Samhain Song

Yesterday, Celestial Elf posted a link to the following video in the comment section of my Secret Monday Samhain post. It's delightfully creepy, though I'm not sure where the figures for his machinima come from.

I hope I see you all in The Secret World this evening between 7pm and 9pm Eastern time. The BtV crew will giving away treats in front of the Black House in Savage Coast. Come join us in game and on Holosuite Excess.

Happy Halloween, Dear Reader.

Hmmmmmm

To WriMo or not to WriMo? That is the question!
I'm truly torn.

NBI: Class of 2013

Much like Belghast, the wind went out my own sails fairly early this month with the Newbie Blogger Initiative. Other than a post or two of encouragement, I didn't have much to say this time around. Great advice was offered by many of my fellow blogging veterans, but much like last year, we discovered that there is no one true way to blog. Gaming blogs are as individual as the people writing them. The only important thing to have the belief that you have something to contribute the MMO conversation, and then do it. Without further ado, I present to you the NBI Class of 2013:

• A Blog Reborn
• Away From Game
• Cheap Boss Attack
• The Chindividual
• Cogitationes Astalnaris
• The Cynic Dialogues
• Gamer by Design
• In Character
• The Jazz Panda
• JVT Workshop
• The Lazy NPC
• Lyirica Heals You
• Lyle’s Grind
• MegaDirge
• Misadventures in Gaming
• Mysterious Artifact
• Null Signifier
• Part Time Core Gaming
• She’s All Nerd
• The Sofa is Waiting
• Thinking Play
• Vagabond Worlds
• The Vancouverite Video Gaming Blog

I have a new list on the far right that will show the five most recent posts by this wonderful group of people, assuming they have an RSS feed. It's expandable by clicking "Show All." Come back often to see how they're doing. And if you really like them, follow them directly.

Congratulations, my fellow bloggers, and welcome to the community. :)

Storytelling

Syp has a post up about some issues he sees with ArenaNet's storytelling technique—or lack thereof—in Guild Wars 2. Slurms says they're working to rectify the problems.

I'll admit that even having come back in to the game recently, I am avoiding the living story elements like the plague. I am so far behind, that it doesn't seem worth even trying to catch up. For a world so obviously steeped in lore and history, Tyria's current events lack a certain je ne sais quois. It just doesn't grip me.

The hearts of GW2 and beer-battered boar rib runs of World of Warcraft are where my interest lies. The Secret World's faction leaders keep saying to keep the big picture in mind. But the PCs keep helping the little guys, beating back the darkness one zombie—or one ancient demoness—at a time.

I am far more involved with the "personal lives" of the NPCs in TSW than with any figure in GW2. I think the problem starts with GW2's personal story and spirals from there, with the players becoming less and less the focus of the game story. However, I believe WoW has suffered in a similar way, mistaking "adventurers" for "Heroes." And then having done so, still shoving them aside in favor of Beings that "truly" matter.

I've said it before, but part of the appeal of TSW for me is that the player character is so much a blank slate. Everything about their personality—up to and including their voice—is in my imagination. GW2's PCs are not really mine, any more than SWTOR's PCs are, despite the illusion of choice those game systems attempt to convey.

Perhaps it is fitting that TSW's latest Halloween mission series deals with decidedly "personal" Urban Legends, rather than some Mad King out of the world's past. One Dark Pharaoh is enough.

Secret Somvār: Celebrating Samhain in Style

I just realized that this 186th post of the year marks 3x the number of posts I made in 2011.

I would have had this out sooner, but some of us work for a living. The "SAH-win" event is in full swing this week in The Secret World; and what better way to spend Secret Monday with the Knights of Mercy than traipsing across the landscape of Solomon Island like some insane (and slightly drunk) parade on the trail of some juicy urban legends? Because as you know, in the Secret World, EVERYTHING IS TRUE.

We started the night out by organizing a couple NM runs of the Cat God instance, a repeat of Samhain 2012. As it turns out, as long as at least one person is Gatekeeper qualified, the whole group can get into the nightmare version of the instance, which in fact is not particularly hard. In our group, I healed on Dortmunder while Chucho tanked, with Solaris, Dex-y, and Yeti providing DPS. Scooterz ended up with a set of 10.1 pistols for Dex-y, which she promptly put to good use. On our second run something glitched and we only ended up in the regular version of the Cat God fight, which yields no reward if you're doing the associated quest. The Mogsys headed up the other group run, with more success on purple drops and kitties.

No pics of most of the rest of the evening, where we ran around zombieland collecting "Penny Dreadfuls" for Danny Dufresne's Tales of Solomon Island mission. We got most of them before it got too late, I think Scooterz and I have three or four to go. We ended the evening with an attempt at summoning SuperJack, a Guardian size pumpkin head. As seen in the pic above, we got the ritual done correctly. But it bugged out, so no Jack.

Solaris got on the #Halloween chat channel and found another SuperJack fight going on, so we met up with another player and did battle with the squash until we smote his ruin upon the pumpkin patch. (I got smitten a couple times myself. Most of us got credit for completing the ritual and defeating Jack, except for Ocholivis, who was dead himself at the time of Jack's downfall. This is another glitch I have not seen often. During the Anniversary event, we got credit for the Guardian kill even if we were dead. On the other hand, the most recent group Filth clean-up event gives no credit if you're not on the platform at the time of the final boss' defeat. The game is down for extended maintenance this morning as they fix several bugs, so maybe this problem will be solved, too.

Anyhoo, for Monday de la Mode, we have two outfits. The left hand set that we wore most of the evening were rewards for completing our Storyline missions. Dex-y is in Weiss Knight with the Streetwear Samurai headphones, as seen worn by Rose White and Mei Ling in the cinematic game trailers. Dortmunder has on Crowley's Glad Rags as worn by Alex McCall in the cinematics. In the right-handset set, we have the Baron Samedi voodoo suits as worn by Irusan and received as reward for completing the Cat God mission chain. Yes, we're the sort of silly couple that wears the same T-shirts IRL, as well. ;-P