Revisiting Bartle

Greetings Traveler!

I told you I would get another post out before the end of the day. I hadn't thought about WildStar too much in the past few years, now I've had two reminders in the same day.

With thanks to Thyanel, I decided to take the Bartle test again for my evening post. And like Thyanel, my score hasn't really changed much over the years. I think the player "types" that Bartle originated can be valuable as guides to design and plan a roleplaying game, particularly an MMO. However, too much emphasis on Bartle types can lead to poor design decisions, WildStar being a case in point. The result of my own test today is shown below.

The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology

You are 73% Explorer

What Bartle says:

♠ Explorers delight in having the game expose its internal machinations to them. They try progressively esoteric actions in wild, out-of-the-way places, looking for interesting features (ie. bugs) and figuring out how things work. Scoring points may be necessary to enter some next phase of exploration, but it's tedious, and anyone with half a brain can do it. Killing is quicker, and might be a constructive exercise in its own right, but it causes too much hassle in the long run if the deceased return to seek retribution. Socialising can be informative as a source of new ideas to try out, but most of what people say is irrelevant or old hat. The real fun comes only from discovery, and making the most complete set of maps in existence.

You are also:

47% Achiever

47% Socialiser

33% Killer

This result may be abbreviated as EASK

Background & Acknowledgements

The Bartle Test is based on the player types identified by the legendary Richard Bartle in his paper, Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs. It is strongly recommended that you read this paper if you wish to find out more about your player type, and what it all means. Bartle revisits and expands upon these ideas in his book, Designing Virtual Worlds, which is also recommended if you wish to delve a little deeper.

The original Bartle Test was created by Erwin S. Andreasen and Brandon Downey and this implementation is based on the question data which Andreasen has made available at http://www.andreasen.org/bartle/.

As you can see, while I heavily fall in the Explorer group, I also have significant scores in both Achiever and Socializer, and occasionally might dabble in the Killer group. The folks at Carbine mistakenly (in my humble opinion) thought that players would be one or another type, when I suspect we are all more of a blend. I need to read Bartle's original paper to get more nuance, but I think it is worth noting that he was talking about (and possibly promoting) a specific type of game: Multi-User Dungeons.

As Bartle himself wrote:

Are MUDs
games? Like chess, tennis, D&D?
Yes - to achievers.
pastimes? Like reading, gardening, cooking?
Yes - to explorers.
sports? Like huntin', shooting', fishin'?
Yes - to killers.
entertainments? Like nightclubs, TV, concerts?
Yes - to socialisers.

While MMORPGs share many traits with MUDs, they are not the same. And few MMO players have ever played a MUD. As I wrote above, I do believe that Bartle types can be helpful in designing MMOs. However, they are just one of many considerations that should infuse the design of a game.

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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.

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.

Developer Appreciation Week 2017 - WildStar Soundtrack

Another Developer Appreciation Week is upon us. I've been so out of things, started a vacation with Scooter on Friday, handed off a torch to Ravanel Griffon and she ran with it.

What is an MMO without its music? SWTOR couldn't be SWTOR without the epic score that pays homage to classic John Williams' Star Wars themes. Is there anything more poignant than the tragic score of WoW's Wrath of the Lich King or Legion?

(Insert a plug here for my friends the Battlebards: Syp, Stef and Syl, who are up to 95 episodes as of this writing, and much more capable of musical analysis than I.)

I may have mentioned this once or twice before, but I love the WildStar soundtrack by composer Jeff Kurtenacker. Few game soundtracks come quite as close to WildStar in evoking the feel of the game world. It helps that I love the mix of electronic and rustic instruments. The music is so cool, I included it in our travel mix playlist, alongside Elvis, Adele, Taylor, ELO, REO Speedwagon. And, of course, Journey.

Hopefully, I'll have time to post at least a couple more times before Ravanel's DAW 2017 Deadline of 10 April. And I encourage you, Dear Reader, to post about your own appreciation for the developers of the games you play. Everyone have a great week!

