Updated My MMO History

Greetings Traveler!

I am hoping to post another later this afternoon, but for now I realized I needed to update my gaming history to reflect our recent stint in GW2. 

If you've read any of my posts, you probably realize that I spend a huge amount of my game time partnering up with my lovely bride, known here as Scooter, who is also an avid MMO gamer.

Guild Wars 2 is a ton of fun (the most important thing in a game), easy to jump into and play for a few minutes or a few hours. The game has a good skill/progression system, great graphics, plenty of lore, and just a touch of whimsy—without going overboard. I especially enjoy the seasonal events like Dragon Bash and Lunar New Year. Scooter and I began playing during the Summer of Betas (2012), and after a lengthy break, returned in the summer of 2018. We have been playing pretty solidly since. And, in fact, we recently pre-purchased the upcoming expansion "End of Dragons." I have ten characters, all at or near max level (80). As of August 2021, Scooter and I have played most of the story content at least once through the middle of the (current) Icebrood Saga, although not all in the exact episode order.

I played World of Warcraft from June of 2006, when a friend got me hooked, until October of 2011. I have three level-80+ characters, plus many more lower-level ones. I tried the Pandaren starting area in the "Mists of Pandaria" expansion (in October, 2012), but got a "been there, done that" feeling from the experience. With the release of the Warcraft movie in June, 2016, I again became interested in WoW, and Scooter and I re-upped a couple months before the release of Legion. Honestly, we never really experienced most of the Legion content, choosing instead to level a few new characters up through the expansions that we missed. Time and interest petered out in early 2018, and neither Scooter nor I have played since.

Prior to our stint in WoW, Scooter and I were subscribed to Star Wars: The Old Republic from April, 2015, through June, 2016. Previously, we had played from the headstart in mid-December, 2011, to August, 2012, pushing to achieve 50 (max level at the time) and finish up the story on my Imperial Agent. Despite issues I've had in the past with BioWare's customer relations, the game has a lot going for it. During our return, we enjoyed several class storylines, and loved a single run through of the new "Knights of the Fallen Empire" expansion. Unfortunately, the lack of variety in storylines in KotFE didn't help our interest level. And I still haven't completed the Trooper storyline.

Star Trek Online is another game I have returned to with some regularity, playing from just after its release in February of 2010 until May of 2011. I dipped in a toe again in June of 2012, checking out the Duty Officer system and other developments to the game. With the "Legacy of Romulus" expansion, I started up a new Romulan Captain and got my Main up to max level. Most recently, I played for a few months in the winter and spring of 2015. Amongst all my MMO characters, I am still most attached to my STO crews in many ways.

Scooter and I have drifted in and out of Rift a few different times. We played regularly from the beta tests in January of 2011 through October of the same year. I cannot say enough great things about this game, or the developer, Trion Worlds. It's not perfect, but the polish and responsiveness of the game and company are things other devs should aspire to. For reasons not really clear even to me or Scooter, when our Mains hit 50 (max level at the time), the wind went out of our sails, and we really had no desire to continue playing the game. We got involved again in summer of 2013, with House Stalwart, but discovered that something about the game caused us both eye strain. We were back again in the autumn of 2014 in for the "Nightmare Tide" expansion, but quickly drifted off again.

We played WildStar in the summer of 2014. Scooter and I had two duos of Exiles, plus I had a few solo toons. It was a fun game with an engaging storyline and a delightful art style reminiscent of World of Warcraft, but in some ways an even darker tone. Despite the colorful cartoony look, this is not a game for young children. Sadly, Wildstar and Carbine Studios were shuttered by NCSoft in late 2018. I still listen to Jeff Kurtenacker's soundtrack to this day.

