From Corellia With Love

Sctrz and I finished out the stories on Chicco (Chico!) and Versteckt on Tuesday. I also picked up this snazzy new jacket from the Corellia commendations vendor, giving the long coat I'd been wearing since the Black Talon to Ensign Temple. So many of the outfits available to the Agent were basically the Imperial Navy uniforms from the movies; which I never understood, given how much of the story I was supposed to be under cover. I really like this top, and the way the match-to-chest made my outfit look. Too bad it was the last two days of my time in-game.

This will be the last time for a while, that I deal with SWTOR, since I canceled my subscription effective yesterday. We pushed a bit to get to 50 and finish our stories before I did. The Secret World has been taking more of my interest, and the Guild Wars 2 headstart is on the horizon. I still enjoy myself when playing, but it is no longer compelling. There it's fun to play through the stories, but in so many ways they are not my characters' stories, they are what the BioWare writers came up with. I encountered spoilers a couple times, too, which dampened or nullified the impact of the story. That was my own fault I suppose.

IMPERIAL AGENT SPOILER!
I gotta say, my favorite part of the climax (maybe the whole story) was when Versteckt shrugged off the torture and kicked serious ass. I love it every time it happens in a movie that a hero surprises a villain with an extra-strength can of whoopass. It's one reason I love Black Widow in Avengers.
END SPOILER!

Honestly, and there will be people who are critical of my position, much of what dampened my enthusiasm for SWTOR was external to the game itself: the way BioWare and EA failed to understand how to run an MMO, how to relate to the players. The clumsily handled free-month giveaway to "valued players"; the forced mergers that were painted as anything but; the inflexible Legacy system that did little to encourage having an actual Legacy, the inept handling of an unjustified player ban; actions that caused whole guilds to evaporate (to highlight: Beskar was a guild for about 5 times longer before launch than after, as far as I can tell). I had better stop before I really start ranting.

The sad thing is the game is good. I like it. But it could have been great and wasn't. I'll be back when SWTOR goes Free-to-Play in November, to see the other stories. But I know now that they won't really be my stories.

Dear Mrs. Santa

Dear Mrs. Clause,

So River tells me you have some special goodies for me, all I have to do is ask. I've been reeaaallly good this year; but when I'm bad I'm better, just ask Sctrz. Some of this is pretty "World Peace" level stuff, IYKWIM, but some of it is doable. Much like you, if River is to be believed. ;)

1. Stop people from whinging over SWTOR. It is what it is. Enjoy it or GTFO.
2. I wants me some GW2, ASAP. I am so looking forward to the end of the unholy trinity, and trying some real online roleplaying.
3. Speaking of Roleplaying, are we ever going to get a Firefly MMO? I so wanna be Malcolm Reynolds. He's the big reason I plan to role a Gunslinging Smuggler in SWTOR. (I promise not to cross IPs, though.)
4. When is someone going to invent the Holodeck? We'd all be in better shape if we were actually jumping around killing imaginary dragons, instead of pushing buttons on a keyboard or gamepad.
5. As long as we're in pure fantasy territory, can you get me a (well-paying) job spewing my worthless opinion in the internet? My day-job is not fulfilling, though I am grateful for it.

Thanks in advance. I hear MMOGC, Stargrace, Scopique, and Syp might have some items on their lists, as well.

Sincerely,
Rowan

Developer Appreciation Week

OK, I planned to write this and post it much earlier in the week, but RL and GL got in the way. As it is, I haven't posted this often in a week since I-don't-know-when. So I guess last year Scary Booster founded Developer Appreciation Week to show his appreciation (of course) and encourage other gamers in the blogosphere to do the same. I don't know enough about individual developers to write bios, but I want show my appreciation for the teams that have brought me so much entertainment for the past year and the past half-decade. All too often, game developers are on the receiving end of a lot of criticism (to say the least) from many quarters of the gaming population (including me). In a given game: the PvPers want more battlegrounds or whine about this or that class being over-powered; players of said OP class don't want it nerfed; the crafters want a more robust crafting system; the Raiders want new challenges; the altoholics want more quests; PvErs don't want PvP affecting their play; the list goes on and on. All the while the techies, artists, and storytellers try to keep the hardware and software functioning under tremendous loads, keep player accounts secure, and keep the games fun for everyone.

I want to briefly mention Funcom and Turbine. I tried Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan this year; and while neither ended up being my cuppa tea, I did ring a few hours of enjoyment out of them. And the developer teams do their best to support the fans of both games.

BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT takes a lot of flak from many directions over World of Warcraft, a game held in contempt by a great many "serious" gamers, and one in which even fans often level tremendous criticism. But you've gotta hand it to the developers of the only true blockbuster MMORPG in the Western World. What other company, in the SIXTH year of of a game's existence, would go back and say that in the next expansion pack they were not going to simply add a new land or continent for purchasers of the XPACK, but completely revamp the original world for ALL players as well, streamlining the content so new players feel just as welcome as the veterans? The people at Blizz have a passion for the game that really does shine through the material.