Hmm, feeling the pull of Nexus' gravity well . . .

ETA: Wildstar is free to play, so go ahead and give it a try if you're so inclined.

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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.

Blaugust the 19th: Most Valuable Players, Revisited

Today, I got involved in a discussion of Wildstar's loyalty program, apparently called "Cosmic Points." I guess people have gotten and will get 3000 CP for each month they subscribe in the traditional sense ($15 per month). In addition, those that purchase CREDD (at $20 per CREDD) in order to sell it for platinum, the in-game currency, on the exchange will get 4000 CP for each CREDD purchased. Those that have purchased, or will in the future purchase, that CREDD on the exchange for platinum and redeem it for a month's subscription status will receive 1000 CP for each CREDD redeemed.

This strikes some folk, like Gracie, as unfair to those redeeming the CREDD. They are, after all, faithfully playing the game and supporting the market by providing the platinum to the CREDD sellers. However, as Belghast points out, those spending time and effort in the game to purchase CREDD with platinum are, in fact, a feature themselves, providing a livelier environment for the paying customers. Meanwhile, CREDD redeemers are guests—playing for free—despite protests to the contrary. That sounds harsh, but sadly, it is the truth.

While I agree with Belghast, I can sympathize with Gracie. I, myself, was very riled up in the spring of 2012 about BioWare's ham-fisted approach to keeping folks from canceling rewarding valuable players. (That situation was slightly different in that they failed to reward many people who actually were loyal, paying customers. I may have forgiven, but I have not forgotten.) I was iffy about CREDD when I first heard about it. I thought that Free-to-Play with an optional sub was a better system. I guess we'll get a chance to find out.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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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.

Free Shuttle Flights to Nexus, Coming Soon

Twitter is all abuzz this morning. And that's always good for a game and studio. Cautious optimism is my reaction to this exciting news. I liked WildStar, in small bits. But Scooter and I left the game just before the Great Server Merger last fall because we couldn't justify the cost, what with Scooter's computer at the time giving her issues.

This announcement has been a long time coming. Carbine admitted to tossing around various ideas for an alternative payment model as far back as the mega-merger, and I speculated on the possibilities at that time. I wonder when we'll have details about the nature of the WildStar's F2P scheme (because they vary widely). [EDIT: Thanks to Alisdair, I got the details.] Will it be relatively innocuous (e.g., Rift) or more in your face (e.g., LOTRO) or horrendously egregious (e.g., SWTOR, to which I am currently subscribed for a reason)?

The link to the official announcement is basically a link page to the trailer and to a post about loyalty awards for those have been subscribed since launch or will subscribe for a bit before the transition. Oh! it also has a place to sign up for beta. Beta, for F2P? I guess that's necessary.

Honestly, if I were not already committed to SWTOR right now through August, I might jump back in, just to get the loyalty rewards, if nothing else. However, as it is, I don't see myself going back before September, regardless of when F2P goes live.

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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.

DAW2015: Most of the Rest

I've played quite a few games this year, though perhaps not as many as some other folks. As Belghast said in today's Aggronaut, "[Devs] are my rockstars, and even if you are making a game that no one will ever play…  you are being awesome.  Games bring me so much joy, and there is a cast of often nameless and faceless people who struggled through crunch time to get that product into my hands." Even games I decided not play after some trial or beta are still herculean efforts by teams of people who poured no small portion of their lives into making what they hoped would please the players. No one sets out to make a crappy game. It's usually time and/or resource constraints along with pressures from folks who don't really understand the process that do damage to it. And sometimes a perfectly well-made game just isn't my cuppa tea.

Carbine's Wildstar Team

I spent a chunk of the summer playing Wildstar with Scooter. Wildstar is an interesting mix of old and new game design. I liked the irreverent approach to storytelling, the cartoonish art style, and of course the great music from Jeff Kurtenacker. You can tell the team had a lot of fun developing it. In many ways, playing Wildstar was a lot like I imagine playing in the Firefly 'Verse would/will be. And that's not nothing.

ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 Team

Tyria is always a nice place to visit, and ArenaNet's buy-to-play approach means that I can poke my my head in whenever I get the itch, without worrying about the hobbles of F2P. I started a couple new characters around Christmas to experience GW2 anew, and enjoyed the look around. While some folks are not impressed with the living story, you can't deny the team is trying to keep things fresh. And of course the "Game of Thorns" expansion is on the horizon.

Trion's Rift Team

Rift will always have a special place in my heart as the game that Scooter and I bonded over. We returned this fall just in time for the Nightmare Tide expansion, and things are still hopping. I like the new minion mini-game, and I really like the Dimensions housing system. It seems like Trion has done the most to enable players to play with all their friends, with the "Faction as Fiction" crossover content; and not only the ability to "mentor" down from higher character levels, but also the ability to "sidekick" up lowbies to match veterans for some content.

Tech Support
On a side note, it is not just the people creating the game that we need to appreciate. I've been assisted many times by the support teams of various games, fixing issues with my account or the game client. Often issues caused by my own derpiness. Thank you so much to all the support personnel and community managers out there.

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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.

End of an Age

I have a longer post about Open World PvP, but it may be moot as far as ArcheAge goes. Even after Scooter did a bunch of research and upgraded her video drivers, etc., her computer still spontaneously reboots at random while running the client. So despite a promising little storyline and a pretty good skill/ability system—not to mention beautiful graphics—we will no longer be playing the game.

ArcheAge isn't the only game we are leaving behind this month. Despite my optimism about WildStar's server mega-merger (with a healthy side helping of "Why wasn't it this way at launch?"), the truth is all my characters have stalled just after reaching eligibility for housing. Messing around with my various WildStar plots—and examining the farm/housing system in ArcheAge—only makes me long for the Dimension system Trion uses for Rift. Scooter canceled her WildStar sub a week or so ago, and I followed suit just the other day. We have until our current month runs out, but I doubt we'll be doing much on Nexus.

And so Scooter and I made the decision last night to re-up in Rift to see if we can make a home in Telara. I plan to throw some money at Trion to get the Dream Soul pack, enabling me to possibly create a rogue character similar to the Warpriest class in ArcheAge, a combination of healz, sword-and-board, and archery. A bit has changed since the last time we got involved with Rift, and I think quite a lot has changed since we left the game the first time so many moons ago. I am hoping to see more of what has happened to Telaria in the intervening years.

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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.

Payment Options

So, apparently, the folks at Carbine are looking at possible options for WildStar's business model going forward. Given their previous announcement regarding converting the game infrastructure to a megaserver, I wonder if whatever business model they choose will happen at the same time. Of course, a certain contingent of players decry anything other than a pure subscription model as detrimental to the game. I believe this is short-sighted, especially given NCSoft's penchant for pulling the plug on under-performing titles—however beloved by their fans. Look, everyone realizes that these games are not cheap to design or execute, but maintaining a healthy playerbase may require a departure from the hidebound payment models of yesteryear.

As for me, I look at Rift or the Secret World as ideal models from a consumer perspective. Rift is free to play, with mostly cosmetic items in the shop. I believe the expansions (some content and new "souls") also cost extra, but player can conceivably reach max level without spending a dime. The cash shop interface even provides some ancillary benefits, like the ability to sell off vendor trash from anywhere in the world.

TSW still costs money to buy, though it tends be heavily discounted. The cash shop also contains mostly cosmetic items, plus content DLC "Issues." There are XP boosts, but they merely speed up ability gains, not power. And again, a player can reach the original "end-game" without paying more than the box price. And neither Rift nor TSW do RMT for quality of life items like extra bank space or whether one's helm can be hidden, at least not that I am aware of.