Judging from the shear number of posts tagged with The Secret World, it may have been my favorite game. It's the smartest story and skill/ability system on the market, in my humble opinion, though the additions of the Augment and Aegis systems make an already complicated system unwieldy. The issues from 2013, "The Last Train to Cairo" and "A Dream to Kill," feature the most enthralling storylines I have followed in an MMO. I currently have a toon in Egypt's Scorched Desert, one in Transylvania's Carpathian Fangs, and one in Tokyo, having completed the main story through "The Venetian Agenda." I stepped into Tokyo, the new zone that opened up with the release of Issue 9, "The Black Signal," but became discouraged with the AEGIS system. I haven't logged into the game in almost a year. I dipped a toe back in during early spring, 2017, but decided I was not interested in the format of the re-released Secret World Legends.

I have tried Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Defiance, The Elder Scrolls Online, ArcheAge, Landmark, EverQuest II, and Neverwinter, but ultimately found them not to my taste.

Please see also my character pages. Links above.

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This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after publication. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

What If I Told You?

Greetings Traveler,

OK, a little cheat here. This tidbit has been sitting in my drafts for years–nearly eight, actually. I would like to get more creative writing in, but it required a certain mood. By way of explanation, this is my Illuminati character from The Secret World.

What if I told you that it's all real? What if I told you an army brat from Texas could find herself in the middle of one of the biggest conspiracies on the planet? I'm just a humble history professor. I almost had my tenure. Little did I know that it was not the fancy college education and degrees from ivied halls that would be most useful in my life. Instead it was the hours on the shooting range that Daddy dragged us to from the time I was five until I departed for said ivory towers.

Daddy was a Vietnam vet. Not one of those acidhead burnouts. He assisted in the evacuation of Saigon, then made a career of it. He made sure his whole brood could fire any number of different guns. Rifles, pistols, shotguns—you name it, I've squeezed the trigger. Among my brothers and sisters, I was always the most natural shot; but since the Bees came, my aim is downright uncanny. Big Bro followed in Daddy's footsteps, got into West Point and everything. He's a Light Colonel now, I think. Daddy was slightly disappointed that I didn't go the military route myself. But there was still no room for women in the infantry when I came of age, and I didn't need to play Army a couple times a year and spend the rest behind a desk or pulling weeds. And I wasn't about to become some G.I. Jane parody.

Oh, to be sure, my current employers take plenty of advantage of my skill in libraries and literature. But on such missions, I feel more like a Tomb Raider than a scholar, like my recent trip to Salamanca. They just had to have that Loyola manuscript. Turns out the accusations were correct, but like all true Illuminati, Ignatius escaped prosecution.

Anyway, so I went from pantsuits to jeans and camo jackets, unless I need to look the part of the university professor again. KG calls me her Lone Star Belle. A real NYC bitch, that one—or maybe La La Land. I hate The City, regardless of the coast it's on.

When I first joined the Firm, I hadn't held a weapon in years. They frown on that sort of thing in Academia. I actually thought I would try the fist claws. I love Hugh Jackman—couldn't imagine anyone else as the Wolverine (Dougray who?). And that X-factor healing ain't got nothin' on the Bees. The claws aren't as easy as they look, though.

Eventually, I settled on an array of firearms. See these pistols? My great grandfather wore them. Colt M1873s. Other folks use newer pieces, but there's a certain feel to the Peacemaker, especially since they're family heirlooms. Don't you worry about the "limited capacity" of a six-shooter. I haven't used bullets since Solomon Island.

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This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after publication. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Legends of the Secret World

Greetings Traveler,

Much like an NPC that just sits in town, I did not go adventuring into Secret World Legends upon its launch a couple months ago. It's hard to tell for sure, but it seems like the core RPers I follow on Twitter have made the transition. No way to know what they actually think without asking directly, which I am reluctant to do for some unknown reason.

I downloaded the game at home before going on a trip last month. But then, it would not start properly. I had to uninstall and reinstall to get it to work. Of course, I was in a hotel at that point, which meant a very slow reinstall from the internet. Then, trying to start my new character was a little frustrating. (a bit NSFW after the break)

Unplugged

Greetings Traveler,

Syp has a post up about the new gear grind of Secret World Legends. It got me thinking. First, I am perceiving less and less reason to make the jump from TSW, which itself lost a bit of luster for me years ago. I loved the classless Ability Wheel, even if enterprising individuals found “perfect” builds and the game itself encouraged other builds through the outfit system. I loved the complex, mature story; though the unrelenting grimdark became tiresome. I've said it before, but it would be nice to have a similar underlying system in a different setting. I guess that is the appeal—such as it is—of game systems like GURPS, where the basic mechanics are the same, but many different settings and scenarios can overlay the dice rolls.