TRION WORLDS. Holy cow! Rift was not even on my radar until mid-December, when many of my blog and Twitter friends got into the closed betas and couldn't stop talking about their excitement for the game. As far as I know, no one--not Sony, not Blizzard, no one--has managed to launch an MMO with the polish and poise of Rift. A visual style all its own, interesting lore, public group content, and a character specialization system (Soul Trees) that blows every other system I've seen out of the water. On top of this, attentive development and customer service teams that are going out of their way to keep players happy and having a blast in the game. Rift is my new shiny, and I think Trion has probably upped the ante for every new MMO that is released from here on out.

CRYPTIC STUDIOS gets my award for most improved game, Star Trek Online. A compelling game (IMHO) from the beginning, with both an excellent space combat system and decent ground combat and an awesome visual style, STO has shown steady improvement in the first year since launch. They are also the main reason you, Dear Reader, are still suffering through my meandering diatribes and stories. Trekkers are a hard crowd to please, and Gaming Trekkers even worse. By listening to one of the most rabid, nitpicky fanbases ever (topped only by Star Wars geeks) in the first year; despite initial hiccups, the STO development team has revamped the crafting system, redone interstellar "warp" space (I liked the original star charts, but great improvement), introduced ship interiors, added great content, and started  the most compelling series of weekly updates I have seen a game: The Featured Episodes.

FEATURED EPISODES deserve a paragraph all their own. Cryptic devs have outdone themselves repeatedly with every mini-series. They offer compelling storylines; mystery, suspense, even creepy/scary atmospheres; cameos of classic Trek characters; puzzles and branch-specific side missions. I love how each one has a teaser then formally opens with a title shot as my ship warps in to the local star system. The latest series introduced voice acting and moved the whole Star Trek story forward, reintroducing the mythical Iconians from The Next Generation as a new threat to galactic civilization. I have come to look forward to each Featured Episode the way I anticipated each new episode of TNG as a teenager.

Thank you, all those who have joined in the efforts to brings such great games to millions of people. It may seem seem trivial to some (as they sit watching Survivor, or the current sporting event), but these games allow us to explore worlds of imagination and wonder, to control or become powerful beings, to be the heroes (or villains) of our own stories.

THANK YOU!!

YAY!! Toons restored!!

Blizz restored my WoW characters. It took a week, but everything (currency and equipment) seems to have been restored.

Good job, Bristocleis, Specialist Game Master of Blizzard Entertainment. :)

A Week? Really?

Still no word from Blizzard on the progress of their investigation, though I discovered yesterday that they had suspended/closed my secondary account on Wednesday because it had been involved in Real World trafficking of In-Game goods and currencies. Well duh guys, it got hacked, being part of the same Battle.net account that Blizard insisted all WoW players should use, based on email logins instead of (theoretically) unrelated account logins. You know, I never got phishing attacks in my email before the changeover that Blizzard pushed. Luckily my email service blocks the scams as spam. Some of them are very sophisticated.

Unfortunately, the reason I didn't find out for four days that my second account was closed for crimes against Azeroth was that my spam filter caught the legit notification from Blizzard. Such that I wasn't sure at first whether it real, until I tried to log into that account and found that indeed it was closed. Upon informing/complaining to Blizzard account admins that this was part of a compromised Battle.net account, they reset my password FOR THE THIRD TIME THIS WEEK!!! Wow. Brilliant.

Is there even a record kept of customer interaction with the company representatives? I worked for a brief time for AOL in the 90's and GTEL California before that. And there was a record of every interaction between customer service/billing and the customers in both cases. Why can't the employees of Blizzard see that their own colleagues have already taken the action they themselves are contemplating?

Also, why are Technical Support and Billing the only departments with phone numbers? Neither of these department can help me. I have sent several emails to various departments that have no live interaction and so far only received form letters back. A single phone call would have helped tremendously, as they could easily verify my identity through my knowledge of the payment method, etc. And we could have gotten to the bottom of the problem within a day or so.

I'd heard Blizzard as a company had the customer service skills of a llama, but I've never been caught up in it like this. EPIC FAIL

Sliding from Furious to Resigned

So it finally happened, after over three and a half years of playing WoW. My account got hacked. On Monday morning. I don't how: I keep my password secure; I ran a virus/malware scan on my computer, and it came back clean. None of my other online accounts/logins have been affected.

They stole all my gold on at least two realms, and deleted all my characters off one of the realms including my two level-80 toons. I promptly reset my password and put in a ticket to Blizzard GMs both in-game and out. They reset my password (again), but still (as of Thursday) have not restored my characters, much less their stuff. I'm withholding judgment to see if they restore the characters with their epic, heirloom items, etc. to my satisfaction, but this may be the end of my relationship with Blizzard.