Both Rift and TSW have monthly subscription options which confer extra benefits in XP and vanity items, but not extra power at end-game. And in an era where you can buy a max-level character in World of Warcraft from Blizzard itself, I don't think people can legitimately cry foul over XP boosts. I think the days of crappy F2P are subsiding; and although there are F2P MMOs that are annoyingly pushy about their cash shops and/or hobbling non-subscribers, the idea that F2P is automatically poor design is an archaic line of thought. Heck, I see folks anticipating SWTOR's impending second(?) expansion, after all sorts of people thought the game was on the ropes when it became free to play less than a year after it launched.

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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.

Chasing a Wraith

The Dead Horse Discussion
On Friday, I wrote a post decrying the schadenfreude of some in the MMO community over the apparent difficulties WildStar and its dev team are having of late. Commenters were of the opinion that Carbine brought it upon themselves as a result of their arrogance and foolishly catering to what turned out to be a very niche group of "hardcore" raiders.

Then Belghast wrote on Saturday about the decline of MMOs in general (not exactly a new topic), highlighting the fact that—other than Everquest Next, which is probably years away—there is not really any AAA MMORPG on the horizon. We have WoW 6.0 coming up, but Blizzard has shuttered development on Titan, effectively "admitting that the MMO genre has no more room for new players."

The Elephant in the Room
Without a doubt, in the absence of WoW, the MMO landscape would look very different. And it would likely be much smaller. As it is, compared to genres/franchises like Call of Duty, MMOs are small potatoes. But up till now, big publishers like EA, NCSoft, and Activision were willing to throw big money at almost any studio with a good idea for getting a piece of the MMO pie. That seems to have changed; even though without WoW in the picture, almost every MMORPG that has been published could be considered a success.

But they're also relatively homogenous, and WoW is blamed for that. Much like Hollywood, a blockbuster in the video game industry begets clones as studios attempt to replicate that success. Everyone remember the Guitar Hero spinoffs and clones? Don't forget that WoW itself is a both a reply to and an attempt to capitalize on the success of (vanilla) EverQuest. But without WoW, there is no guarantee we would have SWTOR or Rift—or TSW or ESO for that matter. If we did, however, it's a safe bet that they would actually be of a different design than they are now and would be less like one another.

Virtual Nomads
And so we players flock from one MMO to another. Some would say we swarm like locusts. But perhaps like heroin, chasing that initial high is a futile endeavor. We're chasing whatever it was that felt amazing about being in a virtual world with other players from around the globe. I've played with folks from China and Australia, to Brits, Canadians, and Continentals. But the sense of wonder about online play—or the glitter of snow in Dun Morogh—is over for me. WoW isn't home anymore, but neither is any other game.

The Age of Arches?
Which brings me to ArcheAge, a game I had not intended to touch given the toxic PvP atmosphere it was rumored to embrace. However, while I was participating in the latest episode of Beyond the Veil last Thursday, Scooter was downloading the AA client. While she enjoys the games we now play, she is ever in search of something new. It was upon her suggestion that we briefly looked at EQ2 early this year.

Since it's free to play, I fired it up myself, and got in close to six hours of play yesterday, including a sizable amount of time customizing my character, a Nuia Vitalist I named Misteli (Finnish for mistletoe). Scooter had created a Nuia Archer already on the Enla server, naming her Kammi and playing to level 5. Together, we made it to level 9 and the village of Lacton before calling it a night.

Honestly, so far I like it. Not quite as frenetic as WildStar, at least at this level. No standing in/dodging out of "the stupid." And though I haven't gotten a great handle on it, I like the possibilities of the mix-and-match class/skills system, reminiscent of ESO. I picked Battlerage as my secondary set when the time came. I may have screwed it up; but right now, Misteli plays a bit like my cleric in Rift, both the tank and the healer for Scooter's DPS.