But I never got Panoptic Core in TSW. That is probably the result of my SLC with Scooter, not to mention my innate altoholism. Maybe between the experience points on my three characters, I could have gotten all the abilities on the Wheel. As far as I know, I could always go back and finish if I want to. Funcom hasn't actually shut down the original TSW completely; they've just decided to develop the game in a different direction. What if Blizzard had done that on at least a few servers for each expansion of WoW, enabling players to return to those older versions of the game if they prefer?

On the other hand, it's become a habit for me to lose interest in an MMO before ever really reaching endgame. Despite playing MMOs fairly consistently for over a decade, I think its been at least a couple years since Scooter or I have hit max level and the "end of the story." It's been almost a month since either of us logged into WoW, on characters that are nowhere near max-level. Part of that is Real Life intruding on our game time. Just when all of the kids are out of the house (sort of), it seems that both of us are busier than ever with job duties. And more of our time off is spent completely unplugging than jacking in to whatever our favorite matrix is at the moment.

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This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after publication. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Secret World Legends First Devstream

I am totally including this as a DAW entry, because I love The Secret World, and Romain "Tilty" Amiel, is one of the few MMO developers I had the pleasure of personally interacting with, thanks to my stint on the Beyond the Veil webcast.

So, back at the end of February, Funcom announced through a quarterly financial report that they intend to relaunch The Secret World with new combat systems, a reworked new player experience, and a free-to-play business model. Concerned voices raised the specter of Sony Online Entertainment's "New Game Engine" for Star Wars Galaxies. Relaunch activities were set to begin in late March. Bloggers at the time assumed this meant an actual relaunch of the game; however, it was apparently only a reference to the start of closed beta on 28 March.

I've adopted a wait-and-see approach to the news. I've been resubscribed as of early February, but have only been able to play a few times in the intervening weeks. So I totally missed last Wednesday's Letter from the Producer. Having a little time today, I logged in to play me some TSW, and discovered the beta had started already. They did a devstream on Twitch that I had just barely missed by a few minutes. Of course, I was able to watch the recording, which featured community manager Andy “Odonoptera” Benditt, newly promoted community team member Nicole "Spynosaur" Vayo, and game director Tilty. The stream was fairly informative and included a bit of character creation and gameplay.

The most striking thing I learned about the new Secret World Legends (SWL) is the forced reticle combat mode, where there is a small target circle in the center of the screen which represents roughly where the player character is aiming. I say roughly, because the actual target box is much bigger than the reticle itself (which many people in the chat felt was too big as it was). If you're not sure what reticle mode is, think of how you might play, say, Call of Duty on a console. Belghast once called it "Action mmo perma-mouselook interface." The Elder Scrolls Online uses reticle mode (or, it did when I tried it a few years ago), as does Neverwinter Nights.

Now, TSW already has a reticle mode option that can be toggled by hitting the "T" on your keyboard (by default). But I generally stick with the regular MMO (read: "WoW") style of moving and controlling my camera and cursor. I haven't really liked reticle mode in the past, so I am skeptical about it being the only mode for movement and combat in SWL. But I signed up for the beta in hopes of checking it out.

But not so hidden in the Producer's letter mentioned above is the following:

"This will not erase your progression in The Secret World though! Secret World Legends will exist on a different server than The Secret World, meaning you will still be able to play your old character on The Secret World server."

In many ways, I still feel woefully uninformed as to the direction Funcom is taking with their IP. It seems that they'll be putting TSW into maintenance mode; that is, all new content will be presented in SWL instead. But they seem to have learned at least one thing from SOE's NGE debacle: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe I'll get LoneStarBelle to Panoptic Core after all.

