be shut down in six weeks.  Is the game worth playing in both of these situations for you?  If so, jettison that worry and just enjoy the journey.  But imagine spending that year in the first scenario being freaked out for no good reason.  That would feel like a waste to me.

My life is not LOTRO.  My gaming life, even my MMO gaming life, is not just LOTRO.  When it goes, it goes, but I’m very happy playing it for the meantime.  I know that, from my personal history and looking at a timeline of MMO shutdowns, there’s a much greater chance of me becoming bored with an MMO and wandering away from it than a studio shutting it down while I’m active in it.  I feel the odds are good, then.