As far as movement and combat, if ESO had had this control scheme from the get-go, it would have been a no-brainer over WildStar. ArcheAge has very much what I consider an MMO-style rather than a reticle-aiming combat scheme; I had no trouble getting around, even on the rowboats (that were thankfully unobstructed by griefers when we crossed the bay).

Much like WildStar, I guess I will be taking ArcheAge one level/feature at a time. It's fun right now, but I don't know whether it will continue to be so as we get further into the game. And when the time comes, will I be willing to pay to "remove the suck"?

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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.

QOTD: Schadenfreude

It's one thing to deeply oppose a game's design, but if you take delight in watching major MMOs flounder, you don't really deserve this genre at all.
~~Brianna Royce, Massively (emphasis in original) 

I have seen this phenomenon over and over. Someone who doesn't like a game gloats over bad news regarding said game. It goes beyond simple a "I told you so" and becomes a perverted schadenfreude.

I say this not as a current subscriber to WildStar, but as a human being: Wishing for and then gloating over someone's failures (whether real or perceived), is the worst sort of immaturity. Especially since most of the armchair game designers could never even hope to get their pet ideas off the ground, much less have any sort of commercial success.
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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.

MegaStar

Hello, Dear Reader. It seems so long since we have been here. Blaugust came to an end and so did my posting. I only planned to take a one- or two-day break that coincided with Labor Day and a business flight on Tuesday. Instead, that break stretched out to the weekend, and now it's been a full week since I posted.

Luckily, I managed to avoid the bulk of what has come to be known as GamerGate, an appellation that surely shows how serious it is. Which is not very. Someday, maybe people will realize they should not feed the trolls. And yes, while I do not believe that both sides of the debate have equal merit, I do believe both sides have exhibited trollish behavior, from what I have seen.

Meanwhile, Carbine has created a minor -gate of their own with the announcement of a server restructuring that will leave us with only four WildStar megaservers, none of which are designated RP servers. This caused immediate consternation within the RP community, who had seen WildStar as a haven for RP activity. While I have all my characters on Evindra, a North American RP server, I almost always play alone or in partnership with my beloved bride, Scooter. I usually view RP servers as friendlier and more mature, but many folks are taking to the forum feedback thread to complain bitterly and even announce their /ragequit.

The RPers don't want to be thrown in with the general population, full of players the RPers are clearly superior to. Seriously, they whine about griefers before the problem has materialized. They may have a point, I don't know. But I don't think they really do either. What they were bringing up as examples of griefing behavior seems to be mostly oblivious people going about their business, rather than a malicious attempt to ruin anybody's fun. And of course, the devs are complete hacks (according to some RPers) who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, much less implement the "simple" fixes these armchair programmers come up with. But at this point, we just have to wait see how things shake out. I do hope that the opportunities for RP that these players crave do materialize, though it may take more effort on their part than simply picking a server.

In preparation for the megamerger, Carbine is offering free transfers to other realms. Though I didn't really see the point, this guy totally did. Then again, he transferred all of his characters at once rather than stagger them, which meant two days of down time. In the future, I hope he learns his lesson and keeps at least one character playable until the others are fully transferred.

One last thing the forum RPers were up in arms about is the implementation of second names coming with the megaservers. Apparently, people are so hidebound that they can't even imagine having a surname for their character, and are even willing to quit over it. I, on the other hand, love the idea, having had formal full names for my characters ever since STO (still one of the most RP friendly games I have seen, though some may disagree). Up till now in WildStar, I've basically mashed my character surnames into their given names (e.g, RowanBlaze, LyraSedgeweaver, etc.). Despite some initial confusion on the forums, the plan is that, after the megaserver implementation, everyone will have the opportunity (be forced) to change their name to include two words with a space between them.

As well as the allowance of at least one space in character names, I think the megaserver is something Carbine should have implemented from the beginning. And I am not alone in that opinion. If you're affected by all this and have not done so already, check out Kaelish's digest here. Along with the FAQ, you'll probably get all the info you need there, without developing an aneurysm.