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This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

By the Skin of My Teeth

I am absolutely not going to skip another February completely (not my fault if you're not up to read it). Lots of stuff going on this month, though, including a business trip: four weeks of nine- and ten-hour days. I got back into TSW a bit, apparently just in time to witness the impending relaunch of the game, whatever that will mean. I don't think we have enough information at this stage to judge how that will work out, but I am interested to see. Of course, World of Warcraft is my priority, with Scooter and I getting our Dorf Shammy and Gnomelock into the upper sixties and the Blade's Edge Mountains of Outland, with a plan to head into Netherstorm as soon as we are able. I, for one, am eager to return to Azeroth and Northrend to face the Lich King's minions.

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This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

The Venetian Chronicles

A fellow Secret Worlder going by the name Yuuko Shirakawa is soliciting In-Character interviews for her. Since I have a Twitter account for LoneStarBelle, I offered to participate. The transcript of the interview follows. You can find other interviews and other examples of Yuuko's TSW-related fictional work at Xencraft's Pastebin.

The Venetian Chronicles: Dr. Samantha Hawthorn

Yuuko: (fumbling with the camera before mounting it on a tripod. Before adjusting the focus on the camera and clearing her throat) This is Council envoy Yuuko Shirakawa, agent of the Dragon, and historian for the archives in Dublin, Ireland. As part of the Chronicles initiative, I am interviewing active agents from the 21st century so that future generations may better understand the context in which events are taking place. This session is being recorded on 03-30-2016 in Greenfield Ireland, at the Green residence.

Yuuko: Could you please state your full name, date of birth, affiliation and rank.

Dr. Hawthorn: Samantha Jayne Hawthorn, PhD. I am sometimes known as “LoneStarBelle,” but you can call me Sam. Let’s just say I was in my late 20s when I was recruited into the Illuminati, where I currently hold the rank of Visionary, though that really only means KG doesn’t mess with me anymore.

Yukko: Can you tell us about your family?

Sam: We’re not super close, especially since I moved to New York. My mom lives in the Hill Country region of Texas; Dad passed away a few years ago. I have an older brother and sister, both of whom live in Dallas with their families.

Yuuko: Where did you grow up?

Sam: Since my dad was in the U.S. Army, we moved around quite a bit when I was a kid. But mostly Texas, with a chunk of my teenage years based in Germany.

Yuuko: How would you describe your childhood?

Sam: Well, I was quite a tomboy. I loved comic books, hunting and camping, going to the shooting range with my dad. It wasn’t until I was older that I became interested in History, which is what my degrees are in.

Yuuko: How were you first introduced to the secret world?

Sam: I started having strange dreams, and discovered I had a power I had never heard of before. It wasn’t long before I got a visit from a fast-talking huckster, who turned out to be a representative of the Illuminati.

Yuuko: Did you have any contact (either directly or indirectly) with your society before your powers awakened?

Sam: No. Ironically, I wrote my dissertation on the Templar Order. At least, the Templars acknowledged by history. I was actually really upset when I discovered they are still operating and failed to contact me before the Illuminati.

Yuuko: Does anima sensitivity run in your family or are you the only one to develop powers?

Sam: As far as I know, I am the only one. Certainly no one in my immediate family has any apparent connection to the Secret World.

Yuuko: Can you tell us what a normal day looks like for you?

Sam: I’m actually semi-retired from fieldwork. I was originally recruited into Documents Acquisition, collecting rare tomes and parchments where they are in hazard zones, or sometimes simply if the Organization has an interest in them. However, now I spend more time in the Archives, cataloguing, researching. Boring stuff I suppose, but I love it.

Yuuko: Has your work for your society ever brought you into contact with anyone who would be considered historically significant (world leaders, celebrities, scientist and engineers.)

Sam: I can’t say that my *work* has ever put me in the same room with anyone famous. But Lumies do throw great parties, if you know what I mean.

Yuuko: Have you ever seen an event reported in the media and known that it was a lie and if so can you tell us what really happened?

Sam: Let’s just say that Daesh didn’t manage to destroy everything of significance in Palmyra.

Yuuko: What was the last event you can remember that shook both the secret world and the mundane equally?

Sam: Events in the Secret World spillover into the mundane with alarming regularity. It’s a testament to the abilities of the Societies that most of it is played off in the press as terrorism or natural disaster, or contained outright, with the general public unaware anything has happened.

Yuuko: Have you ever participated in an event considered historically important to the mundane world and if so was it on behalf of your society

Sam: That depends on what you mean by historically significant. Despite my background, I tend to work with people trying to make sure events that might be worthy of inclusion in a history book don’t occur.

Yuuko: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Dr. Hawthorn.

Sam: Thank you for the invitation. Ireland is lovely this time of year.

-End of file-

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to this blog.

If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Onerous AEGIS

Ah, life. I meant to mine my screencaps for pictures for this post last night, but between running errands and spending time with my daughters, I never even turned on my laptop.

Sypster, yet again, has posted a post I wish I had written. In it, he calls out Funcom on the dreadful secondary combat systems they've tried to implement since the launch of The Secret World. As you may well know, Dear Reader, AEGIS basically broke the game for me. I was a huge cheerleader because I loved TSW. I still do. The Ability Wheel, with its multiple synergies, provided a classless system that left the Unholy Trinity intact. I truly felt the idea of "bring the player, not the class" was well served in TSW.

Auxiliaries were cool, though I agree with Syp that they would have been more interesting as full weapons instead of a single active/passive. Augments were always obviously optional and never seemed worth the grind, at the very least they were lower priority AP expense. But AEGIS, both being mandatory, and yet adding nothing to the game, was the ten-ton dumbbell that broke this camel’s enthusiasm.

At best, AEGIS increases the length of an already long combat cycle. At worst, it makes the game impossible to play, as the player may not be able to do any damage to a random encountered mob without the proper equipment.

I dipped a toe in again a couple weeks ago but never got around to writing about it. I re-did the Tower Defense and obtained the AEGIS controllers I was missing. Though my friends from Beyond the Veil were trying to do me a favor those many months ago, it might have been better if I had done the mission solo. I learned much more about what was going on with the individual towers and their proper distribution the other night. As is often the case when one is carried through group content, getting "help" from the BtV crew didn't really help me in the long run. In point of fact, that night was the last time I logged in for over a year, because I wandered down the wrong alley and encountered a mob I didn't have the controllers to combat.

Which leads back to the added unnecessary complexity and length of fight. Commenting on Syp's post, Sylow maintains that AEGIS isn't that big a deal once you get used to it—and use the AegisHud addon (which I do), and have some capacitors in your full set of controllers—a point echoed on Twitter by my old mate, Galactrix. Sylow goes further to lay the blame for both Augments and AEGIS at the feet of the playerbase, hundreds—or thousands—of whom insisted on power increases or they threatened to not spend any money on additional Issues or updates to the game. Funcom was over a barrel. I wonder, though, how many players Funcom lost because the system was both unnecessary and poorly implemented at first. I myself had just begun subscribing again a month prior to entering Tokyo. They got maybe 30 bucks out of me before I quit cold turkey, not even playing or being tempted to play for well over a year.

Syp is not the only one who dislikes AEGIS despite having powered through the Tokyo Issues. Tententacles, for example, despises the system despite having taken three alts through to the end. Apparently, Lead Designer Romain Amiel has said AEGIS will be relegated to end-game content (dungeons/raids?) after Tokyo.

I noticed (and Sylow pointed out) that the Tower Defense mission now gives a full set of controllers. I want to dip in again now that I have a full set and maybe see how things go because the stories are still fascinating. I feel a bit removed from what is going on though. It may be better to return to my lower level Dragon to get back into the swing of things, or even create a character to start anew. We’ll see.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to this blog.

If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Another Dead Horse: "Clunky Combat" in TSW

It being the Halloween season, both Syp and Belghast (You may be able to tell how many blogs I actually manage to read on a regular basis. It isn't a long list.) have posts up today  about The Secret World. Belghast's post was a recruitment piece, promoting the virtues of the game. While Syp had some creepy screencaps. Perhaps inevitably, the topic of TSW's "clunky, slow combat" came up in the commentary, and Tanek finally offered up a possible explanation, at least from his perspective. I decided to write a rebuttal; however, Tanek did point out that TSW is one of his favorite games. But it is in spite of the combat, rather than a result of it.