Meanwhile, I started yet another character: Leonotis (Leonurus), pictured above. He's a Cassian Esper, and my first Explorer, as well. He's definitely a character, but I'll have more details in another post.

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The Running Aurin

Blaugust is in the final stretch. Hang in there, Cupcake!

Minor SPOILERS for WildStar

I have a great idea for a post, but haven't had time to develop it. Hopefully, tomorrow will be the day. Not to complain once again about the daily blogging thing, but while I think it's a great exercise, I don't feel it allows me to really go in depth with a topic. That may be my own hang-up, since Belghast, Wilhelm Arcturus, and others frequently crank out insightful posts despite a daily or nearly daily schedule.

Anyway, Flint and Lave have buttoned up the case of the Darkspur Cartel and are basically moving past the town of Gallow into what looks to be the last area of Algoroc.

We had fun with the tropes of the Western town, right up to the final confrontation with Throg. This despite Scooter being inexplicably disconnected from the game almost constantly, leaving poor Lave running in place while Flint stood by to defend her. It wasn't our network, because I had no trouble with my connection to the game besides an occasional lag spike.

We considered switching over to WoW, but there wasn't enough time left before bed to be worth it. 

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Gallow Humors

Beware of SPOILERS

Flint and Lave have been spending time in the town of Gallow in the Algoroc valley. You could say they've been deputized, since the local constabulary seems inadequate to the task of protecting the townsfolk. As you may know, Gallow is the hub of several mining operations, as well as a robust ranching enterprise. (You may also note a certain lilt in my speech. It seems the local dialect may rubbed a bit off on me.)

Unfortunately for the Gallowites (Gallowegians?), a group of thugs led by a Krogg named Morek Throg has arrived in town to claim the valuable loftite in the area for the Darkspur Cartel. They've been terrorizing the good folks of Gallow, and also facilitating the distribution of the bootleg beverage known as Slush.

After losing his arm to a cowardly attack by Throg, Judge Kain has enlisted the help of Flint and Lave to break the stranglehold of Throg's gang and their allies, the Crowes. The walking mountain and his kinetic companion have been making mincemeat of the bandits and bootleggers.

Because dispensing frontier justice on the edge of a blade is how we do it in this big valley, pardner!

Bear witness to the Blind Justice of Blaugust!

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Unexpected Guests

Flint Buckthorn looked out across the Algoroc Valley. The sun was just peaking over the mountains. Loftite spires reached up into the sky, shards of the strange ore floating around them as if in orbit, catching the dawn's rays. He had been in the area just a few weeks, but it was already growing on him. The sparse environment reminded him of his village on Gnox, but he pushed that down. Even three centuries later, the rejection of the Free Companies by the Granok chieftains felt like a fresh fissure. A heavy sigh came out from under his mustache. He wasn't even middle-aged, but Flint felt old. He leaned on his sword, squinting into the distance. A ship was landing across the valley, but he couldn't make out its markings.

"Heya, Flinty!" Lave came bounding up the boulder he was standing on. Jumping onto his broad back and clinging to his shoulders, she asked, "What's so interesting up here?"

Flint barely felt the young Aurin's weight. The burden of her history was a different story. Seven years ago, he'd been part of the operation on Arboria. Unfortunately, they couldn't save the Aurin homeworld the way they had Gnox centuries earlier. Lavender Daisy had been orphaned by a Chua planet reaper attack that razed her village, and Flint's team was the first on the scene of destruction. He had found her huddling in a pocket under the rubble. The Aurin girl had scarcely left his side since. Flint had sworn that even if he couldn't rescue them all, he would make sure Lave wmade it out.

"Ship touched down over yonder," he responded, pointing. "I don't know that we're expecting visitors today. Might be the Marauders."

"Ya wanna check it out?" She dropped off his shoulders, landing lightly.