Impact:
"Fighting with fist and blades I have not felt like most skills give any feel you are actually fighting anything. For most of my skills [those that don't involve knockdowns, etc.] there is no feedback beyond watching the enemy health bars tick down."

Name a game where this is not the case. None of the MMOs I have ever played effectively mimicked how a real battle with swords would play out. SWTOR, for example, makes some attempts to vary the animation to account for blocks, etc. But all too often the characters swing their lightsabers and weather blaster bolts with only a floating red number and a gap in the health bar to show for it. WoW was even worse, with dodge calculations happening entirely in the background.

Targeting:
"Some of this may come down to play style and choice of weapon, . . . the game decided that instead of your assist target being yourself or a group member, it picks the enemy or an inanimate object."

If you're trying to directly target characters in the battle area, I can see how this might be a problem. As a healer, I target using the party/raid frame (the default will do). This is an old habit I picked up playing WoW.

Mouse-look/target mode:
"I have come to like using what some call mouse-look mode. . . but it seems to only work when that was exactly where you had your cursor when you went into mouse-look. There is no easy way to temporarily use the cursor if needed to do something like click a loot roll button on screen (to be fair, the only game I have seen do this in a way I like is DDO. . .) Switching targets can seem a bit random. . ."

This seems to come down to preferred playstyle. I've never used "mouse-look" as described. (When I left-click-and-hold, the camera moves around my character. Right-click-and-hold causes my character to face the same direction as the camera. Holding both down, makes my character move. (Yes, I realize this is fairly normal behavior for MMOs post-EQ.) By default, reticle-based Target Mode in TSW is toggled by hitting "T" on your keyboard, and works consistently as far as I can tell. Toggling out in order to mouse click the UI or whatever is no more difficult than many other games where Target Mode is the norm and not just an option (e.g., The Elder Scrolls Online). As an aside, reticle targeting being the default is the reason Scooter and I never got into TESO. And if Tanek hasn't found a satisfactory toggle method outside of DDO, that's cool. But then TSW's is simply one of many combat systems he must not like.

Movement: 
"This is not always a problem specific to combat, but movement is TSW can seem somewhat 'floaty.' When fighting multiple enemies in an area that is not flat, this can lead to some interesting situations where you might have trouble avoiding environmental damage because you just… can’t… jump… on… that… ROCK!"

Again, this is not a problem unique to TSW. I've played plenty of games in which jumping and uneven surfaces were problematic at times. This is due to a discrepancy between the generally more intricate visual details of the game world vs the generally much simpler polyhedrons used to calculate collisions in the game environment ("hitboxes"). Hitbox Dissonance affects everything in this list, really.
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Overall, I would say that combat in TSW is on par with most other MMOs I have played. Having said that, I do have my issues with it. Though I still consider it one of my favorite games, I haven't played TSW in quite a while because I developed an extreme dislike of the AEGIS system the devs implemented with Issue 9 ("The Black Signal") and the Tokyo zones, making an already fairly long per-mob time-to-kill even longer.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Trivializing Content

So there was a big hubbub over the weekend about the (lack of) flying mounts in Warlords of Draenor. I guess there is a vocal contingent of folks that would (really, really) like them, but Blizzard devs have staunchly (and rudely) refused to consider the matter, given their experiences with  previous expansions. I personally don't have a dog in that fight, but I noticed something last night that dovetails with Belghast's take on the subject.

So Scooter and I are playing through the Republic planet quests in SWTOR, even though we could skip them entirely due to the 12x XP for story quests currently in place. The thing is, by the time we left Taris (the third world) for Nar Shaddaa, we were a high enough level to tackle Tatooine (the fifth planet). Last night, I noticed that I was only getting about 6 XP for turning in the regular planet quests. We were actually getting more for (some) individual kills than we were for completing entire quest chains.

Needless to say, the questing is easy and we are enjoying the place. Nar Shaddaa has an awesome East Asian neon vibe, and I decided to buy my stronghold there. Right now, even though we can't fly like in WoW, we can easily slip past mobs we don't need to kill. But I can't help wondering if or when we should start skipping content completely in order to find a challenge.

The same thing happened to us in WoW. When I first introduced Scooter to the game during Cataclysm, we had the recruit-a-friend XP boost. Even though we could have skipped the Ghostlands (playing BElfs) I though we should play through, but then we started skipping whole zones because we'd out-leveled them before even arriving.

GamerLady thinks all that content (what can be flown over) is senseless anyway. To some extent, I can agree. But during the course of my playing of WoW, I went from feeling completely immersed in the unflyable world of Azeroth to being fairly disconnected from it. In SWTOR, I pushed through to the end of the second chapter of my old Sith Assassin, skipping all the planet quests on two or three planets. Even though I went through it a few years ago, I have little clue what is happening there.

In TSW, the mobs are never fully trivial, no matter what Quality Level the player's gear is. And there is no good way to bypass them. On the other hand, the XP for going through lower level content never diminishes; rather, XP for higher content is simply greater.

To what extent does the "senseless" content add to the "reality" of an MMO? And how much do we lose when we are able to bypass it in pursuit of our story?

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I'm Back!

Where was I? Well, I spent two weeks in the future! ("Avengers: Age of Ultron" is AWESOME!), Also known as Korea. It's a nice country, the people are very friendly. But I hate the 40+ hours and two or three plane rides it takes to get there and back. I was awake for over 30 hours on Saturday (time-travel, remember?)

I spent a lot of my spare time playing Star Trek Online in the middle of the night. They are still doing the Delta Recruitment event, and Season 10 dropped last Thursday, changing the landscape (spacescape?) considerably. What used to be something like 20 separate zones of Sector space has been consolidated into just three or four "quadrants." I didn't get much time to poke around before my trip home, but the feel of Warp is vastly (heh!) different than it was before, encountering a load screen every few parsecs.

I did get some sight-seeing time in, and I took a few pictures of Seoul and Uijeongbu. Once I have them organized, we'll see if my experience in those cities matches the look and feel of TSW's Seoul neighborhood, headquarters of the mysterious Dragon.

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DAW2015: I Am TSW

What is DAW?
Dang! it's already Tuesday of Developer Appreciation Week, and other than soliciting posts from my fellow bloggers on Friday, I haven't really done much. I blame the folks that actually pay my wage. Busy, busy day yesterday.

A few years ago, not long after I started blogging, the MMO Gamer Chick brought to my attention the efforts of The Blogger Formerly Known as Scarybooster. He set aside a Week every March to explicitly show Appreciation for the Developers who make our favorite games, and encouraged other bloggers to make similar posts to their blogs. Since then, TBFKaS, has decided to shed his "Bad Boy of the Blogosphere" image, but the spirit of DAW lives on. I hope if you're reading this, you make a post, on whatever soapbox you use, thanking the Devs of your favorite game(s).

Funcom, The Secret World

In the summer of 2012, I played the public beta for a new game, different than any other MMO I'd been involved with, from the setting (Modern-Day Lovecraftian Horror?!) to the character progression system (Take a spin on the Ability Wheel of fortune!). It is perhaps a tribute to the abilities of Ragnar Tornquist, Joel Bylos, and their team that they built a game that thoroughly enthralled me in a fictional genre that does not really appeal to me at all.

I am more attached to my characters in TSW than I am to other characters I spent much more time with. With deep backstories (of my own creation), they move through stories crafted by Joshua "Scrivnomancer" Doetch that are are creepy and wonderful. Romain "Tilty" Amiel and the rest of the TSW dev team have created an astonishingly detailed world, depending in part on our own, but incorporating our legends and myths into a credible cosmos of horror, intrigue, and grand adventure. A realm that is both in the now and firmly rooted in our own often nightmarish folklore.