Flint hefted his claymore over his back and grinned at his companion.

"Sure. I love a good asskicking in the morning."

It's not too late to enjoy the Battle of Blaugust. Field Marshall Belghast has promised spoils for the victors.

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Which Path Shall You Take?

Syp's talking about player paths in WildStar today. He's got some great ideas, like adding ways that the various paths interact with the environment on an incidental basis (e.g., blowing stuff up for extra damage to enemies, opening otherwise hidden doors, etc.).

Inherently Flawed?
I originally thought the paths would be more swappable—based on my playing mood, really. Much like the popular Bartle Test, locking paths in at character creation reflects a misunderstanding of Richard Bartle's types in the first place. On top of which, Bartle's hypothesis has been analyzed and critiqued by others, like David Yee, who came up with a different way to assess playstyle preferences. This actually makes me think of the Myers-Briggs personality test, which has been shown to be unreliable, but is often used in employment decisions and other inappropriate settings. In any event, if Bartle's model of player types is flawed or misunderstood, then games designed to appeal to such types will also be flawed, leading to player dissatisfaction.

Synergies and Efficiencies
Even though I generally love the lore of a world, overall, I am a bit disappointed with scientist. Settler is fun, though. And it seems the most appreciated path, providing buff stations for all players and repairing decorative items that garner the affection of the local NPC populace. There are synergies between settler and scientist, which Scooter and I thought were cool. And I assume all the paths have similar synergies. But often, we "waste" one another's time, one partner doing path-related things while the other stands by, not quite sure what's going on. On our more recent pairing, we went the same path, so now we can work together on the missions and be more in sync, making up for the loss of cross-path synergy.

Soldiering On
Non-soldiers participating in a holdout receive a buff, just like clicking on a settler buff station. There are chests of limited-use weapons scattered across the landscape, as well, that are accessible by anyone nearby when the soldier opens the chest. There is even a creature (with a quest) on the mountain above the first little town in Algoroc that only seems accessible by blowing up a box of explosives. I'm not sure if other paths can set it off, but when I am nearby, it's got a soldier icon above it.

While I disagree somewhat with Syp's assessment of soldier missions (there are more than just holdouts) and skills, they do seem a bit less useful to other players, the way settlers are. I do like the ability to bug out of an area like the bottom of a cave, rather than fight my way back out, though.

Heh, some soldier, right?

The siege of Blaugust is almost over. Who will emerge from the sound and fury victorious?

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Sunday Afternoon on Nexus

So Scooter and I were discussing our our characters, Rowan Blaze and Sabrine, a medic and spellslinger, respectively, and how they'd grown a bit stale, even though we'd only reached maybe level 17 with them. I am enjoying my spellslinger, Lyra, but then again it's only been a few days since I created her. I'd been wondering how a warrior would play in WildStar, and Scooter wanted an Aurin. I decided on a Granok, and Scooter went with the stalker class. Thus were Flint Buckthorn and Lave (LAH-veh) created. It's hard to get them both in frame, if I'm being honest.

In about five hours worth of play, including character creation, we got to level 10. And we're really enjoying the melee classes. I kinda wish one or the other had some healing, but we're doing just fine, I think. I am speccing into Tank; while Scooter is going DPS, as is her wont.

Since we'd gone through Everstar Grove and Celestion with our Human characters, we decided to brave the Northern Wilds and Algoroc. This is my second time on this storyline, and I gotta say that I really enjoy it a lot more than the Aurin/Mordesh one. There's something about the Old West feel of Algoroc that really appeals to me. Perhaps it's the feeling of a land to be tamed, rather than a forest to be preserved.

It might be a bit late to start in on Blaugust, but it's never too late get support and encouragement. If you're interested in joining the fun, double-jump over to Belghast's Blaugust Initiative Page on Anook and let him know you're there. It may even mean a small windfall for you, as Belghast has prizes prepared for high achievers.

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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.