Thanks to my association with the crew from Beyond the Veil, I have had opportunities to interact with Joel, Scriv, Tilty, and the community managers Laurie "Sezmra" Payne, "Tomium," and (formerly) "Morteia." They are all gracious folks, working hard to bring us a little scary and a lot of fun. Even though I am not currently playing, some of the best times in my life during the past three years—and certainly the best times playing MMOs during the same period—are thanks to these wonderful people and the effort they have made to make my hobby more enjoyable. Damn if I am not going to have to re-up now.

P.S. Belghast, of Tales of the Aggronaut, has made another logo for Developer Appreciation Week. Feel free to use either mine at the top of the post or his when you write your own DAW post.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

December Doldrums

The first half of December has seemed fairly hectic this year. Real Life busy-ness has cut into my game time; and quite honestly, my gaming energy. I don't feel like there's a ton to write about on this blog, hence the paucity of posts. After playing Rift intensely during Thanksgiving weekend, I have barely logged in the past two weeks. This is not burn-out so much as a fear of burn-out, methinks.

On the other hand, I have burned out on The Secret World. A few frustrating sessions in Tokyo have led to me taking an indefinite hiatus from the game. This decision has a lot to do with my aforementioned energy crisis. There have been times in the past, even recently, that I enjoyed the challenge TSW presents. But I am part of the camp that feels the AEGIS system brings an unnecessary layer of complexity ("complexity for complexity's sake") to the game. And right now, I don't feel it's necessary for me to expend further energy on it. There is so much I like about the game—the story, the attention to detail, the ability wheel system—but it's not enough to overcome the feeling that, in Tokyo, I am fighting every fight twice, thanks to the necessity of burning down the mob's shield. And that's even assuming I have equipped the right "weapon," when failure to do so may or may not lead to either a hasty retreat or a not-exactly-quick death on my part.

Far more agonizing was the decision to leave Beyond the Veil. Xander, Antida, and the rest have become friends over the past year-and-a-half, and I feel I am letting them down. But I find that I have little to contribute to a webcast about a game I am reluctant to play. In the meantime, they seem to have recruited some new blood, and the show is as exciting as ever.

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First Time Chills: The Broadcast

I intended to write this up with a day or so of running the Broadcast mission in The Secret World. But this week has been very busy, and others have beaten me to the punch. Much like waiting for G.R.R.M. to crank out another book in the Song of Ice and Fire, it can be frustrating to experience Funcom's glacial pace of updates. But then, when content does break out into the wild, all is forgiven. Because damn! It's just that good.

As my buddy Xander from Beyond the Veil is fond of pointing out, Halloween in the The Secret World is like Christmas in almost every other MMO. The place screams Halloween the whole year round. But the season itself turns it up to eleven. Even though we had to wait until just before the holiday itself, the new mission reminds us what we come here for.

I don't know how much detail I want to go into. Suffice it to say, Dave Screed, the Illumati's pet conspiracy theorist, has stumbled upon something even he's too creeped out to investigate further, and he needs the help of the Bees.

The guy at the end bears an uncanny resemblance to the Bogeyman, maybe they're cousins? Interestingly, just last week, Syp mentioned that the devs made the Bogeyman a unique model and then never used the model again. There is plenty of reuse—both models and locales—in this mission, but that does not stop it from being top-notch.

The old radio programs you encounter throughout the mission are really great, I found myself stopping just to listen to what was going in the programs themselves. But what happens when you (somewhat inevitably) shuffle off your mortal coil is when it really gets interesting.

My compatriots who play TSW all have a moment (perhaps several) where they are quite simply freaked out by the game. Whether it's some dark parking garage housing a Wendigo, or a pitchblack mine with Filth Creeps lurking about, or some Tokyo office with Ghosts hiding just around the corner, TSW has plenty of hot and cold running chills. But none of that affected me until I stood listening to numbers stations with a crowd of fellow spirits.

I am telling you, all the hairs on my body stood on end. I've read read up on the general consensus on the rather mundane origins of numbers stations, but that doesn't stop them from being creepy as hell. So congratulations to Nusquam and Scrivnomancer. You finally got to this fearlessly jaded blogger.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.